and cultural preservation spans from the middle of the Pacific
to the top of Mauna Kea
One evening, on his first long-distance voyage across the Pacific, Chad Kalepa Baybayan found himself looking up at the stars from the deck of the Hokule'a. Tracing the contours of the Hawaiian constellations in their slow journey across the night sky toward the horizon, he was struck by an epiphany that moved him to the core. He was seeing the very same stars that his ancestors had seen hundreds of years ago‹the same view of the night sky observed from the deck of the canoe, the silence of the ocean deafening. At that moment, Chad realized the power of a tangible connection with the past, one that he was actively recovering through voyaging.
Master Navigator Chad Baybayan is one of contemporary Hawai'i's cultural and community leaders, or, in his own words, a wayfinder. "We like to use the term wayfinding instead of voyaging because it implies more than just knowing how to read points on a compass," explains the 55-year old part-Hawaiian, part Filipino on a recent educational trip to South America. With a quiet seriousness that can break suddenly into a broad, joke-cracking grin, his informal and low-key local style belies an astonishing breadth of knowledge culled from years of dedication to this art.
Baybayan lives with his family on Hawai'i Island, where he is the associate director at the 'Imiloa Astronomy Center and works on connecting the higher educational system to Hawaiian culture, history and values. But much of his time is spent traveling to share the voyaging movement's story throughout the world (most recently he traveled to Argentina and South Africa). For Baybayan, this not only means teaching others about Hawaiian culture, but also spreading a global message of stewardship and community-building as understood and practiced by oceanic wayfinders. For Baybayan, wayfinding is much more than getting from one place to another; it can also be understood as a way of organizing the world. This broad definition encompasses ways of leading, of articulating a vision and a set of values and a model for taking care of the earth. The concept of the canoe as an island reveals the wisdom of a traditional culture that understood the need to live within the boundaries of finite resources.
In 1975, Baybayan became an active member of the Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS) at the age of 19, sailing as the Hokule'a's youngest crewmember on his first long-distance voyage to Tahiti in 1980 and later serving as crewmember and captain on many voyages throughout the Pacific. He witnessed the movement's growth from a risky experiment into one of today's most successful and internationally recognized symbols of the Hawaiian cultural renaissance and lived through all of its major milestones: the PVS's tragic loss in 1978 of big wave surfer Eddie Aikau, who he remembers fondly as the first person to welcome him in the group when he was "just a quiet young kua 'aina country boy from Maui" who had seen the Hokule'a sail past his house one day and felt an irresistible calling to be a part of the project; Nainoa Thompson's quest to reincorporate the late Micronesian Master Navigator Mau Piailug back into the PVS's efforts, essentially rescuing the traditional art of deep-sea voyaging from the brink of oblivion; and the historic trips to faraway destinations like Aotearoa (New Zealand), Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and Japan.
A Model for Stewardship
In 2007, over 30 years after the birth of the PVS, Baybayan and four other Hawaiian men were initiated by Mau Piailug into the order of Pwo, a 2,000-year-old society of deep-sea navigators on the island of Satawal. It was the first time that non-Satawalese islanders were brought into this elite hierarchy of Master Navigators of the Pacific. But as Baybayan describes it, the privilege of being named Master Navigator is really an ingenious way of publicly reaffirming one's responsibility to care for the human and natural resources that the community depends on.
"Being initiated into the rank of Pwo is about being a humble servant, a steward to community and a resource to those who pursue the knowledge of committing to a noble cause." He explains that it was historically the navigators of Pacific islands‹who spent a good deal of time at sea‹that had a comprehensive understanding of how human and natural resources, and their proper care, sustained the population at large. "If I'm given the opportunity to transmit some of this understanding, I try not to waste it. That's the responsibility that was given to us, I need to honor it."
Today, Baybayan spends less time on the canoe and more in the classroom, teaching audiences both in Hawai'i and elsewhere about the relevance of deep-sea voyaging as a learning tool and model for environmental stewardship. After many years of voyaging, he realized that in order for the movement and the Hawaiian people in general to continue growing, education is key. So he went back to school, obtaining a master's in education from the University of Hawai'i at Hilo and learning to speak Hawaiian fluently.
As part of a generation of Hawaiian path breakers who chose to diverge from what was socially and politically acceptable at the time, Baybayan watched the growth of the cultural renaissance and its impact on local society. While he had to struggle to recover his ancestors' language, he can now converse with young children who are learning Hawaiian as naturally as he learned English. Today, with education at the heart of his personal and professional mission, Baybayan is one of the community's leaders who seeks to bridge otherwise antagonistic native and mainstream visions of how to manage Hawai'i's natural and cultural resources. He participated in the growing 'Aha Punana Leo Hawaiian language programs as well as becoming the Master Navigator-in-Residence and later associate director of the 'Imiloa Astronomy Center, run by the University of Hawai'i at Hilo.
Controversial Astronomy
Originally called the Mauna Kea Astronomy Education Center, the idea for 'Imiloa originated in the mid-1990s when a group of educators, scientists and community leaders decided to develop an educational facility that would showcase the connections between the traditions of Hawaiian culture and the astronomical research conducted at the summit of Mauna Kea. This intersection between scientific and cultural knowledge sources had taken place for decades in the PVS, and although Baybayan believes that there are layers of wisdom unique to the accumulated experience of traditional navigators, he adds that the PVS always made use of modern technology and science to achieve its work.
Mauna Kea is now at the center of a heated debate over the 30-meter telescope (TMT) project being planned for the mountain's summit. A project of the TMT Observatory Corporation, the telescope would be one of the largest and most advanced in the world, with a $1.3 billion budget with research partners and investors from Japan and India, as well as the United States.
Critics of the project, which include Hawaiian and environmental groups, contend that Mauna Kea's summit is both sacred and ecologically sensitive land. After the Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) approved the project in February 2011, contested case public hearings took place in August and September. At the time of publication, both parties had yet to submit all the necessary materials. After receiving the hearing office's final recommendation, BLNR will then review and vote whether or not to allow the construction of the telescope.
Baybayan is an important figure in the hearings, given his stature in the Hawaiian cultural and educational community, but unlike many in the native Hawaiian community, he supports the project. He cites among his reasons the fact that the TMT will be built at a lower elevation, rather than at the summit of the mountain, and that if it is built at least two, if not more, of the other 13 telescopes currently in use will be dismantled. He believes that concentrating the research activity rather than spreading it out will be better for the mountain's ecology and cultural use in the long term.
The project also serves as a model for negotiating "community benefits packages" in exchange for major development projects, which in the case of the TMT has been set at $1 million annually in funding for locally chosen and managed educational programs on the island of Hawai'i. "In the past, these kinds of benefits weren't included in development projects and if this one goes through it will set the bar for future proposals," says Baybayan.
Economic benefits (which, in this case, include between 120 and 140 jobs) have always been used as arguments for tourism and development in Hawai'i, although they have also been viewed as contradicting cultural and community welfare. But Baybayan, who worked in hotels when he was younger, believes that the differences between community and economic wellbeing needn't be so severely opposed.
"I don't see my support of the telescope as contradicting cultural values, but I do think that there has to be compromise in the process and it's hard to argue away the economic benefit to the community," explains Baybayan. "Preserving cultural integrity and maintaining economic stability in the Islands is a delicate balance, but I think today's reality forces us to recognize the harshness of the current economic climate and we need to make wise choices that build upon the industry at hand."
Baybayan points out that on the Hokule'a's first journey, the differences between Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians produced such violent disagreements that their most precious resource of all‹Mau Piailug‹was so disgusted by their behavior that he abandoned the project in Tahiti, returned to Satawal, and told the Hawaiians to never bother him again. This was a defining moment in the voyaging movement and the cultural renaissance itself, when petty differences could have killed a broader dream to rediscover the wisdom of traditional Pacific seafaring people. Thanks to the humility and perseverance of those who insisted that the values behind voyaging‹the values of wayfinders‹transcend race or political ideology, the name Hokule'a is now synonymous with the wisdom and achievements of Hawai'i's island culture.
Over three decades later, when Baybayan and four others were invited by Piailug to form part of the brotherhood of Master Navigators, it seemed a learning process had been completed. "Performing that very simple and powerful ceremony reinforces my belief that as voyagers our horizons are limitless, that the power to renew our lives through self-discovery lies in our oceanic tradition to risk and explore."