Professor Kerry Howe received a Fulbright Travel Award
to take up a visiting professorship at the University of Hawai‘i
for the Spring Semester of 1987. Now a Professor of History at Massey
University Albany, Kerry recently lent his expertise to Auckland Museum’s
major new exhibition Vaka Moana, chronicling “the untold story of
the world’s greatest exploration” – that of the Pacific.
A curator of the exhibition, Kerry also edited and wrote two chapters
for the accompanying 368 page book.
For the past three years I have been heavily involved in the Vaka Moana
exhibition currently showing at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. The
exhibition was the brainchild of Director Dr Rodney Wilson who (easily)
enticed me onto his curatorial team as well as entrusted me to edit the
very large scholarly volume that accompanies the exhibition (Vaka Moana:
The Voyages of the Ancestors, Auckland: David Bateman/Auckland Museum,
2006).
Vaka Moana tells the story of the Austronesian people (the direct ancestors
of today’s Pacific islanders) who emerged from Southeast Asia more
than 4,000 years ago and settled the remotest islands on the world’s
largest ocean. This magnificent feat is not only a unique saga of our
region, it is also a fundamental part of the story of the human settlement
of the entire planet. The Pacific Ocean and its islands were the last
places on earth to be explored and settled by humans. With that settlement,
humans reached the end of the habitable world. If we wish to go further,
we have to head out into space.
The reason why the Pacific islands were the last places to be inhabited
is simply because they were the most difficult to get to. Homo sapiens
settled all of Africa, then Eurasia, and then the Americas mainly by walking.
But you cannot walk to the Pacific islands. To do so humans needed to
have two skills. The first was a blue water technology and a navigational
system. The second was the ability to plant and harvest crops and domesticate
animals, since the islands of the Pacific were very poor in edible flora
and fauna. For example, there were no coconuts, or yams, or taro, or breadfruit,
or sugar cane, or bananas and so on before humans introduced them. The
development of agriculture and a blue water technology came relatively
late in human history, well within the last 10,000 years.
Professor Kerry Howe
The Austronesian people originated in the area of southern China perhaps
5,000 or more years ago – long before the development of modern ‘Chinese’
society. They had the agricultural skills, and they developed the world’s
first ocean going vessels and the capacity to navigate them. They began
their voyaging into the Oceanic Pacific some 3,500 years ago. This was
long before anyone else on earth developed oceanic sailing.
This exhibition celebrates that achievement. It shows how their migrations
right across the ocean can be traced by modern investigative techniques.
Much of the exhibition is about the sailing technology employed by the
Austronesians, and their navigational skills. It also covers the development
of the essentially maritime cultures as they had emerged by the time of
western contact. And it outlines the impact of this western contact as
two maritime people – Pacific and European – met for the first
time. There was much cultural loss, particular of Pacific peoples’
sailing practices.
The exhibition brings the story up to date by showing the amazing renewal
of traditional sailing and navigating skills which has taken place over
the past 30 or so years. Today traditional sailing along the ancient migratory
sea routes has become a major cultural activity for many people in Polynesia,
and a symbol of Pacific peoples’ renewed pride in their heritage
and identity in the modern world.
There were many challenges in telling this great story – a major
one being that there are no surviving vessels from thousands of years
ago, and few ancient cultural artefacts (though there are many from the
time when Europeans first entered the Ocean – and the Auckland Museum
has one of the world’s best collections of such material).
What was required was an imaginative and intellectual reconstruction of
this greatest migration in human history, so the exhibition essentially
offers an argument rather than just simply displaying material objects
– that argument is about the human capacity for technological innovation
and discovery and the consequent deliberate and purposeful exploration
of the mighty Pacific Ocean. The exhibition will travel overseas for up
to five years – to Australia, Southeast Asia, North America and Europe
– and will return to Te Papa in New Zealand when its journeying is
over.
