Sailing With The Ancestors

SAILING WITH THE ANCESTORS

Te Aurere is a Waka Hourua (double-hulled ocean-going canoe) built in 1991-2 along traditional lines, from two giant kauri trees hauled from the Herekino State Forest. Not one nail or bolt was used in her construction as she is lashed together in the manner of waka that used to ply between Aotearoa and the central Pacific Islands. One of the advantages of this type of construction is that it gives her flexibility in rough seas.

Te Aurere was built at Aurere in the Far North of Aotearoa by Hekenukumai (Hector) Ngaiwi Puhipi Busby. The waka is 57 feet (17.4m) long and 18 feet (5.5 m) wide. Depending on the how far the waka is sailing, she typically has a crew between six and 12 including the captain and navigator. Her first voyage after some local sailing in Doubtless Bay was the 1,700 nautical mile trip to Rarotonga for the South Pacific Arts Festival in October 1992. Te Aurere has now sailed over 30,000 nautical miles.

Celestial navigation is a key part of traditional wayfinding used by the ancient Maori to populate the South Pacific. Wayfinding uses the stars, sun, wave action, ocean currents, wind and birds to make long passages across the Pacific Ocean.

Te Aurere is navigated using these traditional methods. The waka also has a compass, radio and GPS which are required by law before a vessel can leave New Zealand waters. On a voyage the radio operator uses the GPS to fix the waka’s position for daily reports to its home base. But the navigator is never told and relies instead on his wayfinding skills.

Polynesian Wayfinding

European recognition of the prowess of Polynesian navigators dates back to James Cook who investigated sailing and navigation in Tahiti in 1769. His main source was Tupa'ia who told Cook how they sailed their canoes and navigated using the stars, moon and sun. Tupa'ia also gave him sailing directions to islands as far away as the Marquesas to the northwest, the Australs to the South and at least as far west as Samoa, Fiji and Rotuma.

Cook was apparently very impressed with the practical seamanship, navigational skills and wide geographical knowledge of the Tahitians. He proposed that their ancestors originally came from the East Indies where related languages were spoken. He believed that they used their sailing canoes, non-instrument navigation, and skill at using westerly wind shifts to work their way eastward, from island to island, against the direction of the prevailing trade winds.

Over the years a number of challenges have been made to this theory, particularly in terms of whether the process of colonisation was deliberate. These perhaps reached their most strident in 1957 when Andrew Sharp, a New Zealand civil servant turned historian, published Ancient Voyagers in the Pacific. In it he claimed that Polynesia had been settled over a long period by people who were lost at sea.

Te Aurere is part of a Pacific-wide movement which is redressing this patronising view. The first step was the voyage of the Hawai’ian double-hulled canoe Hokule’a from Hawai’i to Tahiti and back in 1976. With this sailing the Polynesian Voyaging Society showed that the two-way voyages celebrated in Hawaiian oral traditions could be made in a replica of an ancient voyaging canoe without using instruments. Hokule’a was navigated on this voyage by Mau Piailug from the Caroline Island of Satawal in Micronesia, considered to be the greatest exponent of traditional navigation still living.

On the return leg from Tahiti was Nainoa Thompson who has gone on with Mau to lead a renaissance in waka voyaging. Over the next four years, spending many thousands of hours studying the night sky as well as months of intensive tutelage by Mau, Nainoa developed a workable system of navigation based upon traditional methods but incorporating some unique (but non-instrument) methods of observing the stars he had worked out for himself.

Nainoa has since trained navigators from around the Pacific including Jack Thatcher and Piripi Evans of Te Aurere. Jack Thatcher, working with the captain of Te Aurere, Stanley Conrad, now conducts regular wananga for people who wish to learn the ancient arts of wayfinding and waka sailing.

For other evidence on migration patterns see:

Underhill, P.A., G. Passarino, A. A.. Lin, S. Marzuki, P.J. Oefner, L. Cavalli-Sforza, and G.K.. Chambers, (2001), Maori Origins, Y Chromosome Haplotypes and Implications for Human History in the Pacific, Human Mutation, 17:271-280

DOWNLOADS

Click on the following titles to download more information about waka building and sailing in Aotearoa:

Hekenukumai profile (206kb)

Te Aurere montage (786kb)

Waka Tradition Helps Young (275kb)

Centre to support culturally-based development (241kb)

New waka pictorial summary (3844kb)

Lack of wind slows International Classic Yatch Race (466kb)

Te Aurere at Around Alone Stopover (1368kb)

Traditional waka helps dispel myths.pdf (268kb)

A friend of traditional wayfinding passes on (907kb)

Hekenukumai leads carving project at Te Kauhanga marae (1789kb)