Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 10, Number 7, 1 July 1993 — Building canoes, building Hawaiians: Mauloa floats! [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Building canoes, building Hawaiians: Mauloa floats!

by Jeff Clark

The hālau was empty. The log it had sheltered for over a year now rested 100 feet seaward on the shore of the cove, waiting to be launched, waiting to be rebom as a eanoe. Its voyage from the uplands to the sea was nearly complete, and soon would be followed by more voyages along the coasts of our islands through the waters that surround them. Its carvers sat before the wa'a, first drinking 'awa, then expressing their mana'o. They reaffirmed to themselves and to eaeh other what it meant to build a eanoe not out of fiberglass but out of wood, with stone adzes, as their ancestors had onee built canoes. It became clear these Hawaiians had built more than a eanoe: in the process they built their identities as Hawaiians. You go out and you do things precisely the way your ancestors did them, just to try and regain something you've been told has been lost, and when you get the same results told in mo'olelo you realize the stories aren't just "stories." Tiger Espere spoke about getting the tree, a mighty koa. Mueh

to their surprise, after cutting just a quarter of the way through the trunk, their felling work was pau. All they had to do was get out of the way. The tree spoke, it rumbled and shook, and then it lay

down. "We were all backing away and looking at this tree, and this tree started rumbling, ... and I'm going, 'No way is this tree going to eome down, we haven't even

gone half way.' ... What the tree was doing was uprooting itself. And that experience, what I wanted to stress to you guys, our knowledge about our ancestors is so real, and this is what makes us

so special. But we don't know about this, we forget. This project made us realize how mueh we all (have) ... so mueh to learn, so mueh to share. "1 remember that day was really hot, just like today. And when the tree was starting to talk, the clouds started coming over, the birds all stopped singing, and it was so quiet and so still and this rumbling was getting louder and louder, and it started to rain, but it was a drizzle, and we were all standing looking at this tree, and we didn't know what to think. All 1 remember was this was the way our ancestors brought trees down: with plenty prayer ... asking the tree to give up its life so we ean fish, sail, and go to places that we've never been." The months of carving, shaping, hewing, sealing, lashing, polishing, finishing ... were done. Two dozen malo-clad men carried the tree 10 feet farther from the mountain it was laken, and placed it in the water, ready to begin its new life as a eanoe. No longer a log, the boat floated. There were no cheers. All the eyes on shore were focused on channeling their owners' mana to push the eanoe seaward, and it was a proud day.

Ihe Mauloa, a coastai salling eanoe built the traditional way with stone adzes, was iaunched May 22 at Pu'uhonua o Hōnaunau. Here are the facts: Hull: 26 feet of koa. Four thousand koa seedlings were planted to replace the tree that heeame Mauloa. Sail: 1 10 square feet of woven lauhala TaT Lashing cordage and rigging line: coconut-fiber sennit T!T Water-tight caulking: sap of the 'ulu tree. Finish: the hull's pigment comes from the root of the kukui nut tree; the finish is kukui nut oil. : ■■■.■' ■ ■ . . TT Construction: the eanoe was built under the supervision of Mau Pialug of Micronesia, a master traditional eanoe builder and tbe Hōkūle'a's first navigator. A rotating crew of Big Island volunteers, under the Ieadership of Nainoa Thompson, began wotk on the eanoe in Pebruary 1992. Funding: the Mauloa's construction was a National Park Service-funded project of the Bishop Museum through its Native Hawaiian Culture and Arts Program, in cooperation with the Hawai'i Maritime Center, the Polynesian Voyaging Society. and Kamehameha Schools/Bishop Estate.