“Hawaiʻi is a man, a child of Tahiti.”
In 1976, the Hōkūleʻa set out, with Mau Piailug as the navigator to sail the legendary sailing route to Tahiti. Mau is a rare gem in Polynesian navigation for the fact that he is one of the last keepers of our old ways. Mau felt the need to reconnect Kanaka Maoli with our ancestral capabilities. Micronesians are among the first Polynesian navigators and more specifically, the island nation of Satawa contains those who still practice these ancient ways of navigation.
2000 miles west of Hawaiʻi, Mauʻs home waters surround Micronesia and he felt this trip from Hawaiʻi to Tahiti was very necessary. Mau wanted to assure that Kanaka Maoli were able to re-align ourselves with our skillset identities, that was shared with Mau, through his father and grandfather.
Mau showed his crew how to become pō, which is well beyond the limited scope of palu. Palu are those who only know how to sail. Mau wanted to reconnect us with our ancestral ways of pō - complete navigational mastery.
People have tossed aside the old spirits to pray to the Christian God, which took away some of the magic that was held in the ancient systems of navigation and Mau warns us to maintain as much of our origins as we can, that it not be lost forever. This evolution in methodology of prayer and ancestral connection is concerning. It is the circumcision of our complete identity and the soul contained within.
Evidence and carbon dating of Lapita pottery was used to confirm that Lapita voyaging began with the Bismarck Archipelago and ended with the Chatham Islands. Pottery and other obsidian artifacts make old voyaging habits much easier to confirm or trace. Canoes were studied to confirm how steering and controlling primitive vessels was able to be mastered in the way it was.
Kahala Lei
copyright August 2019
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