"They're coming. They're coming."
Fiji Museum's photo of the announcement.
Those are davuii, the traditional horn,
which traditionally are blown to announce
someone has spotted ...
... Vaka on the horizon.
And look at that: they are coming through
the Nukulau Passage usually only ever
used by Queen Elizabeth's ship Britannia.
And the big story that has everyone so excited? Te Vakas have arrived in Suva. An entire flotilla of them.
Davuii sound as they make their way into
Laucala Bay. It's a traditional welcome/warning.
Fiji Museum photo.
Jon's stunning photograph
"Waiting for Te Vaka!"
This is pure poetry.
If you don't know what a vaka is - and yes, it is ALSO a World Music fusion band from the Pacific - it's a boat.
Yup, it's a boat but not just any boat. It's a traditional Pacific Island catamaran.
Fiji Museum photo!
Dennis's photo!
Every now and again, and certainly not often enough, something happens in the world that fills me with joy and this flotilla of traditional vakas from Hawaii, Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti and the Cook Islands currently sailing together across the Pacific on their way to the Solomon Islands for the Pacific Arts and Culture Festival, definitely makes my heart sing. GO PACIFIC.
It's all being done to prove that the people of Oceania were perfectly capable of crossing thousands of miles of open ocean, and the central agenda of this journey is to make Polynesia and Melanesia regain their pride in who they were and thereby stop the Pacific's cultural disintegration.
Hawaii, with possibly the greatest disintegration of culture and greatest disrespect for the Polynesian heritage, was the first to build a Vaka and first to relearn how to sail them (apparently back in the 50s they still had one old man alive who had sailed Vakas and who knew the secrets and, despite the ban on Vakas, taught all to his sons, but whose grandsons didn't want to know ... and the knowledge would have been lost forever but for the judicious and fortuitious decision over a decade back to build a Vaka) ... but when they saw what Hawaii was doing all the other Pacific Island nations want to do the same, and so far FIVE nations have done so ... and thus this flotilla going around the Pacific to remind our islands of what they used to be.
And I tell you that if I were in Fiji right now, I'd be in among these women waving my traditional tapa flags too:
A joy like no other!
Fiji Museum photos.
Fiji Museum photos.
Since this is just HUGE for the Pacific want to see more shots of the vakas? (We in Fiji call it a drua but in the current context are more than willing to go along with the rest of Oceania for the occasion.) Here they are:
And since the sky looks so grey and grim in those shots, let's also see Stan's photos where it doesn't:
Photos by Dovi Kanaimawi,
from Leleuvia Island
from Leleuvia Island
Aren't they mighty and magnificent? And it means Pacific Islanders are beginning to regain their traditional sailing skills, and I am so for that. DIE THOR HEYERDAHL DIE!!!
It's just a shame that it's been about 40 years since the death of The Last Kondi (navigator) so all that astral navigation knowledge, accumulated over millennium, has been lost, although I guess with compasses and global positioning devices, it isn't as serious an issue as it would otherwise have been.
Actually Kondi isn't really the Oceanic name for Navigator. It's
just the New Zealand Maori one. And I've always found it mighty curious
that Kondi is the family name, the actual clan name, the surname, of the most famous traditional navigator
family in the Cook Islands, yet NZ Maoris always claim they have no
idea where they originally came from.
Anyway I have no idea if he's the Kondi, but here's Jon's shot of one of the Tahitian crew anyway:
Really rockin' the traditional tats!
You may not know this, but when the Pacific was annexed by the European Colonial Powers back in the 19th century, the first thing they did was outlaw the vakas, with the intention of immediately restricting the movement of the people. They were adamant on this point and Queen Victoria wouldn't even accept Fiji as a gift from King Cakobau (who gifted his islands to her in order to protect them from the Americans who he knew for a fact had the most evil of intentions regarding his people.) (It was during the American Civil War and they'd just discovered Fiji could grow cotton.) while he still had his navy ... so because he really needed to hand over Fiji in a hurry his entire flotilla of over 200 giant drua suddenly vanished.
Being a naturally curious soul, as a child I actually went on a hunt to solve this mystery and did actually meet an old man who told me what became of them, but I promised secrecy on the matter and I have never ever told anyone what I know despite finding out it is also known to Fiji Museum, which could make it OK now to talk about it openly, but nonetheless I still hold to my promise.
Anyway, all vaka were banned in the Pacific - and they are still banned in French Polynesia and French Melanesia - and gradually all this amazing and valuable knowledge died out.
I was once told the heartbreaking story of Fiji's Last Kondi who, back in the 1930s, was in a hospice in Suva but who suddenly wanted to go home to die on his own island. The British Colonial Office obliged and put him on a small inter-island trader where, completely blind from cataracts, he sat on the deck and sniffed the air. But then a strange mist came down and the crew were desperately worried about where they were, especially hearing the sounds of the breakers on the nearby reef but The Last Kondi kept sniffing the air and feeling and tasting the sea water till he brought them all safely through the reef to his island.
And then for over a century the Vaka traditional building and sailing and navigating knowledge was lost until finally that complete and total tosser and idiot - who I have desperately hated all my life, and even thinking about him now makes my bile rise - THOR (The Kon TikiTosser) HEYERDAHL dared to propose "Drift Theory" - that Pacific Islanders DRIFTED IN ON RAFTS - hate! hate! hate! - which made the entire world go "Oh, so that's how it happened!"
HOW DARE HE! Honestly, nothing has ever made me more angry in my life. The thought of these vigorous sailing people with their wealth of knowledge of the sea and of boats, who were crossing the Pacific back and forth between islands for thousands of miles for thousands of years, had been reduced to passive DRIFTERS, not in control of their own destinies, just makes me so angry ... oooh, the bile! The anger! The hate!
And were you aware that he didn't actually do it and that entire 'drifting from South America to Tahiti' journey was based on a fraud. In truth, he kept being dragged up the coast by the Humbolt Current (where they've found a LOT of Polynesian DNA, btw) and thus had to get a tug to drag them 80 miles out to sea.
Oh Lordy, they've just turned it into a film. I AM SO ANGRY ABOUT THIS. You'd think they'd be so ashamed of themselves they'd want the whole regretful insulting and injurious incident forgotten forever.
And, adding insult to injury, did you know that Baby Jane, who went to boarding school in New Zealand, learned Drift Theory in school there? Yes, it was taught as FACT in the New Zealand high school curriculum; and this to a country that had once been the apogee of the Vaka Tradition. Pure evil, right? Pure and patronising evil?
Jane even still hangs on to this idiocy. "If it isn't true, then why did I learn it at school?" she always says, even refusing to read the National Geographics I've given her that actually tell how badly Thor Heyerdahl got it wrong and that archeological evidence shows it was actually the Easter Islanders who left their island en masse (cutting down all their trees to build their flotilla which left their Island so completely deforested) and who went to South America and became the Aztecs and NOT the other way around as The Kon Tiki Tosser claimed.
But let's not get angry here. Instead look at how much knowledge has been retained: like the traditional vaka greeting which was actually acted out there in Laucala Bay:
The three fiercest warriors wait to see how close the vakas will get ...
... and when it becomes obvious they intend to land ...
... swimming out to ask them what their intentions are.
But I'm glad to see that despite acknowledging the past, they aren't been stupid about using the latest technology when appropriate:
Fiji Museum's photo of the solar panels they're using.
I mean, this is the 21st century so why not take advantage of the good stuff. I'm sure that if the Vaka Tradition hadn't been eradiacated for so long, today they'd all have solar panels.
So that's what's happening in Suva this week, and note how all the little kiddies are going down to Laucala Bay to learn all about the Vaka Tradition ...
... and they're being interviewed by all the Fiji media ...
... and even local artists have got into the theme:
Regaining your past, regaining your history, your mana, your dignity, and even your soul. How mighty is that? How magnificent? My heart sings for this and I do hope it's just the start of something mighty and grand.
I think I've already shown you the photo Johnson sent me of the little personally owned takia (small traditional sailing boat) that someone is sailing around Suva Harbour these day. Let's hope the Vaka Flotilla creates so much more of that sort of thinking!
GO OCEANIA! AND DIE THOR HEYERDAHL DIE!!!!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment