Canoe Crossing: A Lunch with Vicente Diaz

Hello everyone, and happy weekend!! Today I had the amazing opportunity to eat lunch with Vincente Diaz, a professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois. This is the first talk I went to of the "Lunch On Us!" series of the semester, where the university brings awesome speakers from all disciplines, organizations, etc to discuss matters of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, any other social identity, or interesting topics. These events are hosted at various locations on campus and are typically a lot of fun! Vicente Diaz's talk discussed how canoes have historically served as links between Pacific Islanders and Native Peoples of the Great Lakes Region, and he is involved in a project that is trying to help revitalize this canoe culture.

Diaz revealed that the Pacific Islanders have been seafaring and traveling long distances 3,000 years before what we consider major explorers like Columbus or Magellan even left the shore. The Pacific is such a vast area (indicated by map below), that stretches from Hawaii, to New Zealand, to Easter Island. These seafaring people continuously traveled to other islands, and using the canoes were 100% powered by people, the wind, and the waves. He shared how the Pacific Islanders had specific chants they would use that were amazing mnemonic devices to aid with navigation, prior to the invention or use in this region of other navigation aids that are associated with the Western "Age of Exploration" throughout the 15th to 17th Centuries.

Why is this canoe culture important and need to be revitalized? Well, it could save lives. Due to global warming, many islands in the Pacific are going to be completely submerged, and therefore uninhabitable. The canoes could serve as the vessels necessary to move these people to other, larger islands for very little cost. Vincente Diaz and the University of Illinois recently received a grant to build one of these canoes that will be around 400 feet long and will seat 12. This initiative will be building the canoes out of a mix of wood and fiberglass, which will help make them lightweight as well as easier to mass produce. Another important component of the work that Diaz and others are doing is a project to create virtual canoeing simulations, that will help teach the native peoples and students from the University of Guam about how to build and operate these canoes, as well as how the history of the canoe is such an integral part of their history. These canoes are not your typical canoes, so it becomes important to teach people how to use them, since to change direction, the outriggers must be completely transferred to the other side of the boat in a short period of time. The boat has an outrigger, which is the part that extends off to the side of the boat, and it helps stabilize the boat without needing the hull of the boat to be as deep. Here is a picture that shows the outrigger, although it is not necessarily what the boats from this area look like.

For more information, check out this documentary Vincente Diaz made that is on Youtube. It is called Sacred Vessels and there are two parts! I have embedded part one below.

Enjoy your day!