Polynesian Voyagers Bring Messages of Hope to UN on World Oceans Day

• by Lyndal Rowlands (united nations)
• Wednesday, June 08, 2016
• Inter Press Service

The voyagers sailed the Hōkūle‘a canoe to New York to deliver the pledges from countries and communities committed to doing their part to help save the world's oceans to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.

Nainoa Thompson, the Polynesian Voyaging Society's Master Navigator told IPS that they were inspired to collect the declarations after Ban sailed with them in Apia, Samoa in the Summer of 2014.

"He gave us this bottle (capped) with his own handwritten note of his pledge to work with the membership of the UN (for) the betterment of the ocean," said Thompson.

Thompson is master navigator of the Hōkūle‘a canoe. The voyagers uses the ancient traditions of Polynesian navigation to travel the oceans without technical instruments, knowledge which almost became extinct, but has been revived through decades of training.

Nainoa Thompson. Credit: The Polynesian Voyaging Society.

Hōkūle‘a has recently returned from a 37-month voyage covering about 50,000 miles in the Pacific Ocean.

"We are sailing on the belief that there are millions of people that are working for kindness and caring and compassion for the earth even though we're not connected," said Thompson. "We just want our voyaging canoe and our community to (be) part of that movement."

The Hōkūle‘a canoe was launched 41 years ago, the first of its kind launched in over 600 years, says Thompson.

"It was our vehicle to allow us to explore and rediscover our ancient traditions primarily in voyaging and in navigation."

"It was a reconnection not just to our culture, and to our tradition, and to our ancestors, but also reconnection back to the Pacific Islanders."

Over that time, he says the voyagers have seen many changes in the oceans and peoples of the region.

"We've been witness to watching shifting change, not only in what's been happening to the oceans physically, but what's been happening to the relationship between islanders and the ocean in the biggest ocean, that's the Pacific."

During this time, Thompson says that he has observed increasing awareness around the Pacific of the science of the negative impacts on the oceans such as climate change and acidification.

"I think part of the solution to figure out how to protect the oceans is going to really require a meshing and a coming together of both science and technology with indigenous knowledge -- those people who have lived and known these islands for generations and thousands of years."

Thompson says that he has personally learnt a lot from his own teacher, who he described as the only known master navigator.

"We're not master navigators, our generation is students of the great master, his name is Mau Piailug, he was the one who navigated to Tahiti for the first time in 1976."

Thompson describes Piailug, who came from a tiny island called Satawal in Micronesia, as "a window into the ancient world and the ancient oceans."

Satawal is "only a mile and quarter long and half mile wide," yet the people who live there have a phenomonal "knowledge of the oceans, and of the stars, and the heavens, and the atmosphere, and the winds, and the clouds, and the sea life, and the sea birds," said Thompson.

"We were lucky to have (Piailug), he changed the whole world view from another native group that was losing language and culture to a whole new world where we were the greatest navigators."

"He came back and trained us for 30 years."

"In that process we tried to understand really the importance of listening to your elders and spending time and trying to protect and preserve their knowledge of the ocean because it was getting so lost so quickly."

"Extinction of cultural values and cultural lifestyles are happening everywhere so Mau singlehandedly shifted that whole mindset."

"Back in 1975 there were no canoes, there were no voyages, there were no navigators. In Polynesia now there's about 2500 active sailors," said Thompson.

He added that learning the navigation skills helped his generation to better understand the oceans.

"The thing about the navigation is it forces it you to do two things: to observe and secondly to understand nature."

Thompson says that his generation now has a responsibility to share this knowledge with the children of Hawaii and the world.

He says that there is also a need "to move education towards catching up with the real core issues that our children need to know."

"The worldwide voyage is a relationship between those who are exploring, those who are learning, those who are bringing things back and getting it embedded into schools."

The President of the University of Hawaii sailed with the Hōkūle‘a from Washington DC, to New York, and the Superintendent of the Hawaiian public schools system will also be joining the Hōkūle‘a at the UN on World Oceans Day.

Thompson said that ensuring that the knowledge was shared with Hawaii's students was important because in the past that knowledge had been lost when it was banned from schools.

"The problem of why we know so little of native people is because it wasn't taught in schools and Hawaiian culture, language and geneology was outlawed by policy by public and private schools back a hundred years ago."

"The way to change that is really to change what you teach in schools."

The voyagers plan to share the knowledge they collect of people who are doing great things to protect the oceans with the children of Hawaii.

Many of these examples also include school children, such as is the case with oyster farming in New York.

"New York was considered the largest oyster population in the world, the indigenous people lived directly off the sea food, that's all they needed."

However eventually the water became so polluted that the oyster larvae couldn't survive, but more recently some New York schools have begun breeding the oysters themselves.

"The equation is that if you plant reefs of oysters, if you get a billion oysters you can filter the harbour in three days," said Thompson.

New York restaurants have now got involved, and Thompson described the program as an example of how the economy and environment can work together for the better.

"That's an equation that Hawaii needs to figure out, and that's an equation that the world needs to figure out, but it's happening in very special places."

© Inter Press Service (2016) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service