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Pwo
Pwo is a sacred initiation ritual, in which students of traditional navigation in the Caroline Islands in Micronesia become navigators (''palu'') and are initiated in the associated secrets. Many islanders in the area indicate that this ceremony originated on the island of Pollap, or nearby islands. The Pwo ceremony today is having a comeback in importance. In the days before World War II, it was common to have Pwo take place. After WWII, through westernization and the influence of missionaries traditional practices including Pwo started to be abandoned. Mau Piailug, famous for helping Hawaiians regain their traditional navigation skills, was the last person to go through the Pwo ceremony in 1951. For thirty-nine years, the ceremony lay dormant. Then, in May 1990, Pwo again took place. This time Jesus Urupiy, a master navigator, with help of an American ethnographer and documentary filmmaker, Eric Metzgar, conducted the Pwo for his son, Ali Haleyalur, and four other stud ...
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Mau Piailug
Pius "Mau" Piailug (pronounced ; 1932 – 12 July 2010) was a Micronesian navigator from the Carolinian island of Satawal, best known as a teacher of traditional, non-instrument wayfinding methods for open-ocean voyaging. Mau's Carolinian navigation system, which relies on navigational clues using the Sun and stars, winds and clouds, seas and swells, and birds and fish, was acquired through rote learning passed down through teachings in the oral tradition. He earned the title of master navigator (''palu'') by the age of eighteen, around the time the first American missionaries arrived in Satawal. As he neared middle age, Mau grew concerned that the practice of navigation in Satawal would disappear as his people became acculturated to Western values. In the hope that the navigational tradition would be preserved for future generations, Mau shared his knowledge with the Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS). With Mau's help, PVS used experimental archaeology to recreate and ...
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Outrigger Canoe
Outrigger boats are various watercraft featuring one or more lateral support floats known as outriggers, which are fastened to one or both sides of the main hull (watercraft), hull. They can range from small dugout (boat), dugout canoes to large plank-built vessels. Outrigger boats can also vary in their configuration, from the ancestral double-hull configuration (catamarans), to single-outrigger vessels prevalent in the Pacific Islands and Madagascar, to the double-outrigger vessels (trimarans) prevalent in Maritime Southeast Asia, Island Southeast Asia. They are traditionally fitted with Austronesian sails, like the crab claw sails and tanja sails, but in modern times are often fitted with petrol engines. Unlike a single-hulled vessel, an outrigger or double-hull vessel generates stability as a result of the distance between its hulls rather than due to the shape of each individual hull. As such, the hulls of outrigger or double-hull boats are typically longer, narrower and mo ...
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Alingano Maisu
''Alingano Maisu'', also known as ''Maisu'' , is a double-hulled voyaging canoe built in Kawaihae, Hawaii, by members of Na Kalai Waa Moku o Hawaii and Ohana Wa'a members from throughout the Pacific and abroad as a gift and tribute to Satawalese navigator Mau Piailug, who navigated the voyaging canoe '' Hōkūlea'' on her maiden voyage to Tahiti in 1976 and has since trained numerous native Hawaiians in the ancient art of wayfinding. The word ''maisu'' comes from the Satawalese word for breadfruit that has been knocked down by storm winds and is therefore available for anyone to take. The name is said to symbolize the knowledge of navigation that is made freely available. The concept for ''Alingano Maisu'' came about in 2001 when two Hawaiian voyaging groups, the Polynesian Voyaging Society and Na Kalai Waa Moku o Hawaii, met with Piailug. The two hulls of the vessel were fabricated by the Friends of ''Hōkūlea'' and ''Hawaiiloa'' on Oahu and shipped to the Island of Hawaii w ...
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Sacred
Sacred describes something that is dedicated or set apart for the service or worship of a deity; is considered worthy of spiritual respect or devotion; or inspires awe or reverence among believers. The property is often ascribed to objects (a " sacred artifact" that is venerated and blessed), or places (" sacred ground"). French sociologist Émile Durkheim considered the dichotomy between the sacred and the profane to be the central characteristic of religion: "religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to ''sacred things'', that is to say, things set apart and forbidden." Durkheim, Émile. 1915. '' The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life''. London: George Allen & Unwin. . In Durkheim's theory, the sacred represents the interests of the group, especially unity, which are embodied in sacred group symbols, or using team work to help get out of trouble. The profane, on the other hand, involve mundane individual concerns. Etymology The word ''sacred' ...
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Satawal
Satawal is a solitary coral atoll of one island with about 500 people on just over 1 km2 located in the Caroline Islands in the Pacific Ocean. It forms a legislative district in Yap State in the Federated States of Micronesia. Satawal is the easternmost island in the Yap island group and is located approximately east of Lamotrek. Name The name of the island goes back to Proto-Chuukic ''*tadawana'', making it etymologically related to Satawan. Geography The island, which measures long northeast-southwest, is up to wide and sits atop a small platform-like reef with a narrow fringing reef. The total land area is , and is thickly wooded with coconut and breadfruit trees. As there are no anchorages for large boats, Satawal is seldom visited by outsiders. Administratively Piagailoe Atoll, located 71 kilometers to the northwest, belongs to Satawal municipality. Culture The native language is Satawalese, a Chuukic language closely related to Woleaian, and the entire pop ...
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Culture Of The Federated States Of Micronesia
The Federated States of Micronesia (, abbreviated FSM), or simply Micronesia, is an island country in Micronesia, a region of Oceania. The federation encompasses the majority of the Caroline Islands (excluding Palau) and consists of four states—from west to east: Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei, and Kosrae—that span the western Pacific just north of the equator for a longitudinal distance of almost . Together, the states comprise around 607 islands and a combined land area of approximately . The entire island nation lies across the northern Pacific accordingly: northeast of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, south of Guam and the Marianas, west of Nauru and the Marshall Islands, east of Palau and the Philippines, about north of eastern Australia, southeast of Japan, and some southwest of Honolulu of the Hawaiian Islands. The country's total land area is relatively small, but its waters occupy nearly of the Pacific Ocean, giving the country the 14th-largest exclusive economic zone ...
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Micronesian Culture
The Micronesians or Micronesian peoples are various closely related ethnic groups native to Micronesia, a region of Oceania in the Pacific Ocean. They are a part of the Austronesian ethnolinguistic group, which has an Urheimat in Taiwan. Ethno-linguistic groups classified as Micronesian include the Carolinians (Northern Mariana Islands), Chamorros (Guam & Northern Mariana Islands), Chuukese, Mortlockese, Namonuito, Paafang, Puluwat and Pollapese ( Chuuk), I-Kiribati (Kiribati), Kosraeans (Kosrae), Marshallese (Marshall Islands), Nauruans (Nauru), Palauan, Sonsorolese, and Hatohobei (Palau), Pohnpeians, Pingelapese, Ngatikese, Mwokilese (Pohnpei), and Yapese, Ulithian, Woleian, Satawalese (Yap). Origins Based on the current scientific consensus, the Micronesians are considered, by linguistic, archaeological, and human genetic evidence, to be a subset of the sea-migrating Austronesian people, who include the Polynesians and the Melanesians. Austronesians were the ...
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Hector Busby
Sir Hector Busby (1 August 1932 – 11 May 2019), also known as Heke-nuku-mai-nga-iwi Puhipi and Hec Busby, was a New Zealand Māori navigator and traditional waka builder. He was recognised as a leading figure in the revival of traditional Polynesian navigation and ocean voyaging using wayfinding techniques. He built 26 traditional waka, including the double-hulled '' Te Aurere'' which has sailed over 30,000 nautical miles in the Pacific including Hawaii, Cook Islands, French Polynesia, New Caledonia and Norfolk Island. In December 2012, ''Te Aurere'' and ''Ngahiraka Mai Tawhiti'' (another waka built by Busby) reached Rapa Nui after a 5000-nautical-mile, four-month voyage from New Zealand. The two waka then made the return journey to New Zealand, landing at Aurere Beach in Doubtless Bay in May 2013. Honours Busby received the New Zealand Commemoration Medal in 1990. In the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for s ...
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Hawaii
Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only state not on the North American mainland, the only state that is an archipelago, and the only state in the tropics. Hawaii consists of 137 volcanic islands that comprise almost the entire Hawaiian Islands, Hawaiian archipelago (the exception, which is outside the state, is Midway Atoll). Spanning , the state is Physical geography, physiographically and Ethnology, ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. Hawaii's ocean coastline is consequently the List of U.S. states and territories by coastline, fourth-longest in the U.S., at about . The eight main islands, from northwest to southeast, are Niihau, Niihau, Kauai, Kauai, Oahu, Oahu, Molokai, Molokai, Lanai, Lānai, Kahoʻolawe, Kahoolawe, Maui, and Hawaii (island), Hawaii, a ...
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Wayfinding
Wayfinding (or way-finding) encompasses all of the ways in which people (and animals) Orientation (mental), orient themselves in physical space and navigation, navigate from place to place. Wayfinding software is a self-service computer program that helps users to find a location, usually used indoors and installed on interactive kiosks or smartphones. Basic process The basic process of wayfinding involves four stages: # ''Orientation'' is the attempt to determine one's location, in relation to objects that may be nearby and the desired destination. # ''Route decision'' is the selection of a course of direction to the destination. # ''Route monitoring'' is checking to make sure that the selected route is heading towards the destination. # ''Destination recognition'' is when the destination is recognized. Historical usage Historically, wayfinding refers to the techniques used by travelers over land and sea to find relatively unmarked and often mislabeled routes. These include bu ...
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Polynesian Voyaging Society
The Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS) is a non-profit research and educational corporation based in Honolulu, Hawaii. PVS was established to research and perpetuate traditional Polynesian voyaging methods. Using replicas of traditional double-hulled canoes, PVS undertakes voyages throughout Polynesia navigating without modern instruments. History The society was founded in 1973 by nautical anthropologist Ben Finney, Hawaiian artist Herb Kawainui Kane, and sailor Charles Tommy Holmes. The three wanted to show that ancient Polynesians could have purposely settled the Polynesian Triangle using non-instrument navigation. The first PVS project was to build a replica of a double-hulled voyaging canoe. In the genesis of the Society, the East–West Center was instrumental in convincing the UN authorities in the Pacific of the necessity of the project. The navigator Pius "Mau" Piailug, master of the techniques of traditional navigation, was named Special Fellow by the Center.
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Lamotrek
Lamotrek () is a coral atoll of three islands in the central Caroline Islands in the Pacific Ocean, and forms a legislative district in Yap State in the Federated States of Micronesia. The atoll is located approximately east of Elato. The population of Lamotrek was 373 in 2000, living on almost 1 km2. Name The name of the island possibly goes back to Proto-Chuukic ''*lamʷo-li-ragi'' "lagoon of the west". Geography The atoll is long northeast-southeast, and up to wide. Its total land area is only , but it encloses a lagoon of . Among the individual islets are the following: * Falaite (northwest) * Pugue (northeast) * Lamotrek (southeast) History Before European rule, Lamotrek was invaded by Ifalik during Mweoiush's reign, with aid from the Mailiyas. In January 1849 an earthquake occurred causing a flood to submerge the island with the exception of some trees. People climb trees to survive. The water however swept away people in certain cases who climb the trees ...
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