Taumako is a small island, with no electric or phone services, and no roads, harbour or airstrip. He was a navigator from one of the rare Pacific societies that had preserved its knowledge of navigation by handing it down through the generations to modern times. Mimi translated and explained We the Navigators to the late Koloso Kahia Kaveia, founder of the Vaka Taumako Project in the Solomon Islands. There were no navigating elders to learn from. Mimi described this Hawaian-based research as a planetarium system, using modern knowledge to reconstruct a method of navigation that had been lost in Tahiti and Hawaii. Spirituality in the islandsīut research has moved on. This rebutted several hundred years of claims that the polynesians only found their Pacific islands by accident as they were blown randomly across the Pacific, implying many were lost. He reconstructed Hawaian and Tahitian methods, showing how they could have navigated with the stars, in ways just about decipherable to anyone who can use a sextant. The seminar was introduced by Dr Marianne (Mimi) George, who sailed for 15 years with David Lewis, author of the best known book on Pacific Navigation, We the Navigators. Outrigger canoe Capt Vaikawi explains where the islanders live The theme was essentially the same, but it approached the issue in a direct, practical sense: traditional navigators from several Pacific nations described their attempts to set up or maintain schools to teach and preserve the ancient methods. Mimi George introduces the Greenwich talks on traditional navigation The exhibition, which opened on 1 April, is excellent, merging modern and traditional art practices to show how ancient cultures and their environments are struggling to survive.īy coincidence, just before we left for Australia I went to a seminar on traditional Pacific navigation organised by the Royal Institute of Navigation and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London. The curator’s notes say “this proverb calls attention to the contemporary revival of Great Ocean celestial navigation practices which have been accompanied by waves of renewal of language, thought, movement and relationships.’

The biennale title is a Samoan proverb which translates as – ‘the canoe obeys the wind’.

a prestige art venue in the countryside near Melbourne in Australia. I was lucky enough last week to visit the TarraWarra Biennial exhibition 2023. Two events 10,000 miles apart link a renaissance in traditional Pacific navigation and the world of art.

We, the Navigators by David Lewis