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GREG DENING 33

ENDEAVOUR AND HOKULE'A: THE THEATRE OF RE-ENACTMENT HISTORIES Public Lecture, April 23, 1997

FIGURE FIGURE 2

Endeavour Replica in Port Phillip Bay Hokule'a approaching Maui from Honolulu

It is my honour and my privilege to have University of . Since that day been invited by this University to be the concerns of cross-cultural studies Adjunct Professor in the Centre of Cross- have been my life. cultural Research. I am most I have a reflection this evening on two appreciative of the warm welcome and icons of cross-cultural research: the care for our needs by the administrative Endeavour replica, here in a place the staff of the centre: Julie Gorrell, Anne- original Endeavour had never been, Maree O'Brien and Jenny Newell. My first Port Phillip Bay, Victoria. And Hokule'a, association with the ANU was in 1964 the replica of an Hawaiian voyaging when Jim Davidson and Harry Maude canoe, here undergoing sea-trials in offered me a position as research fellow 1975 off the north shore of Oahu in the in Pacific history. But it was forty years Hawaiian islands. ago almost to the day that I began my work in cross-cultural history under the My reflection is about re-enactment tutelage of John Mulvaney at the histories, the sort of social memory 34 GREG DENING

evoked by these replicas. I won't be thing to be said about cross-cultural focusing so much on their history, the research, I think. It always begins with a accuracy or otherwise of their replica- little giving, whatever way one crosses. tion, so much as their theatre. Social Endeavour and Hokule'a. Where's the memory, I will be wanting to say is as giving in that? That is what I wanted to much about the present as the past. lecture about. Social memory enlarges the continuities between past and present. Social The Endeavour replica. Perhaps you have memory is, in that word of Aristotle of seen her. I confess I had a lump in my , the theatre, catharsis, getting the plot, throat when I first saw her. Much of my seeing the meaning of things. work has been concerned with the poet- ics of space on an eighteenth century Let me say first that I am not much for re- naval vessel: the rituals of the quarter- enactments. I remember when my that were the theatre of Bligh's prejudices about re-enactments were command; how important were the divi- born. It was at a meeting of the American sions between private and public space Historical Association in New York in the and how dangerous it was to blur their 196os. I attended a session on 'New Historical Methods' with high expecta- boundary; how the proper order of that tions only to discover that it was about space was turned upside down in the the advantages for historical realism in reverse world of skylarking and ' wearing Napoleon's hat while taking baptism rituals; how a was energized hallucinegetic drugs at the same time. by the tempo and rhythm of sailors' bodies. It was not by chance that the That's what I tend to think. The danger in ship's most skilled seamen were also the re-enactments is that they tend to hallu- ship's best dancers. There was much cinate us into seeing the past as us in choreography in a ship. funny clothes. But the past is its total- ity—its postures, its smells and dirt, its That space had a language, too, to tones and accents. The past in its totality describe it, as precise and inventive as is different, as different if you like, as any science. Sailors' lives depended on another culture, another country as the speed with which they could compre- David Lowenthal has said. All history in hend an order. Precision, economy and that sense is cross-cultural. But distinctiveness were the marks of sailors' difference is the hardest thing to see. language. For any landsman pressed into Difference is the hardest thing to accept. His Majesty's service, his first months To see difference we have to give a little were a language school. of ourselves: old to young, young to old, called that language 'a flawless thing for male to female, female to male, black to its purpose'. On the Endeavour replica, white, white to black. That is the first this language world was materialized for

ENDEAVOUR AND HOKULEA 35

me: sheets, bowlines, chewlines, bunt- when I first saw the Great . I haven't lines, reeflines, brails, gaskets, halliards, got a slide of it. This will have to do. It did , shrouds. I discovered when I not seem possible that so much could saw her first what was a mainmast heart come out of such a cramped space. and why it was seized around the . Where could Joseph Banks, let alone his I won't fool you I know. I've done all my dogs, spread himself out, Sydney sailing in the library I do all my reading Parkinson paint, Daniel Solander cata- in logs with a plan of ships logue. And Cook! Where did he find beside me. When Cook or Bligh write in room in his tiny quarters on the side of their logs that a 'severe gale' abated into a the Great Cabin or on that elaborate `mere storm', I reach anachronistically fold-away table, to make his maps, to for my Beaufort Scales to under- write his log. stand what it might mean and what are Now that I have these spaces re-shaped in the signs in the sea to determine it. my mind, why don't I try a little re-enact- It is in the props of re-enactment that the ment of my own. Let me take you to a realism of its theatre is created. Of part of the Endeavour's voyage that gets there are many compromises. There are perhaps only a line in most histories. It's engines now on the.Endeavour and a the passage from and the propellor. Desalinization plants, and sighting of the East Coast of at toilets (Cook once flogged a drunken Point Hicks. This passage took place in marine down in the Arctic Circle because the first nineteen days of April, 177o. he pissed on the in their locker You'll be able to re-enact the weather rather than from the heads out amid the for yourselves. ice and . The marine, presumably There was a warm and expansive feeling drunk again, was lost overboard later among Cook and his companions in the doing it from the heads). There are metal Great Cabin as they left Cape Farewell. fittings now, and artificial materials in the They felt that they had done well circum- sails. Instead of oak, elm and spruce, navigating the two islands of New there are jarrah and other Australian Zealand, proving it to be no part of a hardwoods. And much hidden symbol- Southern Continent. They collected to ism. The tallow wood hanging tree decide what they would do now They had supporting the weather beams came three options. One, to run to the east and from trees near Port Macquarie, old below latitude 4o degrees. enough for Cook to have seen, but That would determine finally whether logged because of the widening of the there was a Southern Continent. Already Pacific Highway. they had narrowed the possibility of a I suppose the most magical moment of Southern Continent to a small part of the all for me on the Endeavour replica was Pacific deep to the south of . But 3 6 GREG DENING

their rigging and their sails were already It was a reasonably easy run, although in such poor shape that they doubted that old -built collier griped into the whether they could complete a voyage in breeze all the way and drove herself these high latitudes. uncomfortably upwind. Endeavour was

The second option was to westward, near perfect for her discovery tasks, but a south of Van Diemen's Land to the Cape little unforgiving in hard weather. Cook of Good Hope. There was no discoverer's used to say her best sailing was with joy in that, nothing new to be seen. square sails set, a fore What's more they were too well supplied. and a breeze on her port quarter. The They had six months supplies left. The night watches, without Cook looking thought of having to throw out or give over their shoulders in these safer waters, back what had been so hardly earned would let the Endeavour edge more galled them too much for that. northerly and say it was the current that did it. They hankered for warmer climates. They voted unanimously therefore for the third option which was to sail west- Cook drove a hard ship. Halfway between ward slightly north of 38 degrees latitude Cape Farewell and Point Hicks, he gave so that they would come upon the north- Jonathan Bowles, marine, twelve lashes ern extension of Van Diemen's Land, for refusing to do his duty. The marines follow the coast northward or wherever were the men most frequently flogged by it took them, and come across, if they Cook and every other voyaging captain. were there, de Quiros's . Marines had too little to do. If they happened to be Irish and younger than FIGURE 3 25 years, God help them. Cook used to say that the Endeavour's best sailing was with square sails set, Cook grew in status every day of this a fore topmast staysail and a breeze on first voyage. But he was peeking over her port quarter the shoulders of the 'experimental gentlemen' in the Great Cabin as well as his helmsman. He was an auto-didact and he learned from them what it was to be a discoverer. He searched their books. He began to form large thoughts. For most of the voyage he had felt that his best discoveries were his knowing where he was at every minute. Accurate navigation was his obsession.

But now he was beginning to reflect on what the place the things he was doing

ENDEAVOUR AND HOKULE'A 37

would have in a larger scheme of things. Pacific—by asking islanders where to go. He was scornful of discoverers who Cook was finding in this part of his voyag- thought that they saw signs of new lands ing that in cross-cultural matters he had but would not follow their clues. But he to give a little in respect to the navigating knew what people would say if prudence abilities of islanders who had preceded dictated to him that he had gone far him everywhere he was to go in the enough, and there was still places to Pacific. Respect too in a little while for discover. While Joseph Banks still Australian aborigines who didn't seem to favoured—rather guiltily—the idea of a need his civilizing influences. He would Great Southern Continent, Cook was muse in his journal about his doubts at sure that there was none. And while he how they would benefit by it. was not prepared to say there was none The nineteen April days of this leg were until he had seen for himself, he is easy sailing, but rather slow. They were nonetheless sure. In any case, he was forever cannibalizing old sails for patches already planning the second voyage. in less ragged ones, leaving their better He had on board a Tahitian priest, Tupaia. sails for when they might need them He was taking Tupaia back to England most. They were a little bewildered at with him to meet King George. Joseph sudden changes of temperatures—warm Banks had said in Tahiti that other men one minute, cool the next. Banks slowed doing their Grand Tours brought back them down, insisting on taking out the tigers and the like. Why couldn't he bring small boat to collect birds and fish and back a noble savage at less expense? As it whatever there was to be seen in the sea. happened, Tupaia would not survive the He shot Wandering Albatross, Black fevers of Batavia, but he helped Cook Browed Albatross, Grey Headed Albatross wonderfully in his navigation and his and petrels in even greater variety. He encounters with native peoples. Tupaia, fished sea anemone and Portuguese men- the priest, was also the holder of Tahitian o'-war and took them back to the Great navigation lore. Tupaia knew of all the Cabin where Solander described them islands the Tahitians knew of. Tupaia the and Sydney Parkinson painted them. navigator drew Cook a map of the Out on the water there was great and Central Pacific. There were 140 islands innocent scientific excitement. It lived in on that map. Cook knew that these island their minds their whole lives long. names made a great circle some 6000 km in diameter. Tupaia was with them Came the 16th, I 7th and i8th of April. now pointing out all the signs of land to The seaweed was getting thicker and the east, that they did not see until he more frequent. More and more land pointed them out. Tupaia taught Cook birds passed them or rested in their how he might be a discoverer in the rigging. Shearwaters fished beside them.

3 8 GREG DENING

Dolphins were around them all the time, They had, of course, the whole of the east leaping out of the water like salmon. coast of Australia to go. All the time, Cook They even thought they saw a butterfly. would be at his brilliant best, mapping, Then at first daylight on the igth, Zachary surveying, commanding, keeping the Hicks made his name. He saw land— expedition safe. sloping hills covered with trees and There's my re-enactment. There is bushes, interspersed with large tracts of theatre in it of course. I the story-teller sand. The land they saw ran away to the want you to have what Aristotle said was southwest and to the northeast. They necessary in good theatre. I want you to came pretty much to Point Hicks on a get the plot, experience catharsis. I want north south line. you leave my theatre saying what the By noon they had passed the point and story meant. I am hoping that you will say had gone on to a remarkable point of that I told a story about Cook's personal discovery of what it meant to be a discov- land which Cook named Ramshead after the point in Plymouth Sound. Between erer. How he was beginning to discover that he was to discoverer to somebody as i.00 and 3.o opm they saw three or four well as the discoverer of some place and water spouts—columns of water rising to how complicated that was beginning to a cloud, transparent like a tube of glass, make his life. Banks said, contracting and dilating, curving with the wind. Two of the spouts My more general point which I must let joined and gradually contracted up into a lie rather baldly for want of time is about cloud. By evening they were off Cape Howe the theatre of encounter with this most and its island we call Gabo—some say from perfect Endeavour replica. Its catharsis is the aboriginal pronunciation of Cape Howe. to join us to a man of whom Charles Darwin said 'added a hemisphere to the It was not until the next day that they saw civilized world'. The speeches at its signs of inhabitants, or at least smoke in launching said that the Endeavour the day and fires at night. North of replica was a living creature imbued with Bateman's Bay through their spy glasses Cook's presence. Cook, they said, was the they saw their first aborigines. Banks says `most moderate, humane, gentle circum- he saw five of them 'enormously black'. navigator who ever went upon discovery'. But to do him justice for his sense of the The Endeavour replica was seen to be a ways in which others shaped his images, symbol of courage, tenacity skills he added: `so far did the prejudices we endurance and leadership and of the had built on Dampier's account influence us that we could see the colours when we Australian credo of 'Have-a-go'. could scarce distinguish whether or not I am not really setting up that to laugh at they were men'. it. I merely want to point out the sort of

ENDEAVOUR AND HOKULE'A 39

realism that a near perfect, five million ism and science. What was left was the dollar replica effects. It lends authenticity theatre of violence that Cook did in to our perceptions of our present , , Aotorea and wherever humanistic, scientific selves. Cook is us he put foot on land he did not own. in our better moments. Then the theatre of re-enactment is about the resistance indigenous ances- I've written about the authenticating tors would have made had they known effect of theatrical realism before. When the history to follow. this famous painting of the Apotheosis of Captain Cook, with Cook looking rather Forty years ago our cross-cultural nervously at both Britannia and Fame, research was characterized by a sort of floated down on to the stage at the end of intellectual innocence. Our excitement a pantomime in 1797, the audience joined was sparked as much as anything by a the chorus with gusto: famous re-enactment voyage—Thor The hero of Macedon ran o'er the world Heyerdahl's Kontiki raft voyage from the Yet nothing but death could he give Peruvian coast to the great thousand kilo- Twas George's command and the sail was unfurtd metre arc of atolls northeast of Tahiti, the And Cook taught mankind how to live Tuamotus. The Pacific peoples, He came and he saw, not to conquer but to save specifically the , came from The Caesar of Britain was he the Americas, Heyerdahl had argued. We Who scorned the conditions of making a slave scoured everything botanical, linguistic, While Britons themselves are so free genetic, material, mythological, histori- Now the Genius of Britain forbids us to grieve cal, anthropological, archaeological to Since Cook ever honour'd immortal shall live. prove him wrong.

The realism of a brilliant stage We locked horns too with another designer, Philippe de Loutherbourg, famous but more curmudgeon scholar and a brilliant , John Webber, of the day—this is 1956-57-58—Andrew authenticated their catharsis, made the Sharp. His Ancient Voyagers in the Pacific hyperbole seem true. It is the same with scoffed at the notion of Pacific the Endeavour replica. wandering vast ocean spaces freely. They were blown hither and yon, he Of course, off a NSW coast where there wrote. Traditions to the contrary were were Aboriginal eyes to see the just myths. Endeavour replica, and not in Port Phillip Bay, in the Bay of Islands where My first academic publication was a there were Maori eyes to see it, there was review essay on Ancient Voyagers in the another form of catharsis. With aborigi- Pacific in Historical Studies. I ghost wrote nal and Maori eyes to see it, the realism it for Mulvaney's Pacific Prehistory class. I of the replica was leached of its human- still have Sharp's stinging rebuke in my 4 0 GREG DENING

files. The faded blue aerogramme is between indigenous peoples and intrud- a sort of scout's badge of adversarial ing strangers that are the problem. It is academia. I keep it proudly because I the depth of the silences. Translating knew I was right. silences is the hardest thing in cross- cultural research. Anyone in cross- Do you want know how I knew I was cultural research will have to have right? One day I was reading in the glow trust and imagination to hear what is of a lamp in the gloom of the Great said in that silence. Reading Room of the State Library of Victoria, on a green leather desk carved Two other scholars were making their with the message that Too had been very first contribution to Pacific cross- there', with a bucket behind me into cultural research in those years. Marshall which rain water dripped from a vast Sahlins and Ben Finney. I felt jealous, I height, with a smelly, sleeping drunk have to confess, of them both. Sahlins beside me—I used to wear a clerical wrote `Esoteric Efflorescence on Easter collar in those days, and half the home- Island' in theAmerican Anthropologist. It less men in Melbourne used to sit beside was part of his library—rather than field me in the library because they thought orientation of his doctoral dissertation that they would not be thrown out if they on the Social Stratification of . did—in this act of historical research I was jealous of him because he was which I re-enact for you right now in a reading everything that I was reading but sentence that clearly is never going to reading it differently and more creatively, end—I read Harold Gatty's survival —wrongly, but creatively. I decided that pamphlet for crashed airmen during the anthropology helped him do it. So I went Second World War. It was full of the lore off to do anthropology to get those Gaily had learned from islanders about reading skills. all the signposts to be found at sea— But it is Finney I want to talk about. ocean swells and the shadows islands He had just written an article in one of made in them, clouds and the colour of Finland's prime academic journals on the lagoons reflected in them, birds, ancient surf-board riding in Hawaii. For migrating or returning to land to roost, many years there has been a deep interest orienting stars. It was an enlightening in the tropical Pacific in Finland no moment for me in cross-cultural history. doubt there is plenty of trust and imagi- It was a moment of solidarity with expe- nation in that. I was a little jealous of riences I had never had, a moment of Finney because I thought that surf-board trust and imagination, if you want. research was a pretty good lurk to get you Anyone engaged in cross-cultural out of the library and onto the beach. But research will know that it is not the it was the beginning for him of a career mountains of texts of the encounter in which he has wedded theoretical ENDEAVOUR AND HOKULE'A

knowledge with practical skill. He calls it indigenous past and an indigenous `experimental archaeology' these days. present has been almost a presumption in Oceanic studies. 'The Fatal Impact' was Finney was about to reconstruct a Alan Moorhead's famous metaphor for it. Hawaiian double canoe, a replica of King Kamehameha III's canoe. There But all around the world, not just in the was a precise plan of it in a French Pacific, there has been some resurrection explorer's publications. Finney's purpose found amid so much death. Histories now was modest: to test whether shallow are of resistance. Not just of the open rounded hulls would give resistance to resistance that was crushed mercilessly leeway and whether the inverted triangu- by empires, but of that hidden resistance lar 'crab-claw' sail would drive the canoe that preserved native identities in a new into the wind. It was skepticism on these cultural idiom. 'Re-invented tradition' two points that drove, among other has been the phrase used to describe it, things, Heyerdahl's and Sharps argu- but that has been spurned by indigenous ments about the possibilities of peoples as suggesting political oppor- Polynesian deliberate voyaging. tunism and insincerity. I have not a phrase that would satisfy them yet. In my own When Finney brought the canoe to mind I see it as creative aboriginality: the Hawaii from California where he had ability to see, despite all the transforma- done his tests, Mary Pakena Pukui, one of tions, the continuities that connect an Hawaii's traditional scholars, called the indigenous past with an indigenous canoe Nahelia, 'The Skilled Ones'—for present. Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha the way in which the hulls gracefully in their subaltern studies have shown rode the swells and into the wind. how it is done. It is done by imagination. Already the project was getting larger Not fantasy. Imagination. The imagina- than itself. The admiration caught in the tion of those many silence- breakers— name Nahelia was a sign of deeper poets, novelists, painters, carvers, cultural and political forces beginning to dancers, filmmakers... I wish I had my be focused in the question of how the time again. I can see my own dyslexia. Hawaiians, Tahitians, Maoris and My reading skills have to be enlarged. Samoans encompassed , 'The Sea Finney in 1975, now supported by and of Islands'. eventually relieved of his leading role by In Oceania, the silences in cross-cultural native-born Hawaiians, turned to the research have been deep: the silences of construction of an ocean-going canoe, victims; the silence of powerlessness; the Hokule'a. Hokule'a means 'Star of Joy', silences of banal evil; the silences of what Arcturus, the zenith star, the homing star cannot be seen in any encounter with in Hawaii's celestial latitude. The overrid- otherness. The voicelessness of an ing ambition of all Hokule'a's great

42 GREG DENING

FIGURE 4 This University has long made creative Hokule'a's odyssey in the Central Pacific contributions to the question of Pacific peoples voyaging. Gerard Ward directed the first computer simulations. David Lewis initiated the experimental archae- ology of voyaging and began the tapping of living traditions of navigation. So let me bypass all the debates on prehistoric exploration and proceed to a re-enact- ment of my own.

It begins with an insight of a New Zealand archaeologist, Geoffrey Irwin. His is also a 's insight. Puzzling over voyages was to perform them as much as the fact that most of the expansion east- possible in the way in which they were ward into the Pacific was against performed a thousand years ago. prevailing weather conditions, he Hokule'a has voyaged to nearly all parts suggests that the chief worry for a sailor of the central Polynesian Pacific: was getting home. Prevailing and Hawaii—Tahiti—Hawaii; Tahiti- contrary weather conditions are not a Raro-tonga—Aotorea; - disincentive for exploration. They are an Aitutaki—Tahiti. incentive for it. Prevailing and contrary weather conditions will get a sailor These voyages have been an extraordi- home. He further suggests that the big nary achievement. There is no point in jumps, east, north and south in the Pacific being romantic about them. The thirty seemed to occur after about five hundred years of this odyssey have had their pain years localization in a region. Five and conflict, their tragedies and failures, hundred years is a long time to create a their political machinations, their greed, knowledge-bank of homing signs for a their absurdities. But they also have been way finder. courageous over-all triumphs, tapping well-springs of cultural pride in a sense Let me pick up the homecoming voyage of continuity with a voyaging tradition. of Hokule'a from Tahiti to Hawaii in June This has not just been in Hawaii, but in 1980. It begins in Matavai Bay, Tahiti and Tahiti, Samoa, Aotorea as well. ends 32 days later on the Big Island of Hawaii. Nainoa, a young man of Hawaiian Everywhere where she has gone it has birth, 25 years old, was the navigator. been the same. The landfall has been a theatre of who island peoples are, who Nainoa had apprenticed himself to Mau they have been. Piailug, the Micronesian navigator who

ENDEAVOUR AND HOKULE'A 43

had taken Hokule'a to Tahiti in 1976. Mau FIGURE 5 had given David Lewis much of his navi- North/South voyaging with Polaris and Crux gator's lore, too. Nainoa has not got a as latitude determinants Hawaiian tradition of navigation to call upon. That's gone, or rather, too deeply imbedded in mythology and the language of the environment to be of much use. Nainoa had virtually to invent his system. He does not do it by learning western celestial navigation. He avoids that. But he has the Bishop Museum Planetarium in Honolulu to set in his mind the night skies. He can simulate the FIGURE 6 rising and setting of the stars for all Calibrating a hand Southern seasons in Hawaii and for different lati- Cross tudes. He creates for himself a star ACRUX and sets it in his mind as in all systems of oral memory with a metaphor. His metaphor for Hokule'a is manic, a 17° bird with outstretched wings. He has not just a star compass in his mind— SOUTHERN HORIZON different from the ones we know of in

Micronesia but a directional compass island shores and in the island shadows. in his mind as well of 32 settings, or His navigational lines, latitudinally, north `houses' as he calls them, more regular and south in his system are relatively than the traditional settings. He sets easy. But his movements east and west himself to remember the rising and along a longitudinal line are far more setting of stars, sun and moon in these complex, involving of houses. He also sets himself to calibrate miles sailed and the relativizing of theo- his hand to the two great determinants of rizing and settings in his star compass. his Hawaiian latitudes, the North Star That will be the greatest anxiety of his and the Southern Cross. When he is not navigation. He has to make landfall in the Planetarium he is in the seas upwind of his destination, northeast of around Hawaii, experiencing the swells Tahiti, south east of Hawaii. Downwind, if made by the dominant weather patterns he ends up there, will require . and their seasons, the seas created by the changing and the movements Let's join him on the last three days of the made by the backlash of the sea against voyage from Tahiti to Hawaii, May-June

44 GREG DENING

1980. He is tired and anxious. He sleeps the term they preferred to use rather hardly at all at night and not more than than navigation—each day and night an hour at a time in the day. For ten days, is a new calculation, a new assessment: high clouds had obscured the stars. He It is important to note that. What seemed had steered mainly with the sun and the undeniable in Sharp's argument was moon. The moon in its crescent carries that errors were cumulative and once the sun's shadow vertically near the committed drove canoes into oblivion. equator, then more angled as they move But the discovery over all of Hokule'a's north. The full moon on the horizon voyaging was that errors were random gave them a steering target. Dawn was and tended to counter one another. the most important time, not just for But that did not relieve the tension at the compass point of the sun's rising, moments of critical commitment. but because the angle of the sun made reading swells and seas and the weather FIGURE 7 of the day to come easier. Mau, the Tahiti to Hawai'i in 198o, showing Micronesian navigator, had thousands of the actual track of Hokule'a, the dawns at sea in his mind. The Southern reference course, and Nainoa's dead Cross as it moved lower and to the west reckoning (DR) positions estimated at brought him the judgement on that third sunrise (marked by 'a' following the last day that they were 55o miles SE of date) and sunset (marked by `b) O'o 150• 140•W Dune6,1980)`. Hawaii. But they saw a land dove during 40 20• HAWAIIAN ,1 0 ACTUAL TRACK , ----- the day. How could it have flown that ISLANDS 36 REFERENCE COURSE ---- 360 NAINOA'S DR. POSITIONS distance between dawn and dusk? NorM 200 They had passed through the equatorial Eomolorial 1b0 1c,, (June 1,1980) doldrums. They had passed through that • 316° 10• 316° part of the ocean where the NW swell of 30 Q300 touole,o1 the northern hemisphere passed over the 0297 Countarrunew 0286 I SE swell of the southern and had given ,2801 0276' 274 CHRISTMAS I. 266 I the distinctive pitch and roll movement South 0 Ji g) o• of the canoe Nainoa had learned to feel iessocvial _246/ Curter', .244 0236/ these different motions of the canoe °Do/ SEbai from Mau Piaulug—by lying prone 0216' 0216 206 on the decking. Now they were at the CAROLINE I. 206 • r most anxious time of their voyage, 196 186 190 176 wondering whether they should trust 17 166 156 TUAMOTU SOCIETY. 15.0 ISLANDS their calculations and turn westward in ISLANDS 1460 / t ,146 the Hawaiian latitudes. In way-finding- 160•W TAHITI (May 13,1980) IL

ENDEAVOUR AND HOKULE'A 45

Tropic birds are plenty, but these are canoes—in the canoe's making, in its no sure sign of the direction of land. parts, in its launching, in its voyaging. But there are manu ku, land doves too. The canoe was an icon of all sorts of They knew land was near. They caught continuities of identity, an icon of a the angle of the North Star against the conjoining past and present. I don't have horizon and got a clear sighting of the difficulty in believing that island peoples Southern Cross. These convinced them can recognise themselves in Hokule'a and that their latitude calculations were embroider that recognition with all sorts right. On the second to last day Nainoa of re-births of traditional arts and crafts, said they were 210 miles from the Big with dance, poetry and song. Whatever Island, but nervously changed his calcu- the transformations of modernity that lations to 300 miles. masquerade as discontinuities — religion, science, politics—the theatre All day on the last day, the clouds on of Hokule'a's re-enactment is directed to the horizon seemed stationary. Clouds that recognition. at sea moved. Clouds over land stayed still. There was something different GREG DENING about the setting sun. They couldn't say Greg Dening is Emeritus Professor of History at the what, its colouring perhaps, as it caught andAdjunct Professor at the Centre for the air around and above Hawaii. They Cross-cultural Research. alter their course a little in its direction.

It is in the right house of Nainoa's ACKNOWLEDGMENTS compass for land. The illustrations for this article and Then a stationary white cloud opens lecture are acknowledged as being presented by courtesy of Sailing up and reveals the long gentle slope Endeavour (Peter Petro and John of Mauna Kea on Hawaii. Nainoa says Ferguson) Maritime Heritage Press, to himself: 'The way-finding at this Sydney 199i; An Ocean in Mind (Will moment seems to be out of my hands Kyselka) University of Hawaii Press, and beyond my control. I'm the one Honolulu 1987; Hokule'a. The Way to given the opportunity of feeling the Tahiti (Ben R. Finney) Dodd, Mead emotions of way-finding, not yet ready and Company, New York 1979. to have a complete understanding of what is happening. It is a moment of self-perspective, of one person in a vast ocean given an opportunity of looking through a window into my heritage'.

I think he is correct. All over Polynesia, island peoples saw themselves in their