Polynesia's master voyagers who navigate by nature

Ancient Polynesians settled the Pacific islands through the sacred art of wayfinding. Today, navigators sail thousands of miles, without instruments, to preserve the tradition.

Time stood still as Hōkūle‘a's scarlet sails pierced the Pacific horizon, painting an ancient scene long absent from Tahiti's shores. It was 4 June 1976 and Hōkūle‘a, a traditional Polynesian double-hulled sailing canoe, neared Tahiti's Pape'ete harbour after 33 days at sea. Elders wept on the beach, absorbed by the moment's enormity. Children scaled trees to snag views of the history that would soon unfold.

Hōkūle‘a carried a crew of a dozen Hawaiians and one Micronesian who'd used the pillars of ancient Polynesian wayfinding – navigating by stars, sun, wind, waves, wildlife and no instruments – to travel 3,862km from Hawaii to Tahiti. It was the first voyage on this route using traditional Polynesian wayfinding in centuries, and Pape'ete harbour's cheek-to-jowl crowd of 17,000 Tahitians, more than half of the island's population, were eager to celebrate.

To an outsider, non-instrumental oceanic navigation may sound like a hair-raising challenge. But for Polynesian wayfinders, it involves a deep and sacred connection to the Earth and a fluency in the planet's movements and patterns. Where the average person ires shining stars or soaring gulls, wayfinders see constellations as navigational guardrails and seabirds as clues to what lies ahead.

Polynesians perfected non-instrumental deep-sea navigation more than 3,000 years ago – well before early European explorers reached the Pacific with comes and sextants. "They're a migrating people," Christina Thompson, author of Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia, said of the ancient Polynesians. "The ocean and its islands are their world; they are at home in a way that land-based people have a hard time imagining."

Polynesian wayfinders intuited Mother Nature's signals to successfully migrate among and settle more than 1,000 scattered islands across the Polynesian Triangle between New Zealand, Hawaii and Easter Island. But after European and US colonisation in the late 1800s, history classes throughout Polynesia told a different story. Children were taught that wayfinding long distances was impossible without instruments. Instead, they were told, ancient Polynesians drifted directionless – accidentally stumbling upon, then settling, the Pacific islands.

"This drift business is ridiculous," said Lilikalā Kame'eleihiwa, a historian and professor at University of Hawaii's Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies. "It's very clear they used stars to find their way, and the Tahitians in particular talked about how every star has an island. They would memorise which islands go with which stars."

The dismissive history lessons, paired with colonisers prohibiting native languages and cultural events in places like Tahiti and Hawaii, sowed decades of sorrow and fury on many Pacific islands. "Imagine graduating from 13 years of education and having no idea who your ancestors were or where they came from," said Nainoa Thompson, a native Hawaiian and master navigator certified through the sacred pwo ceremony, a ritual initiating students as deep-sea navigators. Thompson is also president of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, the Hawaii-based organisation that oversees Hōkūle‘a and her sister canoe,Hikianalia.

Thompson, 68, grew up during his homeland's dark days of cultural suppression. He re his grandmother's tales of family "using lye [soap] to rub the brown off their skin". But after Hōkūle‘a's maiden voyage, Thompson watched a cultural revival sweep through Polynesia – a movement of ancestral pride and love of culture, largely sparked by the vessel that changed the course of his own life.

"Hōkūle‘a was like a match that lit the flame of the Hawaiian renaissance," said Thompson, noting that Hōkūle‘a's first voyage was designed to prove Polynesians could, in fact, navigate purposefully without instruments – a feat Hōkūle‘a's crew accomplished, then celebrated, that blue-sky June 1976 day.

But in the sea of revelry after the historic landing, one important crew member was missing: Mau Piailug, a master navigator from Satawal, a tiny atoll in Micronesia. He was the only crew member fluent in the art of wayfinding, and by 1976, he was one of few master navigators left in the world.

The Satawal people still relied on wayfinding for sustenance, and Piailug had started his training in tidepools with his grandfather, also a master navigator, before he could walk. That's why Hōkūle‘a's crew sought him out for their inaugural expedition; with wayfinding long absent from Hawaii, they needed an expert to teach them the craft. Piailug, who navigated the entire Hawaii-to-Tahiti journey, had hesitantly agreed to help, but soon regretted it. Crew argued throughout the journey, and several lacked the required focus and discipline for non-instrumental navigation, so Piailug hurried home to Satawal as soon as Hōkūle‘a entered Pape'ete harbour. He left one parting gift: an eight-track cassette tape with return-voyage instructions and a final, fiery message: "Don't come look for me. You will never find me."

Despite Piailug's absence, the Hōkūle‘a crew set their sights on another Hawaii-to-Tahiti journey. But the ocean had other plans. In 1978, Hōkūle‘a capsized, and seasoned crew member Eddie Aikau, one of Hōkūle‘a's greatest ers, surfed off to find help. Hōkūle‘a and the team were eventually rescued, but Aikau never returned. Grief swept in with hurricane-like force, jeopardising the future of this budding movement. 

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"Hōkūle‘a was on the brink of becoming just another canoe in a museum, like so many canoes are today," said Matahi Tutavae, a Tahitian voyager who trained and eventually sailed with the Hōkūle‘a crew in 2010. "[Polynesian] culture belonging to museums has been detrimental to our people. It says our traditions are stuck, they're in the past. But Nainoa [Thompson] was instrumental to getting Hōkūle‘a back in the water."

Thompson had trained with Aikau throughout the 1970s, and the two bonded through a mutual dedication to wayfinding, and the cultural pride it sparked. But the 1978 tragedy tested Thompson's strength – could he wayfind without his friend? The answer had to be yes, Thompson knew, and he would continue pushing Hōkūle‘a's limits to honour Aikau.

But the 1978 capsizing catastrophe did pinpoint the Hōkūle‘a crew's many blind spots – weaknesses that would make long-distance wayfinding risky, if not deadly. Thompson and his father, Myron "Pinky" Thompson, one of Hōkūle‘a's founders, knew they needed an expert versed in the art of non-instrumental navigation, someone who'd grown up wayfinding, to teach them – and the only man on the planet skilled enough for this task was the very man who'd sworn off Hōkūle‘a two years before.

Thompson flew to Micronesia anyway.

"Mau was there waiting for me," he recalled, noting that Piailug was heartbroken about Aikau. "We sat on a driftwood log by the beach, and I asked him, 'Can you come back? Will you teach us">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });