European recognition of the prowess of Polynesian navigators dates back to James Cook who, after learning some Tahitian, investigated sailing and navigation in Tahiti. His main source was Tupa'ia, a learned Tahitian who told Cook how they sailed their canoes and navigated using the stars, moon and sun. He 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 sufficiently impressed with the practical seamanship and navigational skills of the Tahitians and their wide geographical knowledge, to propose that their ancestors originally came from the East Indies where related languages were spoken.  Cook 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 how deliberate the process of colonisation was. 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 which he claimed that Polynesia had been settled over a long period by the survivors of maritime accidents.  Simulation studies have subsequently shown that the probability of success of accidental migration was infinitesimally small, Irwin (1992).

Te Aurere is part of a Pacific-wide movement which is redressing this view. The first step in this process was the voyage of the Hawai’an double-hulled canoe Hōkūle'a from Hawai`i to Tahiti and back in 1976. With this sailing the Polynesian Voyaging Society showed that the two-way voyages that were celebrated in Hawai’ian oral traditions could be made in a replica of an ancient voyaging canoe without using instruments.  Hōkūle'a was navigated on this voyage by Mau Piailug a master navigator from the Caroline Island of Satawal in Micronesia.  Mau guided Hōkūle’a on the 2,300 mile voyage, the first in over 600 years navigated without instruments on this ancestral Polynesian sea route.

On the return leg from Taihiti was Nainoa Thompson who has gone on with Mau to lead a renaissance in waka navigation.  Nainoa has since trained navigators from around the Pacific including Jack Thatcher and Piripi Evans of Te Aurere. Jack, with Hekenukumai and the captain of Te Aurere, Stanley Conrad, now conduct wananga for people who wish to learn the ancient arts of wayfinding and waka sailing.

Click here for a discussion of Wayfinding Methods

Reference:

Irwin G, (1992), The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific, Cambridge University Press