Teaching Traditional Polynesian Navigation [Still Image]

On the Micronesian island of Satawal, north of Papua New Guinea (about 2000 miles east of the island group of Hawaii), children sit on a canoe watching a ceremony related to the heritage of traditional navigation. The children are witnesses to a Pwo ceremony—the first held in over 50 years—inducting master navigators into a select group of Micronesians. Five Polynesians, including several Hawaiians, earned this honor by continuing the tradition of "wayfinding" on the Pacific Ocean that was responsible for the settlement of nearly all habitable islands in the vast ocean as much as 1000 years ago. Mau Piailug, a 76-year-old master navigator, conducted the ceremony as one of the last who inherited the skill marked by the journey of the Hawaiian double-hulled canoe Hokule'a on a Hawaii to Tahiti voyage of more than 2,200 miles, in 1976. The canoe was built from 400-year-old logs donated by a group of native Alaskans because there are no more suitable trees in Hawaii’s forests. It was built in the traditional manner by more than 1000 volunteers. The voyage to Tahiti proved that centuries prior to European oceanic voyages, Polynesians navigated in such canoes merely by reading nature: stars, clouds, waves, and the behavior of sea birds. More than 16 such voyaging canoes have since been built, and one of them, the double-hulled canoe Alingano Maisu, was sailed to Satawal and presented to Mau Piailug to recognize his role in transmitting his skill to the next generation of navigators. Piailug’s teaching has taken the canoe Hokule'a across the Polynesian triangle from Hawaii to Rapa Nui (Easter Island) to Aotearoa (New Zealand)—voyages equal to circumnavigating the globe twice.

"Today [the ceremony] was not about us. Today was about our children continuing their tradition, culture and ancestry," said Nainoa Thompson, one of the navigator-inductees and members of the 1976 voyage. A Hawaiian language aphorism, Kapu Na Keiki meaning "Hold Sacred the Children" expresses Thompson’s vision as a navigator and educator. Training the next generation of navigatores to uphold this tradition involves more than just skills of sailing. It addresses the multiple problems faced by many indigenous groups today: healthy nutrition, avoiding drug and alcohol abuse, and securing education and employment skills, as well as caring for the environment. The Polynesian Voyaging Society, which built and maintains the voyaging canoe Hokule`a, carries out programs for exposing youth to the pleasures and challenges of sailing and wayfinding as a means of teaching character and sound living practices as well as carrying on the sacred indigenous tradition of the peoples of the Pacific. Among the programs carried out in Hawaii, high school students paddle one- and two-man canoes about 100 miles along Hawaii’s coastline in the shadow of the Hokule‘a, to hone and test their wayfinding skills.

Gary T. Kubota, "Navigators' journey of spirit, skill ends," Star Bulletin, March 18, 2007, <a class="external" href="http://archives.starbulletin.com/2007/03/18/news/story04.html">http://archives.starbulletin.com/2007/03/18/news/story04.html</a>; and "Kapu Na Keiki," Polynesian Voyaging Society, <a class="external" href="http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/kapunakeiki.html">http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu/kapunakeiki.html</a> (accessed December 8, 2009).

Child with Purple Plastic Doll near Kumasi, Ghana [Photograph]

The girl in the photograph is from the Asante peoples in Ghana. She is holding a purple plastic baby doll of a type that is frequently found in markets in Ghana. The doll is both imported from Taiwan and made domestically in Ghana. The modern plastic doll is based on an older, traditional form of wooden figurine manufactured by village blacksmiths to represent the adult, female figure. Girls play with these dolls they call biiga ("child"), by caring for them, dressing and feeding them, and sometimes tucking them into the waistbands of their skirts just as women carry infants in cloth wrappers wrapped around their torsos. There are significant rituals associated with girls, including the belief that proper care for the doll can ensure fertility and survival of children. Girls also carry the dolls for display when they go among adults, and might expect a token present when, for example, they place their doll on the ground in front of a merchant in the market. Wealthier families and those in the towns have come to consider the plastic dolls to be more prestigious than the traditional wooden ones. Unlike the Mossi dolls, however, the plastic versions are shaped like a girl rather than a woman, and have generally Caucasian features and western dress.

Eliot Elisofon

"Child with Purple Plastic Doll near Kumasi, Ghana," Color Photograph by Eliot Elisofon, 1971, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Image number EEPA EECL 1015; Monochrome photograph from Roy, Christopher D. "Mossi Dolls." African Arts 14, no. 4 (August 1981): 47-88. Annotated by Susan Douglass.

1971-00-00

image/jpeg

en