AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
Limitations of Language for Conveying Navigational
Knowledge: Way-Finding in the Southeastern Solomon
Islands
Richard Feinberg and Joseph Genz
ABSTRACT
Investigators have tended to view navigation either through the lens of cognition or of experience and
embodiment. The cognitive approach assumes that perceptually salient aspects of the environment are mapped and
retrieved in the mind (so-called cognitive mapping). The alternative is that navigators “feel” their way by ongoing sensations of movement, assessing their position through the sequential, temporal order in which salient environmental
information is perceived. Recently, others have challenged models of knowledge that analytically separate cognitive
and experiential modalities of knowing, suggesting that the navigator combines cognitive with visual, auditory, and
kinesthetic information into an integrated whole. Such a holistic approach to spatial orientation and way-finding
raises an important methodological challenge to cognitive anthropology, as certain forms of knowledge are not
easily expressed in words. This is particularly true of kinesthetic knowledge of a canoe’s motion, which provides
navigators with an indirect assessment of wave patterns. Here, we explore one of the authors’ observations during a
voyage with a demonstrably accomplished navigator from the Solomon Islands’ Temotu Province who, nonetheless,
appeared to provide inconsistent and self-contradictory accounts of his surroundings and performance. [Polynesia,
navigation, spatial orientation, cognition]
A
nthropological explorations of the mind–body connection have a venerable history, dating at least to
Marcel Mauss (1973[1935], 1979[1950]) and Maurice
Merleau-Ponty (1962[1945]). The early focus largely involved symbolic projections of human anatomy onto political
and ritual relationships (e.g., Hertz 1973 [1909]; cf. Needham 1973). Oppositions such as self/other or nature/culture
came to permeate the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss and many
of his structuralist followers. Symbolic and psychological
anthropologists have explored the body’s (sometimes un-)
boundedness and the cultural construction of “personhood”
or notions of “self” (e.g., Hallowell 1955; Schneider 1968;
Geertz 1976; Strathern 1988; Csordas 1994); and medical anthropology, by its very nature, examines the connections involving culture, mind, and body (e.g., Lock 1993;
Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987). Recent years have witnessed deconstruction of the body–mind distinction, owing
to a recognition that the mind shapes physiology as much
as it grows out of it (e.g., Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987;
Csordas 1988). And nowhere more than in the realm of
navigation do cognitive strategies combine with multiple
perceptual modalities and embodied practice to produce
human skilled performance.
Thomas Gladwin (1970) and David Lewis (1972)
brought embodiment as a component of Pacific way-finding
to anthropological attention in their discussions of wave
patterns detected through a vessel’s pitch and roll. The
navigator relates those kinesthetically perceived movements
to such cognitive constructs as star and wind compasses
and the spatial distribution of (largely unseen) islands. Yet,
most discussions of way-finding have emphasized cognitive
schemas that are consciously understood by the navigator
and transmitted to apprentice voyagers or curious anthropologists primarily through articulate speech. Here we examine a case in which a capable navigator could not effectively explain critical environmental cues to an eager
researcher.
PROBLEM
As we move about we often ask ourselves, “Where am
I?” People living in particularly challenging environments
c 2012 by the American Anthropological
AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, Vol. 114, No. 2, pp. 336–350, ISSN 0002-7294, online ISSN 1548-1433. Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2012.01429.x
Feinberg and Genz
have addressed this question by developing elaborate navigational systems, and nowhere are navigational challenges
more acute than in Oceania. Traditional way-finders must
guide their voyaging canoes across a seemingly undifferentiated surface toward an island that lies below the horizon,
without the benefit of instruments or charts. The attempt to
understand how they accomplish this has generated numerous ethnographic investigations that both have drawn from
and informed theories of spatial orientation.
Clearly, multiple modalities of sensory experience are
involved in successful way-finding. Still, most investigators
have approached navigation either from the viewpoint of
cognition or of experience and embodiment rather than
exploring points of intersection. The cognitive approach assumes that perceptually salient aspects of the environment
are mapped and retrieved in the mind, a process commonly
termed “cognitive mapping” (e.g., Tolman 1948; Ingold
2000; Montello 2005). Cognitive anthropologists have attempted to uncover culturally shared mental representations
(typically termed “cultural” or “cognitive” models) that provide a framework for spatial orientation (D’Andrade 1995;
Bennardo 2009). Ethnographic studies have detailed how
navigators from several island groups in the Pacific employ
wind directions and the movements of celestial bodies to
form conceptual compasses that are used for orientation and
course setting. The canoe’s movement through its maritime
environment enables navigators to estimate their position
and maintain their course through dead reckoning. Other
environmental features, such as sea life and disrupted swell
patterns, are used to sense land before it becomes visible
(e.g., Ammarell 1999; Feinberg 1988, 1991; Gladwin 1970;
Hutchins 1983; Lewis 1972; Thomas 1987). Roy D’Andrade
(1995:152) cites Gladwin’s (1970) study of Polowatese navigation as one of the best systematic descriptions of a cognitive
model.
A contrasting approach posits that a person “feels his
way” via ongoing perceptions of movement through the
environment (Ingold 2000). As anthropology shifted from
viewing cognition as the internal mental processing of information to processes of engagement in practical activity
(Bourdieu 1977), socialization (Hutchins 1995), and embodiment (Lave 1988), psychologist James Gibson (1979)
proposed an ecological theory of perception, in which a
person’s interaction with and movement through the environment are sufficient to encode information. Gibson argued
that people travel through the environment by experiencing
a direct, continual flow of perceptual information with little cognitive processing. Of particular interest is Gladwin’s
(1970) rich ethnographic description of how Polowatese
navigators feel their way toward a destination island in relation to the motion and sound of waves and wind, and the
visual flow and patterning of stars. This suggested to cognitive scientist Edwin Hutchins (1995) that estimating position
at sea is based on the passage of time during a voyage rather
than a careful calculation of the distance traveled.1 Incorporating these ethnographic insights and experimental data
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Limitations of Language
337
(Heft 1996) into Gibson’s ecological theory of environmental perception, Tim Ingold (2000) suggested that the answer
to the question “Where am I?” may lie in assessing one’s
position through movement in the environment in relation
to the sequential, temporal order in which salient data enter
one’s perceptual field of view rather than by defining one’s
position in a precise maplike location. For Ingold, navigation
is really a way-finding process of enacting and remembering
each voyage as a flow of perspective through time, a “skilled
performance in which the traveler, whose power of perception and action have been fine-tuned through experience,
‘feels his way’ towards his goal, continuously adjusting his
movements in response to an ongoing perceptual monitoring
of his surroundings” (Ingold 2000:220).
Matthew Lauer and Shankar Aswani (2009) recently
challenged models of knowledge that analytically separate
cognitive and experiential modalities of knowing. Their
ethnographic research upon fishing and navigational knowledge in Roviana, western Solomon Islands, shows that spatial
knowledge of the maritime environment is developed over a
lifetime of engagement in and performance of practical and
socially situated activities. Following Ingold (2000), Lauer
and Aswani assert that the foundation of a navigator’s knowledge lies in his or her embeddedness in the voyage itself rather
than the ability to recall cognitive maps. However, acknowledging multiple forms of knowledge, they and others (e.g.,
Levinson 2003:219) view the process of Oceanic seafaring
as combining cognitive information (e.g., star relationships)
with visual, auditory, and kinesthetic information about the
waves and wind into an integrated whole that yields a current
estimate of the spatial environment and translates practically
into minor adjustments to the canoe’s course.
Such a holistic approach to spatial orientation and wayfinding raises a methodological challenge. From its beginning, cognitive anthropology has depended on language as a
means of entry into people’s modes of thought. This is particularly evident in the componential analyses of the 1950s
and 60s, with their assumption of an isomorphic relationship
between cognitive categories and monolexemic labels, and
their attempt to discern logical structures characterizing the
arrangement of lexemes in a cultural domain.2 Through the
succeeding decades, cognitive anthropology has grown more
nuanced. Still, we typically infer our interlocutors’ mental
models from linguistic communication.
Although cognitive anthropology relies heavily on linguistic representations, certain forms of knowledge are not
easily expressed in words (Shore 1996:60). This is particularly true of kinesthetic knowledge of a canoe’s motion, which provides navigators with an indirect assessment
of swell patterns. The navigator, in turn, depends upon
those swells for orientation, course heading, and remotely
sensing land by detecting their wind-propelled flow across
the open sea and their reflection by (or sometimes refraction around) islands. Yet, serendipitously built into studies of Oceanic way-finding is the “stern test of landfall”
(Lewis 1972), which validates the navigational model, even if
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American Anthropologist • Vol. 114, No. 2 • June 2012
certain aspects of the system cannot be articulated or appear
inconsistent. Here, we explore these inarticulate and seemingly incongruous dimensions of navigational knowledge by
examining one of the authors’ practical experiences and observations during a voyage in the Santa Cruz Islands of the
southeastern Solomons.
SETTING
In 2007 and 2008, Feinberg spent nine months in the
Solomon Islands, studying an attempt to revive what islanders understand to be traditional canoe building, sailing,
voyaging, and navigation in the Santa Cruz region of Temotu
Province. This area is well known among students of Pacific
voyaging, owing to the work of William Davenport (1962,
1964), David Lewis (1972), Marianne George (1998, 1999;
Feinberg and George 2008), and the Vaka Taumako Project
(http://www.pacifictraditions.org/vaka/). Until the second half of the 20th century, islanders from Taumako, the
Reef Islands, and the larger outcroppings of Ndeni, Utupua,
and Vanikoro were involved in a complex system of exchange. Craftsmen from the Polynesian island of Taumako
produced large voyaging canoes on order from sailors in the
closely related Outer Reefs (known locally as Vaeakau).3
Vaeakau sailors used those canoes to travel to the larger
Melanesian islands, where they exchanged fish, turtles, nuts,
and sometimes women for scrolls of “red feather money”
(muahau). The feather money was then used in bridewealth
payments back home and to compensate Taumako craftsmen
for providing the canoes.
Vaeakau-Taumako navigators rely on way-finding techniques roughly similar to those documented for other parts
of the Pacific: they follow movements of celestial bodies, patterns of ocean swells and reflected waves, and the prevailing
winds. They report using natural occurrences not cited in
other navigation systems—most especially a phenomenon
locally termed te lapa, typically described as “like underwater lightning” (see Lewis 1972:208–211; Feinberg 2011).
However, many details of their system were unknown to
anthropological scholarship, and Feinberg and his collaborators hoped to unravel them through in-depth conversations
with respected navigators as well as participant-observation
at sea.4 They planned to observe the decision-making process while on inter island voyages and discuss with navigators
the reasoning behind their decisions.
As it turned out, no voyaging canoe was in regular operation during Feinberg’s time in the Solomons.5
However, on his way back from Taumako to the national capital in November 2008, he spent a week with
Clement Teniau (see Figure 1), a respected navigator from
Nukapu, and they traveled to four of the five Vaeakau
islands in a fiberglass motor canoe. When traveling with
Teniau, Feinberg had the opportunity to ask him to identify stars and swells and explain how he found his way
from island to island. Below, Feinberg describes that voyage and his conversations, comparing Teniau’s sense of
what was going on with his own subjective impressions
Clement Teniau at helm of his sailing canoe on Graciosa
Bay, Ndeni Island. (August 2008)
FIGURE 1.
as well as the measurements of his magnetic compass.
Feinberg was perplexed by many of Teniau’s assessments,
which seemed to contradict what he had been told by other
navigators and, in a number of cases, even appeared inconsistent with what Teniau, himself, had said on other occasions.
Yet, Teniau always arrived precisely at his destination.
ELEMENTS OF VAEAKAU-TAUMAKO NAVIGATION
Vaeakau-Taumako sailors navigate by stars, swells, and prevailing wind patterns. Sailing between Taumako and Vaeakau
is more or less along an east–west axis, making it relatively
easy to follow stars. The voyage between Vaeakau and the
high islands of Ndeni, Utupua, and Vanikoro is along a north–
south axis, making celestial navigation more difficult; but the
distance is modest, so the large islands are usually visible from
the outset if one travels during daylight in reasonable weather
(see Figure 2). Major navigational asterisms—a term encompassing both individual stars and constellations—include
Talo/Salo, “Taro” (Antares); Te Kilikā, “The Shark”
(Scorpius’s tail); Hetumdavō, “Bunch of Stars” (Pleiades);
Takelo (Orion’s Belt); Manu, the name of a Taumako
culture hero (Sirius); Nga Papakau (or Kapakau), Manu’s
two arms (Canopus and Procyon); and several others.6
Vaeakau-Taumako navigators, like those in other parts
of the Pacific, distinguish swells from seas and reflected
waves. Swells are regular waves produced by constant winds
that blow over thousands of miles of open ocean. Seas are
irregular waves produced by local winds. Reflected waves
are the remains of swells that hit an island and bounce back
toward the canoe. Swells in the Vaeakau-Taumako language
are hokohua loa, “long waves,” whereas reflected waves are
variously termed hokohua potopoto (also pronounced poroporo), “short waves,” hokohua tuktuki (also pronounced ssuki),
“banging waves,” or hokohua te kaenga, “waves of the place.”
Navigators distinguish two swell patterns, te hokohua loa te
ngatae, “the trade-wind swell,” and te hokohua loa te angeho,
“the monsoon swell.” The hokohua loa te ngatae comes from
the southeastern quadrant; the hokohua loa te angeho is said
to come more or less from the north, although it may be
Feinberg and Genz
FIGURE 2.
•
Limitations of Language
339
Map of the Solomon Islands (Courtesty of Amanda Mullett)
anywhere from the northeast to the northwest—or even
west–northwest.
The third major guide is te nohoanga te matangi, “the seat
(or dwelling place) of the wind,” or, more idiomatically, “the
wind compass.” This is an abstract system indicating important wind points. Feinberg encountered several variants of
the wind compass; the version rendered by Teniau during
a conversation in Lata, the provincial capital, in November
2007 (see Figure 3) is fairly typical.7
• te tonga: a little north of southeast or, perhaps east–
southeast (about 130◦ )
• te alunga: slightly south of due east
• te tokelau tū: approximately due east
• te palapu: east–northeast (about 60◦ )
• te tokelau: approximately due north; “straight toward
Tinakula” from the Lata air strip
• te hakahiu: approximately north–northwest (about
330◦ )
• te laki: about 250◦
• te ulu: just east of south (about 170◦ )8
The space in between each of these points is indicated by
a compound term so that between te tonga and te alunga is te
alunga-tonga, between te tokelau tū and te alunga is te tokelau
tū-alunga, and so on. Designations for these intermediate
regions are as follows:
• Between te tonga and te alunga: te alunga-tonga
• Between te alunga and te tokelau tū: te tokelau tū-alunga
•
•
•
•
•
•
Between te tokelau tū and te palapu: te tokelau tū-palapu
Between te palapu and te tokelau: te tokelau-palapu
Between te tokelau and te hakahiu: hakahiu-tokelau
Between te hakahiu and te laki: te hakahiu-laki
Between te laki and te ulu: te ulu-laki
Between te ulu and te tonga: te ulu-tonga
In the following section, Feinberg describes his voyage
with Teniau from Otmongi Village on Ndeni to four of the
five Vaeakau islands and back to Ndeni. The description is
taken, with minor editing from his 2008 field notes, and
accordingly is rendered in the first person.
THE VOYAGE
On the morning of November 19, Teniau’s friend, Gordon
Otai, brought his fiberglass canoe (see Figure 4) to Otmongi
from Poa, the next village to the west. We set off for Nukapu
at 10:15 a.m., heading almost due north, with the wind from
the northeast, at 30 to 40 degrees (see Figure 5).9
The swells were only one to three feet, with an occasional four-footer—an estimate I made by comparing the
wave crests with the position of the canoe’s gunwales and
the passengers’ heads. We left the small bay at Otmongi with
Teniau’s son, Lionel, at the helm. Once on the open sea,
the wind came from the NNE at about 20 degrees, which
was also our heading. I could only detect one swell, coming
from the NE at 30 to 40 degrees. I thought it must be te hokohua loa te angeho, but Teniau insisted that it was te hokohua
loa te ngatae and pointed to something coming from about
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American Anthropologist • Vol. 114, No. 2 • June 2012
Vaeakau Taumako “wind compass” and dominant swells. (According to Clement Teniau as related in Lata, November 2007; Courtesy of
Ghassan Rafeedie)
FIGURE 3.
340 degrees, which he said was te hokohua loa te angeho. At
first I could see nothing that looked or felt remotely like
a swell from that direction. When we were finally behind
Te Akau Loa, a huge reef that blocked most of the alleged
ngatae swell, I thought that the angeho swell might have appeared. But as soon as we got out of the reef’s shadow, it
disappeared again. And, as hard a time as I was having with
the swells, the hokohua potopoto “short [i.e., reflected] waves”
were still more problematic. Teniau insisted that he could
see and feel them, and that although small they should be
obvious. But all I could decipher were ripples on the surface
that seemed to be going in many different directions. I asked
Teniau if he steers by looking at the 2,800-foot high Tinakula
Volcano and Ndeni Island (both of which were clearly visible
and, indeed, hard to miss). He firmly said, No! He steers
exclusively by te hokohua even on a clear day.
I asked Lionel which way the current was flowing, and
he said, “Ki alunga,” pointing toward the east. A little later,
I asked Teniau the same question, and he said without hesitation, “Ki lalo” [To the west]. Lionel overheard this and
immediately said, “No. It’s flowing ki alunga ‘eastward.’”
At that point Teniau reversed himself and said, “Ki alunga.”
This was not a simple slip of the tongue, as both times he
pointed to where he thought the current was running as well
as telling me in words.
Lionel held a steady course of about 20 degrees, directly
into the wind, which Teniau said was coming from te tokelau
tū-palapu. Soon, Teniau took over and changed our heading
to about 40 degrees, then gradually moved back toward due
north, or even a little west of north. The shifts were not
dramatic; to me they were not obvious by looking at the
wave patterns. And I think Teniau believed he was holding
a steady course. He said that from Otmongi, Nukapu is i te
palapu. When he had shifted to due north and a little west
of north, I asked if he were now going toward te tokelau.
He said no; we were still heading toward te palapu. He then
pointed to what he said was te tokelau—which at that point
he identified as being in the west(!). Was he disoriented?
Possibly. But a few minutes later, he was again heading at
about 20 degrees and, pointing off the port bow, accurately
identified what I understood to be te tokelau.
We continued heading toward the NE or NNE until,
after 2.5 hours at sea, at about 12:45 p.m., we sighted
Matema on the horizon. Then we turned intentionally to
the north, or even NNW. This is not the most direct route
from Otmongi to Nukapu but seems to be a version of
the island-hopping strategy described by Lewis (1972). One
heads NE until Matema comes into view, then heads back
toward the NNW. If one’s objective is to get to Nukapu,
rather than to prove a point, this makes perfect sense as
a navigational strategy. At 1:55 p.m., when Nukapu appeared on the horizon, Teniau gave me a big hug and a
slap on the back and said, “You see? The custom compass
works!”
On the morning of November 20, our second day out
from Otmongi, another seeming inconsistency arose. Standing in Teniau’s Nukapu house, with a half dozen others
around to “help,” he identified the wind compass points as
follows:
• Tonga: just south of east
• Alunga: east
• Tokelau tū: northwest
• Palapu: southwest
• Tokelau: toward Tinakula (which would be south from
Nukapu)
Feinberg and Genz
FIGURE 4.
Lionel with Gordon’s motor canoe on beach at Otmongi, preparing for voyage to Nukapu
FIGURE 5.
Map of the Santa Cruz Islands (Courtesy of Amanda Mullett)
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American Anthropologist • Vol. 114, No. 2 • June 2012
• Hakahiu (Teniau pronounces this “te huahiu”): toward
Temotu Neo [SSE]
• Laki: southeast
• Ulu: east–southeast
To me this appeared utterly confused—as if Teniau thought
he was still in Lata, which would place Tinakula i te tokelau,
but te tokelau would be to the north (see Figure 6). A possible alternative is that te tokelau is always toward Tinakula
regardless of one’s own position, making its volcanic cone
the center of the system. If so, he would be using a consummately radial frame of reference (cf. Bennardo 2002,
2009, n.d.), with axes emanating from Tinakula. But that
system would have to be different from one that identifies
te alunga as the direction of sunrise, which is approximately
east regardless of one’s position. This led to a daylong quest
to pin down directional terms; but in the end, I could find
no way to reconcile the discrepancies.
As Teniau and I pursued this conversation, he made it
clear that he does not view Tinakula as necessarily residing in the tokelau. From Honiara (the national capital on
Guadalcanal island, over 400 miles to the west), for example, it is toward te alunga. However, from every place in the
Santa Cruz region, he identified it as being toward te tokelau.
Later that day, on Pileni, a respected sailor named Roy
Voia gave me what I thought was a consistent, plausible list
of direction names, placing Tinakula toward the hakahiu.
Teniau did not argue with Voia, but when we were by
ourselves in the canoe, he immediately went back to insisting
that Tinakula was i te tokelau. Other directions were adjusted
to accommodate this, and he even placed te alunga and sunrise
just to the east of north (at about 20 degrees). When I pointed
out that my compass did not show that position as the point
of sunrise, he insisted that my compass must be wrong!
There was a similar inconsistency in Teniau’s identification of swells. As we motored from Nukapu toward Pileni,
we noticed small but clear waves coming from the ESE, at
about 115 degrees. Teniau identified this as te hokohua loa
te ngatae, and the swell he had identified the previous day
as te ngatae he now said was te angeho. That evaluation was
consistent with my sense; but when the new wave pattern
faded and, as far as I could tell, the only swell was the one
coming from the NE (at about 50 degrees), he went back to
insisting that that was te ngatae—and te angeho was again the
westerly swell pattern that I could not detect.
I was about to conclude that Teniau was a charlatan—
making up facts as he went along—and the only reason he
does not get lost is that sailing in the Santa Cruz Islands
presents few navigational challenges, as one usually can see
one’s destination almost from the start. But three facts dissuaded me:
1.
2.
He appeared to be totally convinced of the correctness
of his assessments, showing not the slightest doubt or
hesitation.
He really did have the ability to spot islands before I
saw them, and the islands eventually appeared where
3.
he said they should. Thus, it seemed possible that he
could also see or feel other oceanographic phenomena
that I could not. And,
He correctly pointed to the location of every island in
his navigational universe.
Around mid-afternoon, we left Pileni for Nifiloli. The following morning I met with another old sailor, Peter Taea;
then, we set off for Matema, the last of our Vaeakau islands.
Once on Matema, Teniau announced that the wind was
blowing from te palapu, which struck me as about right:
approximately 20 degrees. But he still insisted that Tinakula
was i te tokelau, which means that from Matema te palapu
and te tokelau are about 90 degrees apart—Tinakula being
just north of due west. He said te tokelau and hakahiu, by
contrast, are very close together—as they must be to fit all
eight directions into the model he was now presenting.
Our next destination was Kala Bay on Ndeni. We
planned to make the voyage at night in hopes of seeing
te lapa, a navigational phenomenon resembling underwater
lightning (see above). I was up on schedule, at 2 a.m.; but
Teniau was sound asleep. At 2:30 a.m., I nudged him and
asked if he still wanted to sail at night. I had considered
pushing for an earlier departure. Teniau, however, insisted
that the trip from Matema to Kala Bay would take less than
an hour. As was consistently the case, he underestimated the
time by a factor of four, and we did not arrive until well past
seven.
More critically, dawn makes its first approach at about
4 a.m., so by departing at 3:30, we only gave ourselves
about a half hour to see te lapa. It took that long to get
far enough to sea for te lapa from Ndeni to be potentially
visible. In a perfect world, we might have been able to view
it coming behind us from Matema, but that was directly in
the path of the moon, which was bright enough to obliterate
any trace. Teniau blamed our inability to see te lapa on
the moon. However, it did not rise until late at night; and
up to 3 a.m., it was obscured by clouds. If we had left at
1 or 2 a.m., we would have had a reasonable window of
opportunity. Teniau chose to leave at a time when, it seemed,
a sophisticated navigator should have known the chances of
viewing te lapa were minimal.
The nighttime departure gave us a chance to view the
stars. But again, the results were disconcerting. Teniau appeared to be familiar with more stars and constellations than
most of my consultants. To my surprise, however, I was
quicker and more confident in identifying stars than he. Several times, he had trouble finding Takelo (Orion’s belt) until
I pointed it out to him. He initially looked in the wrong part
of the sky for Sino (Sirius). He described Te Huangi (aka Te
Longi) and Lōleī but could not locate them until I figured
out that he was talking about Orion’s shoulders and knees,
respectively. When I pointed them out and asked if those
were the stars he meant, he immediately said yes. Yet, later
that night, he again placed Lōleī in the wrong region of the
sky—far to the south rather than slightly northwest of the
Feinberg and Genz
FIGURE 6.
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Limitations of Language
343
Teniau’s “wind compass” from Nakapu as described on November 19, 2008 (Courtesy of Ghassan Rafeedie)
zenith. When I pointed to Orion and said, “I thought you told
me it was there,” he quickly replied, yes, I had it right. Of
course, even an accomplished navigator occasionally makes
mistakes and misidentifies stars or does not immediately find
the one he is seeking. I have been disoriented by cloud cover,
moonlight, or other factors that change the apparent “shape
of the sky” (Lewis 1972). And Teniau does not practice a lot.
Most of his sailing is along the Ndeni coast, and most of it is
during the day. Still, for me to be more adept than Teniau at
finding and identifying the major navigational asterisms was,
to say the least, disappointing.
The disappointment was offset somewhat by Teniau’s
repeated declaration that the “real kaastam compass” is the
swell and not the stars.10 As he put it, “The stars move
around; the waves are always there.” And for that reason, he
said, he pays more attention to the wave patterns than the
stars, even when traveling at night. I pointed out that the stars
may move, but they do so according to predictable rules.
And wave patterns are not absolutely stable. He agreed to
the first proposition but was reluctant to accept the second
and was determined to demonstrate to me the efficacy of
the kaastam kompas by showing me how he would follow the
hokohua loa te ngatae from Matema to Kala Bay. But I also
had problems with this.
The designated waves consisted of a very large swell
coming strongly from just south of east, at about 110 degrees.
The swell was unmistakable, cresting at as much as six or
seven feet; I was standing in the bow and frequently found
myself looking up at the waves. The direction also was
consistent with what others had described as te hokohua loa te
ngatae. However, the swell we used in sailing from Otmongi
to Nukapu three days earlier was coming from the northeast,
and Teniau said at the time that that was te hokohua loa te
ngatae. Either he was wrong in his identification then (which
I think is the case) or the swell is much less consistent than
he was now saying.
We headed due south, with the swell hitting the canoe
from port, just forward of amidships. Kala Bay is slightly west
of due south from Matema. After approximately an hour,
Teniau said something about the current to Lionel, who
turned the canoe sharply toward the west so that we were
heading approximately southwest at 230 to 240 degrees.
Teniau said the dramatic change of heading was because
the current was running strongly to the east. We had to
go westward to offset it and make a direct landing at Kala
Bay. I asked Teniau how he knew the current was running
eastward, and he offered several pieces of evidence:
• When the tide is low, he said, the current between
Ndeni and the Reefs runs from west to east—and the
tide at the time was low;
• he could feel the current pulling on the canoe. It is
commonly believed (e.g., Sharp 1957) that, lacking
instruments, one cannot detect the current when far
out at sea. Still, it seemed that when we turned to
the southwest we were surfing quickly down the face
of the waves; but when we hit the trough, the engine
more or less stalled, and it felt like we were being held
back by the force of the current; and
• the wind was only about 10 to 15 knots; yet the waves
were as high as I had seen them during my 2007–08
field trip. Teniau believed this was because the current
was running counter to the wind and swell, causing the
water to “pile up” and make the waves higher than the
wind speed would lead one to expect. Other VaeakauTaumako sailors have told me the same thing, and
344
American Anthropologist • Vol. 114, No. 2 • June 2012
Anutans, whose navigational practices I studied in the
1980s, also cited this as one way to detect the current
when out of sight of land.
Teniau, based on his assessment of the waves, wind, and
current, had Lionel go sharply to the southwest and then,
over the next hour, gradually pivot counterclockwise, so
that by about 5:45 a.m. he was again heading pretty much
due south. He hit the mouth of Kala Bay dead on, in the
middle of the passage, for a perfect landing.
DISCUSSION
Feinberg was taken aback at the apparent contradictions in
Teniau’s account of their course. He had conducted fieldwork in the southwestern Pacific for close to 40 years, and
some of his research has involved navigation in other Polynesian communities. In addition, he was familiar with the
work of others who have studied indigenous Pacific navigation (e.g., Alkire 1965; Finney 1979, 1994, 2003; Frake
1995; Gladwin 1970; Goodenough 1953; Goodenough and
Thomas 1987; Lewis 1972; Thomas 1987). Nothing in his
reading and experience prepared him for the gulf that separated actions from their verbal explanations during his journey through Nga Vaeakau. Assuming Teniau to be the capable
navigator he commonly is understood to be, how might one
account for the discrepancy between his obviously effective
performance and his less-than-stellar narrative?
One possibility is that directional names are unimportant. Teniau could point to the locations of those islands he
might wish to reach as well as others he had only heard of. He
understood prevailing wind directions during the different
seasons. And he seemed to be generally familiar with the
currents (despite his evident lapse on the first morning). Arguably, the name for a particular direction within an abstract
scheme is simply a semantic quibble. Were this hypothesis
correct, however, it is hard to see why many of Feinberg’s
interlocutors, including Teniau, stressed the importance of
getting the “wind compass” right and criticized one another
for alleged mistakes.
Some consultants stated that the names for wind compass directions change from one place to another because
wind patterns differ as one moves to different islands. It
seems unlikely, however, that wind patterns vary so widely
within Temotu province that te tokelau should be to the north
from Lata and to the south from Nukapu. It is also difficult to
see, if that were the case, how one could describe interisland
routes in terms of such directional names.
It appears that the order in which one encounters named
wind points remains more or less stable despite the variation
in absolute positions. Thus, if one were to face te tonga and
turn counterclockwise, the next named point would be te
alunga, followed by te tokelau tū, and so on. The absolute
position of each of those points in terms of magnetic compass
bearings, however, is variable, and the distance between
points differs from commentator to commentator as well as
for the same commentator from one occasion to the next.
Feinberg (1988: 91–98) found the same kind of variability
in Anutans’ characterizations of their wind compass. In the
Anutan case, however, the most effective navigators were
generally consistent.
More likely, Teniau had only limited conscious awareness of the factors that affected his perception of where he
was in relation to his starting point and possible destinations. Many nonhuman animals navigate for hundreds (and,
in some cases thousands) of miles without self-conscious understanding of what they are doing or an ability to express
their experience in anything resembling human language.
Perhaps some people also are attuned to certain aspects of
their natural environment in such a way that they can respond effectively but, because they are unconscious of the
physiological processes involved, are unable to articulate
them. Arguably, this is the case with Teniau and other unusually adept navigators. If so, it would be no more than an
extreme version of a common human experience: we all are
constantly bombarded with sensory stimulation, much of
which never intrudes upon our conscious thought. Yet, we
may process that information and respond to it as if guided
by rational consciousness (e.g., Hirst 1995).
Some well-documented physiological phenomena lend
this hypothesis a degree of plausibility. One is synesthesia,
“a condition in which stimulation of one sensory modality causes unusual experiences in a second, unstimulated
modality” (Hubbard and Ramachandran 2005:509). The
best-known form of synesthesia involves the experience of
certain colors in association with such phenomena as notes
on a musical scale, days of the week, or other non-colorrelated words. A less common but well-documented form
is spatial synesthesia, in which phenomena with no intrinsic
spatial relationship to one another are visualized as being arranged according to a certain spatial pattern. Perhaps Teniau
was experiencing something akin to spatial synesthesia, in
which sensory perceptions produced by wave action or the
movements of stars were translated directly into a mental
image of spatial relations among islands. If the “translation”
was direct and not mediated by language, it is unsurprising
that he had difficulty articulating the systemic connections.
Wanting to be helpful, he attempted to answer Feinberg’s
questions, but because he was trying to express his implicit
understandings in an unaccustomed medium, the message
often came out garbled. This line of argument, admittedly, is
speculative. Still, cognitive scientist Edward Hubbard (personal communication) agrees that Teniau could have had “a
direct experience akin to synesthesia,” adding that, “If this
were the case . . . it would be an example of how synesthesia
might interfere with certain abilities, and not others.”
An anthropological colleague and experienced
yachtsman, James Dow (personal communication, June 11,
2010), offered a concurring opinion:
The first task of a navigator is to know where he (or she) is. This
is almost impossible to put into words. Some people . . . know it
instinctively, others are constantly lost. If you don’t know where
Feinberg and Genz
you are, directions are irrelevant. If you do know where you are,
directions need not be precise, as long as you keep knowing where
you are as you move along.
Dow’s suggestion that navigational abilities are hard-wired
and exist to differing degrees in different individuals finds
support in recent work by cognitive neuroscientists with
nonhuman animals (Wills, et al. 2010; Langston et al. 2010).
Tom Wills et al. (2010:1573), for example, depict the hippocampal cognitive map as a sort of Kantian a priori synthetic
truth and propose—at least among preweanling and weanling rats—that “the basic constituents of the cognitive map
develop independently of spatial experience, or might even
precede it.” If spatial cognition is grounded in prehuman
neurophysiology, it makes sense that navigational processes
would be largely unconscious and, therefore, difficult to
articulate. In Teniau’s case we have the added factor that
he had spent decades traversing the same path. Perhaps the
route had become so automatic that he ceased to think about
what he was doing or how he might explain it.
A useful analogy may exist between someone possessing
an intuitive ability to discern spatial relationships and a musician with perfect pitch: the phenomenon seems so obvious
to the person with the proper neurological wiring that it
defies explanation; for the person who is “tone deaf,” it cannot be taught. Similarly, one might compare navigation with
learning to play a musical instrument. Quality performance
requires training and practice, but the training is wasted on
someone who lacks the innate talent. Navigation, like music,
is highly respected in many communities; yet, only a few
individuals ever become accomplished navigators.11
Whatever merit our physiological hypothesis may hold,
it must be treated with a degree of caution. Some Pacific
navigators have been able to explain their knowledge and
procedures to the satisfaction of anthropological investigators.12 Moreover, some communities have “schools” in
which navigational arts are passed from generation to generation (see, e.g., Gladwin 1970). If the relevant information
cannot be expressed in articulate language, it is difficult
to envision how such schools would operate and why there
would be differences among navigational schools in the same
community. There are also documented instances of navigational knowledge being transmitted, at least in part, through
oral communication. Native Hawaiian navigator Nainoa
Thompson, for example, learned his art largely through
verbal instruction from Mau Piailug of Satawal and through
conversations with astronomer Will Kyselka in the Bishop
Museum’s planetarium (Kyselka 1987).
Although some way-finders are able to explain their skill
through articulate discourse, verbal communication clearly
has limits. Most people will never become skilled navigators
despite superior instruction; and it seems likely that some
special sensory acuity comprises part of the way-finder’s
repertoire. Moreover, in at least some communities, navigational expertise is developed primarily by watching and
doing rather than through verbal instruction. This is true
•
Limitations of Language
345
on Anuta (Feinberg 1988), and it may also account for
some of the frustration expressed to Feinberg in 2008 by
aspiring Taumako navigators. Several Taumako men who
wished to study traditional way-finding techniques spoke of
their disappointment at master navigator Crusoe Kaveia’s
failure to conduct regular “classes.” He occasionally held
sessions in which he described the wind compass and important navigational asterisms, but his detractors complained
that the gatherings were sporadic. If his knowledge were
of a kind that could not be adequately conveyed orally
in a land-based, language-dependent class, it follows that
he would not be inclined to waste his time on useless
sessions.13
CONCLUSION
By the end of Feinberg’s Vaeakau excursion, he had more
questions than before he started. Was Teniau dissembling
about his knowledge of the stars and swells? The apparent
inconsistencies in his account suggest he was. The results,
however, suggest that he was not; that he really knows what
he is doing but is not good at explaining it. Assuming Teniau
is an accomplished navigator, worthy of his considerable
reputation, what might this experience teach us about Pacific
way-finding and spatial cognition? Below, we offer a few
suggestions.
The past half century has witnessed a good deal of research on Pacific navigation, the thrust of which has been
to emphasize the acumen of traditional way-finders. That
was an important corrective to the work of skeptics like
Sharp (1957), who argued that humans, operating without instruments, are incapable of accurate navigation over
long distances and that the isles of Oceania must, therefore, have been settled as a result of accidental drift voyages.
Feinberg’s experience with Teniau suggests that the precision of Oceanic way-finding techniques, while clearly effective, may be exaggerated. They do not replicate the precise
measurements of modern instruments, and there is no reason
to expect them to do so. As Lewis emphasized four decades
ago (see also Ammarell 1999:126), way-finding techniques
need only be accurate enough to get the voyagers reliably and
safely to their destination. Beyond that, attempts at precision
are, in essence, wasted effort.
Feinberg’s voyage with Teniau informs the conversation concerning the respective roles of cognitive mapping
and embodied experience in Pacific way-finding. Despite a
degree of imprecision, Teniau appeared to operate with a
mental map of his navigational universe. From anywhere in
the Santa Cruz Islands, he was able to point with considerable accuracy to each of the Vaeakau islands plus Taumako,
Tinakula, Ndeni, Temotu Neo, Utupua, Vanikoro, Tikopia,
Vanuatu, and Anuta. These include both islands he knew
well and places he had never visited but whose locations he
understood from the reports of others. He was inconsistent
about naming the direction in which each of these islands lay,
but he was able to identify the physical direction. His mental
map is perhaps less elaborate than certain others, such as
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American Anthropologist • Vol. 114, No. 2 • June 2012
that held by Anutans of their fishing grounds (Feinberg et al.
2003; Feinberg 2008), but it exists on a far larger scale.
Although Teniau employs a mental map of sorts, he also
appears to rely on embodied experience involving physical
reactions to a sequence of environmental cues encountered
while traversing a well-established path. On leaving Otmongi, he determined the correct direction by visual sighting. Once the direction was established, he felt the canoe’s
motion in response to the existing swell, and he maintained
that kinesthetic orientation until Matema came into view.
Then he turned slightly to port and felt the new pattern
of movement, given the canoe’s new heading in relation to
the swells. He maintained that feel until Nukapu appeared
in sight.14 This sequence of perceptions and actions supports Lauer and Aswani’s conclusion that navigation involves
an interface between cognitive mapping and embodied
experience.
In contrast with Caroline Islanders (Goodenough
1953; Gladwin 1970; Frake 1995), Anutans (Feinberg
1988), Nukumanu (Feinberg 1995), the Bugis of Indonesia
(Ammarell 1999), and others, Teniau appears not to pay
a great deal of attention to star paths. And, despite professed reliance on wave patterns, he was also inconsistent in
his naming of the swells and speaking about currents. His
performance indicates that he perceived environmental cues
enabling him, with total confidence and accuracy, to reach
his destination. Although the sequence of actions is clear,
however, precisely what Teniau felt was not convincingly
articulated, and the investigator was unable to experience
what Teniau reported sensing.
It is conceivable that Teniau was actually consistent
in his descriptions, and the problem lay with Feinberg’s
inability to understand his system for discussing space. Einar
Haugen (1969), Alexandre Francois (2003), Mary Chambers
(2009), Giovanni Bennardo (2009), and others note that
multiple systems of spatial representation may coexist, and
directional labels in some instances are homophones, thereby
giving the illusion of inconsistency.15 A sometimes-complex
set of rules arguably determines which of the directional
systems is invoked in a particular situation; the researcher’s
challenge is to ascertain the rules.16
We cannot rule out this explanation of Teniau’s
performance—oral and navigational—but we feel it unlikely. The purportedly comparable cases appear to involve
what Bradd Shore (1996) called “multiple models.” VaeakauTaumako, likewise, employs multiple models of spatial orientation that intersect according to an intricate set of linguistic and cultural rules. That phenomenon is addressed by
Feinberg in two recent conference papers (n.d.a, n.d.b).
Teniau, however, was explicit that he considered himself to
be employing a single model. Sometimes he gave apparently
contradictory accounts just moments apart, and on several
occasions he emphatically disagreed with other navigators
who were participating in the same conversation. In many
cases he was dealing either with a version of a wind compass
that is fairly consistent throughout the southeastern Solomon
Islands, at least with respect to certain critical parameters
(Boerger n.d.) or with the names of swell patterns, which
seem quite well defined when speaking of them in general
terms. Once, he reversed his assessment of which way the
current was running after a brief exchange with his son, and
sometime after the voyage he confided to Feinberg that he
might have misspoken about directional names on one or
two occasions.
Clearly, successful navigation requires multiple streams
of sensory input. Gladwin, Lewis, and others have called
attention to the integration of data from sighting of asterisms with the kinesthetic experience of waves, winds, and
currents. To these, Gene Ammarell (1999) adds auditory
data, such as Bugis navigators’ reliance on the Muslim call
to prayer, emanating from shore to calculate the passage
of time. In most of these instances, however, the navigators provided cogent explanations of their process. With
Teniau, that was not the case. The closest parallel may be
etak, a conceptual tool that Carolinian navigators use to estimate their position by calculating the angle between a canoe
and a sometimes-imaginary reference island off to one side
of the designated route. Despite attempts to explain etak to
a number of investigators, a debate continues over what it is
and how it works (see, e.g., Hutchins’s 1983, 1995; Pyrek
2011).17 Similarly, Teniau appears to rely on a system that
is a challenge to express in words.
This is not to say that oral communication is irrelevant.
It was through spoken language that Teniau made clear the
primacy of waves over stars and the visual sighting of islands. For conveying astronomical information, it probably
is indispensible. On the other hand, the processing of kinesthetic information provided by the canoe’s movement over
an uneven sea may be difficult to communicate effectively
through spoken language.
Limitations of this kind have been reported for a few
other Pacific voyagers who remotely detect land by sensing disrupted swell and current patterns. For example,
Marshall Islands navigators guide their canoes by sensing
subtle changes in the ocean’s flow that are assessed indirectly through the vessel’s motion (Ascher 1995; Finney
1998; Genz 2008). As the Marshallese language has encoded
only a few terms to describe these sensations, navigators
supplement their descriptions with hand gestures and resort
to other nonlinguistic means of communication—notably,
they blindfold students and place them on canoes in shallow
water surrounding coral islets to simulate the movement of
a canoe at sea when experiencing disrupted swell patterns
(Genz 2008, n.d.).
If language is not always an effective means of entry into
another person’s thought process, that leaves the problem
of how to access another’s cognition. Watching what others
do is often as informative as listening to what they say. Yet
people may engage in similar behaviors for quite different
reasons. How to get from superficial action to cognition has
been a long-standing challenge for anthropology and will
continue to command attention for the foreseeable future.
Feinberg and Genz
6.
Richard Feinberg and
State
University,
Kent,
Department of Anthropology, Kent
OH
44244;
rfeinber@kent.edu;
http://www.kent.edu/cas/anthropology/facstaff/∼rfeinber/
Joseph Genz
Department of Anthropology, University of
Hawai`i, Mānoa, Honolulu, HI 96822; genz@hawaii.edu.
NOTES
Acknowledgments. This article is based on a study conducted un-
der the auspices of the National Science Foundation, Grant #2010–
70. We are indebted to many Solomon Islanders in the VaeakauTaumako region of Temotu Province for their hospitality, assistance,
and extraordinary patience in sharing their voyaging and navigational systems. Particularly critical was the support and guidance of
Taumako’s Paramount Chief Michael Tauopi; former paramount chief
and master navigator Crusoe Kaveia; Provincial Assembly Representative Honourable Stanley Tehiahua; Father Johnson Vaike; Dr. Simon
Salopuka; voyagers Nathaniel Leiau, Jonas Holland, Janet Longomaha, Ambrose Meakey, Noel Hatu, and William Keizy. Good friends
Inny Taupea, Basil Tavake, and Mostyn Vane, all from Taumako, also
provided invaluable assistance. In addition, we are grateful to Vaeakau
sailors Joseph Laki, Roy Voia, Peter Taea, Shadrack Tuinamo, and
George Tavake for taking the time to share their thoughts and voyaging experiences. We owe a special note of thanks to Clement Teniau
of Nukapu and Otmongi for orchestrating a tour of the Vaeakau
islands, arranging accommodations, and providing many important
insights. We are indebted to Amanda Mullett and Ghassan Rafeedie
for assistance with the figures. A preliminary version of this article
was presented at the 2008 meeting of the Central States Anthropological Society. We owe thanks to audience members and fellow
panelists including Jon Wagner, Jim Dow, Alex Mawyer, and Kate
Grim-Feinberg for helpful commentary. Others who read and made
perceptive comments on earlier drafts of this article include Edward
Hubbard, Mary Ann Raghanti, Cathleen Pyrek, Joseph Grim Feinberg, Tereza Smejkalova, and three anonymous reviewers.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
In practice, of course, time and distance are inextricably interwoven, as distance traveled is a product of time combined with
speed.
These assumptions and procedures are well illustrated by
Stephen Tyler’s influential 1969 collection.
The Vaeakau islands are Nupani, Nukapu, Pileni, Nifiloli, and
Matema.
In addition to Feinberg, the team included co-Principle Investigators Marianne George and Ben Finney. George had been
working with Crusoe Kaveia, Taumako’s paramount chief and
master navigator, since the early 1990s. Finney had investigated
traditional Pacific navigation since the 1960s.
One canoe was taken out for two brief sails on the fringing reef
during Feinberg’s 2007 visit to Taumako, but it never ventured
onto the open sea. George was able to sail several times in
inshore waters with a film crew from the British Broadcasting
Corporation in early 2008 while Feinberg was not in residence
(BBC 2009).
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
•
Limitations of Language
347
On other Polynesian islands, Manu is identified as a bird or a
spirit with bird-like properties, and manu is the usual word for
“bird.” In Vaeakau-Taumako, most people identify Manu as a
man. Sirius is also known in Vaeakau-Taumako as Tino or Sino
(“Body”), indicating that this is Manu’s body, as opposed to
the two arms (Nga Kapakau or Nga Papakau). Terminology in
other Polynesian languages is parallel. On Anuta, for example,
Sirius is Manu (“Bird”) or Te Tino a Manu (“Bird’s Body”),
while Canopus and Procyon are Te Kapakau Pakatonga (“The
Southeast Wing”) and Te Kapakau Pakatokerau (“The North
Wing”). The Taumako call these stars Te Papakau Nga Ndeni
(“The Ndeni Arm”) and Te Papakau a Tātou (“Our Arm”).
The Vaeakau-Taumako wind compass is discussed in greater
detail in Feinberg n.d. For a quite different rendering, see the
Vaka Taumako Project website: http://www.pacifictraditions.
org/vaka/NohoangaTeMatangi.html.
Te is the singular form of the definite article, roughly equivalent
to the English word the.
Teniau possessed a GPS that Marianne George had provided
on an earlier visit, but he rarely used it owing to the cost
of batteries. He and Feinberg took the instrument on their
trip, and it consistently provided readings that were at five
to ten degrees variance with the magnetic compass. After the
first day, Feinberg dispensed with the GPS and relied on his
compass, which had the advantage of being smaller and more
water resistant and did not need to be turned on and off.
Kaastam (or kaastom) is a word in Pijin, the lingua franca of
the Solomon Islands. It is derived from the English custom and
means something like “customary” or “traditional.”
We are indebted to an anonymous reviewer of this manuscript
for suggesting these analogies.
Gladwin’s (1970) and Lewis’s (1972) interlocutors are exemplary in this regard.
This observation is consistent with documented Polynesian
learning styles. Ritchie and Ritchie (1989) found that Polynesian education is typically accomplished by observation and
practice rather than verbal instruction.
This is reminiscent of what has been termed a “route” as opposed
to a “survey” perspective on giving and processing directions
(Tversky 2003; Bennardo n.d.).
Bennardo (2009 and elsewhere), for example, calls attention
to the difference between small-scale and large-scale space for
determining the spatial frame of reference invoked by Tongan
consultants.
Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for calling this possibility to
our attention.
Significantly, Hawaiian navigator Nainoa Thompson was never
able to master etak despite Carolinian Mau Piailug’s efforts to
impart the system.
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FOR FURTHER READING
(These selections were made by the American Anthropologist editorial
interns as examples of research related in some way to this article. They do not
necessarily reflect the views of the author.)
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2005 A Different World: Embodied Experience and Linguistic Relativity on the Epistemological Path to
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2010 Modernity, Creativity, and Embodied Practice in
American Postsecondary Jazz Education. American Ethnologist 37(3):563–582.