The Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS) is a non-profit research and educational corporation based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. 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.
Waka are Māori watercraft, usually canoes ranging in size from small, unornamented canoes used for fishing and river travel to large, decorated war canoes up to 40 metres (130 ft) long.
Taumako is the largest of the Duff Islands, in the nation of Solomon Islands in the Pacific Ocean. This 5.7-kilometre-long (3.5-mile) island has steep sides and rises to a height of 400 metres above sea level. It is composed of basaltic lavas and pyroclastics like the other islands in the Duffs.
AfiogaFiamē Naomi Mataʻafa is a Samoan politician and High Chiefess (matai) who has served as the seventh Prime Minister of Samoa and leader of the Faʻatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party since 2021.
Tākitimu was a waka (canoe) with whakapapa throughout the Pacific particularly with Samoa, the Cook Islands, and New Zealand in ancient times. In several Māori traditions, the Tākitimu was one of the great Māori migration ships that brought Polynesian migrants to New Zealand from Hawaiki. The canoe was said to be captained by Tamatea.
David Henry Lewis was a sailor, adventurer, doctor, and scholar of Polynesian culture. He is best known for his studies on the traditional systems of navigation used by the Pacific Islanders. His studies, published in the book We, the Navigators, made these navigational methods known to a wide audience and helped to inspire a revival of traditional voyaging methods in the South Pacific.
Polynesian navigation or Polynesian wayfinding was used for thousands of years to enable long voyages across thousands of kilometres of the open Pacific Ocean. Polynesians made contact with nearly every island within the vast Polynesian Triangle, using outrigger canoes or double-hulled canoes. The double-hulled canoes were two large hulls, equal in length, and lashed side by side. The space between the paralleled canoes allowed for storage of food, hunting materials, and nets when embarking on long voyages. Polynesian navigators used wayfinding techniques such as the navigation by the stars, and observations of birds, ocean swells, and wind patterns, and relied on a large body of knowledge from oral tradition. This island hopping was a solution to the scarcity of useful resources, such as food, wood, water, and available land, on the small islands in the Pacific Ocean. When an island’s required resources for human survival began to run low, the island's inhabitants used their maritime navigation skills and set sail for new islands. However, as an increasing number of islands in the South Pacific became occupied, and citizenship and national borders became of international importance, this was no longer possible. People thus became trapped on islands with the inability to support them.
Ben Rudolph Finney was an American anthropologist known for his expertise in the history and the social and cultural anthropology of surfing, Polynesian navigation, and canoe sailing, as well as in the cultural and social anthropology of human space colonization. As "surfing's premier historian and leading expert on Hawaiian surfing going back to the 17th century" and "the intellectual mentor, driving force, and international public face" of the Hokulea project, he played a key role in the Hawaiian Renaissance following his construction of the Hokulea precursor Nalehia in the 1960s and his co-founding of the Polynesian Voyaging Society in the 1970s.
Sir Hector Busby, 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.
Amatasi are a type of Samoan double-hulled watercraft. Its sails were woven pandanus leaves tied to 2 spars. The hull was sometimes built of planks. Lashed together, large double canoes 30–60 feet long could carry 25 men on journeys of hundreds of miles.
Fealofani Bruun is a sailor who was the first Samoan woman to qualify as a yachtmaster. She sails and captains the Gaualofa – a double-hull canoe which was built by the Okeanos Foundation for the Sea for the Samoa Voyaging Society to preserve the traditions of Polynesian navigation. In 2018, she was listed as one of BBC's 100 Women.
Polynesian multihull terminology, such as "ama", "aka" and "vaka" are multihull terms that have been widely adopted beyond the South Pacific where these terms originated. This Polynesian terminology is in common use in the Americas and the Pacific but is almost unknown in Europe, where the English terms "hull" and "outrigger" form normal parlance. Outriggers, catamarans, and outrigger boats are a common heritage of all Austronesian peoples and predate the Micronesian and Polynesian expansion into the Pacific. They are also the dominant forms of traditional ships in Island Southeast Asian and Malagasy Austronesian cultures, where local terms are used.
Marumaru Atua is a reconstruction of a vaka moana, a double-hulled Polynesian voyaging canoe. It was built in 2009 by the Okeanos Foundation for the Sea. In 2014, it was gifted to the Cook Islands Voyaging Society. It is used to teach polynesian navigation.
The Cook Islands Voyaging Society (CIVS) is a non-profit organisation in the Cook Islands dedicated to the promotion of Polynesian navigation, cultural ancestry, and environmental knowledge for future generations. It builds and sails replicas of traditional double-hulled voyaging canoes, undertaking voyages throughout Polynesia using traditional navigation techniques.
Te Au o Tonga is a reconstruction of a vaka moana, a double-hulled Polynesian voyaging canoe. It was built in 1994 by former Cook Islands Prime Minister Thomas Davis and the Cook Islands Voyaging Society. It was used to teach polynesian navigation.
Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster is a Samoan environmentalist, politician and Cabinet Minister. He is a member of the FAST Party.
A constitutional crisis began in Samoa on 22 May 2021 when O le Ao o le Malo Tuimalealiʻifano Vaʻaletoʻa Sualauvi II issued a proclamation purporting to prevent the Legislative Assembly from meeting in the wake of the general election in April 2021. Court rulings had upheld the election results, giving a parliamentary majority to the Faʻatuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi (FAST) party, led by Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa. On 24 May 2021, a makeshift ceremony was held outside of Parliament to swear in Mata'afa as prime minister. On 23 July the Court of Appeal declared that the ceremony was binding and that FAST had been the government since that date.
Hans Edward KruseOS was a Samoan civil servant, actor, and rugby player.
ʻAunofo Havea Funaki is the first woman from Tonga to become a licensed sea captain. The owner of a business that takes tourists to "swim with the whales", she has captained a traditional Polynesian canoe that sailed from the Pacific islands to the USA.
Faʻafaite is a reconstruction of a double-hulled Polynesian voyaging canoe. It was built in 2009 by the Okeanos Foundation for the Sea. It is operated by the Fa’afaite-Tahiti Voyaging Society and used to teach used to teach polynesian navigation.
