Polynesian Voyaging Society
Encyclopedia
Honolulu, Hawaii
Honolulu is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii. Honolulu is the southernmost major U.S. city. Although the name "Honolulu" refers to the urban area on the southeastern shore of the island of Oahu, the city and county government are consolidated as the City and...
, Hawaii
Hawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
. PVS was established to research and perpetuate traditional Polynesia
Polynesia
Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, made up of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed Polynesians and they share many similar traits including language, culture and beliefs...
n voyaging methods
Polynesian navigation
Polynesian navigation is a system of navigation used by Polynesians to make long voyages across thousands of miles of open ocean. Navigators travel to small inhabited islands using only their own senses and knowledge passed by oral tradition from navigator to apprentice, often in the form of song...
. Using replicas of traditional double-hulled canoes, PVS undertakes voyages throughout Polynesia navigating without modern instruments.
History
The society was founded in 1973 by nautical anthropologistAnthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
Ben Finney
Ben Finney
Ben Rudolph Finney is an American anthropologist known for his expertise in the history and cultural and social anthropology of surfing, Polynesian navigation and canoe sailing, and in the cultural and social anthropology of human space colonization...
, Hawaiian artist Herb Kawainui Kane
Herb Kawainui Kane
Herbert "Herb" Kawainui Kāne , considered one of the principal figures in the renaissance of Hawaiian culture in the 1970s, was a celebrated artist-historian and author with a special interest in the seafaring traditions of the ancestral peoples of Hawaii...
, and sailor Charles Tommy Holmes. The three wanted to show that ancient Polynesians could have purposely settled the Polynesian Triangle
Polynesian Triangle
The Polynesian Triangle is a region of the Pacific Ocean with three island groups at its corners: Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand. It is often used as a simple way to define Polynesia....
using non-instrument navigation. The first PVS project was to build a replica of a double-hulled voyaging canoe.
Hokulea
On March 8, 1975, the first voyaging canoe to be built in the Hawaiian Islands in over 600 years was launched with captain Kawika KapahulehuaKawika Kapahulehua
Elia Kawika David Ku'ualoha Kapahulehua was a Hawaiian sailor who was the first to captain an ocean-voyaging canoe from Hawaii to Tahiti in modern times....
and crew. Named the Hōkūleʻa
Hokulea
Hōkūlea is a performance-accurate full-scale replica of a waa kaulua, a Polynesian double-hulled voyaging canoe. Launched on 8 March 1975 by the Polynesian Voyaging Society, she is best known for her 1976 Hawaii to Tahiti voyage performed with Polynesian navigation techniques, without modern...
, it left Hawaii on May 1, 1976 for Tahiti
Tahiti
Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...
in an attempt to retrace the ancient voyaging route. Micronesia
Micronesia
Micronesia is a subregion of Oceania, comprising thousands of small islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It is distinct from Melanesia to the south, and Polynesia to the east. The Philippines lie to the west, and Indonesia to the southwest....
n navigator Mau Piailug
Mau Piailug
Pius "Mau" Piailug was a Micronesian navigator from the Carolinian island of Satawal, best known as a teacher of traditional, non-instrument wayfinding methods for deep-sea voyaging...
, using no instruments, successfully navigated the canoe to Tahiti, arriving there on June 3, 1976.
After an attempted voyage to Tahiti
Tahiti
Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...
in 1978 was aborted when the Hokulea capsized near Lānai
Lanai
Lānai or Lanai is the sixth-largest of the Hawaiian Islands. It is also known as the Pineapple Island because of its past as an island-wide pineapple plantation. The only town is Lānai City, a small settlement....
and crew member Eddie Aikau
Eddie Aikau
Edward Ryon Makuahanai Aikau was a well-known Hawaiian lifeguard and surfer. The words Makua Hanai in Eddie Aikaus full name means feeding parent, an adoptive, nurturing, fostering parent, in the Hawaiian language...
was lost at sea, Piailug trained Nainoa Thompson
Nainoa Thompson
Charles Nainoa Thompson is a Native Hawaiian navigator and the executive director of the Polynesian Voyaging Society...
in the ancient navigation methods. Two years later in 1980, Thompson replicated the successful 1976 voyage to Tahiti, becoming the first modern Hawaiian to master the art of Micronesian navigation.
Since that voyage, the Hokulea and her sister canoe the Hawaiiloa
Hawaiiloa
Hawaiiloa is the hero of an ancient Hawaiian legend about the settling of the Hawaiian Islands. After having accidentally stumbled upon the islands, he returned to his homeland which he called Ka āina kai melemele a Kane, "the land of the yellow sea of Kane". He then organized a colonizing...
have undertaken voyages to other islands in Polynesia, including Samoa
Samoa
Samoa , officially the Independent State of Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa is a country encompassing the western part of the Samoan Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. It became independent from New Zealand in 1962. The two main islands of Samoa are Upolu and one of the biggest islands in...
, Tonga
Tonga
Tonga, officially the Kingdom of Tonga , is a state and an archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean, comprising 176 islands scattered over of ocean in the South Pacific...
, and New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
.
Alingano Maisu
On January 23, 2007 the Hokulea and the Alingano MaisuAlingano Maisu
Alingano Maisu, also known simply as Maisu, is a double-hulled voyaging canoe built in Kawaihae, Hawaii by members of Na Kalai Waa Moku o Hawaii and Ohana Wa'a members from throughout the Pacific and abroad as a gift and tribute to Satawalese navigator Mau Piailug, who navigated the voyaging canoe...
set sail on a voyage to Micronesia and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
. In March 2007, the canoes arrived at Piailug's home island of Satawal
Satawal
Satawal is a solitary coral atoll of one island located at in the Caroline Islands in the Pacific Ocean, and forms a legislative district in Yap State in the Federated States of Micronesia...
where five native Hawaiians and sixteen others were inducted into Pwo
Pwo
Pwo is a sacred initiation ritual, in which students of traditional navigation in the Caroline Islands in Micronesia become master navigators and are initiated in the associated secrets. Many islanders in the area indicate that this ceremony originated on the island of Pollap, or nearby islands.The...
as master navigators. The event was the first Pwo ceremony on Satawal in 50 years and the Alingano Maisu was presented to Piailug as a gift for his contribution in reviving wayfinding
Wayfinding
Wayfinding encompasses all of the ways in which people and animals orient themselves in physical space and navigate from place to place.-Historical:...
navigation.
Funding
The Times Online reports that the US Congress has earmarked $238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society. The funding was targeted by John McCainJohn McCain
John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....
as pork-barrel-funding.
External links
- Polynesian Voyaging Society official site
- Voyages with Hokule'a A personal web site
- Navigators' journey of spirit, skill ends