By the time the modern- day voyaging canoe Hokule‘a made her landmark maiden journey to Tahiti in 1976, many people believed that there were no longer any living Polynesian navigators who still knew the traditional methods of wayfinding that enabled their ancestors to explore and settle the vast Pacific.
Instead, the founders of the Polynesian Voyaging Society turned to Mau Piailug, a Micronesian navigator from the remote island of Satawal, to guide and teach them, and the rest is voyaging renaissance history.
In fact, however, a small number of ethnic Polynesian navigators remained — but not within the region generally considered to be the classic “Polynesian Triangle.”
In the far reaches of the Solomon Islands, usually thought of as part of Melanesia, the inhabitants of remote Taumako island speak a Polynesian dialect with strong similarity to Hawaiian, and have cultural traditions that align closely with those found across Polynesia.
“We, the Voyagers,” a new, two-part documentary film chronicling the navigation style of the Taumako islanders, screens Friday at Bishop Museum.
TAUMAKO, LOCATED about 3,500 miles southwest of Hawaii, is inhabited by just a few hundred residents. Even today, it has no electricity, telephone service or airstrip.
And yet, says Kauai-based anthropologist Marianne “Mimi” George, an accomplished sailor who has worked with the people of Taumako for decades to help preserve their voyaging heritage, the island “is a crossroads, and it always has been.
“As people began migrating out into remote Oceania, Taumako is the big jump-off, where it started to take more than one night to get from one island to the next,” George notes. “It’s a very significant area in the pre-history of voyaging.”
George, 68, is one of the producers of the documentary. She first visited the island in 1993 with sailing adventurer and traditional navigation researcher David Lewis. Several decades before that, Lewis met a master navigator in the area named Basil Tevake, and the wayfinding lore the elder imparted formed the basis of much of Lewis’ seminal 1972 book “We, the Navigators,” which helped launch the contemporary voyaging revival.
When George accompanied Lewis to Taumako, they were welcomed by the island’s paramount chief, Koloso Kaveia, who had been a steersman for Tevake and had become a master navigator in his own right.
The chief told them in detail about his people’s wayfinding methods, and Kaveia asked George to help the islanders keep them alive, including someday producing a film that could tell their story to the outside world.
Now that day has finally come.
The first, hour-long segment of “We, the Voyagers” recounts the history and culture of Taumako, and the intensive process of constructing one of the island’s traditional voyaging canoes.
The canoes, called tepuke, are assembled using only natural materials and the ancient methods believed to be handed down from the island’s cultural hero, Lata — known elsewhere in the Pacific as Laka and other similar names.
The process of selecting and felling a tree, crafting the main hull and outrigger, weaving crescent-shaped sails from pandanus and making hundreds of yards of rope out of coconut fiber, along with countless other tasks, can take up to two years. Canoe-making requires the effort of virtually everyone on the island.
The unique hull of the tepuke sits mostly below the surface of the water, a sort of ancestral precursor of the semi-submersible technology used today in superyachts and other high-tech ships.
“When I first got on the vaka (canoe) I was really a bit frightened,” says Simon Salopuka, a doctor who was born on Taumako and is featured in the documentary. “You can only see the platform where you are sitting, and the bottom of the canoe is under the sea, like a submarine.”
George says the advantage of this design is that “submarine hulls are not subject to movement by surface waves, so they do not heave and pitch. This makes them faster and more stable than hulls that are more buoyant.”
The film’s second segment delves deeper into the navigation methods of the Taumako voyagers, which involves correlating star positions, seasons, winds, waves and other factors into one intricate framework.
More esoteric elements are also a part of the Taumako art of navigation, including the observation of te lapa — mysterious flashes of light beneath the sea’s surface that are said to act as beacons pointing the way toward islands.
The film also recounts the efforts of the islanders to mount local voyages envisioned by Chief Kaveia, who died in 2008 at close to 100 years old.
“We, the Voyagers” took more than eight years to complete, and the two segments combine footage taken over several decades.
The producers had to overcome many challenges to complete the project, ranging from lack of funds and infrastructure to a devastating 2015 typhoon that leveled Taumako and the later eruption of a nearby volcano.
But George says the islanders are determined to perpetuate their heritage and once again begin sailing tepuke regularly, re-establishing ancient cultural connections with far-flung partner islands.
“One of the biggest problems so far has just been breaking through into people’s awareness,” she says. “That’s one of the main things we’re hoping these films will be able to accomplish.”
“WE, THE VOYAGERS”
Screening co-sponsored by Bishop Museum and the East-West Center
>> Where: Atherton Halau, Bishop Museum, 1525 Bernice St.
>> When: 5:30-8:30 p.m. Friday
>> Cost: $7-$10
>> Info: 847-3511, bishopmuseum.org
