Native Seas: Traditional Micronesian Navigators Visit the Bay Area
From March 9 to 12, 2026, we will be hosting our Native Seas series, a week-long educational program curated by Sophia Perez, Indigenous Technologies coordinator and UC Berkeley PhD, and presented in collaboration with the Critical Pacific Islands Studies Collective (CPISC) and the Pacific Islander (PI) Initiative, that will bring several traditional navigators, including students and relatives of Papa Mau Piailug, from the Northern Mariana Islands to the Bay Area. These distinguished navigation teachers will be traveling from across the Pacific, representing the only two remaining schools of traditional Pacific navigation and carrying forward ancient knowledge systems that have guided oceanic travel for centuries without modern instruments. As teachers, their work is foundational to keeping the ancient art of traditional navigation alive, and they will be visiting UC Berkeley to foster intellectual exchange and create visibility for Pacific Islander and Indigenous communities.
The Ancient Art of Voyaging: A Night with Traditional Master Navigators of Micronesia
Monday, March 9, at 7pm - California Academy of Science's Morrison Planetarium, San Francisco (register here!)
Experience a glimpse into the realm of traditional master navigators of Micronesia, as they humbly share stories of stars, voyages, navigation, and the enduring quest to keep their ancient knowledge, practices, and legacy alive. Witness CalAcademy’s Morrison Planetarium transformed into an immersive celestial map, as the presenters share traditional seafaring methods, star and constellation identification, and Indigenous scientific knowledge systems, offering a rare opportunity to learn about the Pacific region outside of a colonial perspective.
Keynote Lecture: The Last Schools of Traditional Pacific Navigation
Wednesday, March 11, at 5pm - Grimes Engineering Center's Jarvis Auditorium, Berkeley (register here!)
Bridging history, arts, and oceanic wisdom, the navigators visit the UC Berkeley campus to share their experiences as representatives of the only remaining schools of traditional Pacific navigation. Join us as they present their ancient knowledge systems and cosmology, share incredible firsthand accounts of seafaring voyages, and discuss their collective efforts to preserve their cultural heritage.
Traditional Boat-Making Workshop
Thursday, March 12, at 1pm - Waterside Workshops' Berkeley Boathouse, Berkeley (register here!)
Join us at Waterside Workshops' Berkeley Boathouse as we unveil two five-foot model canoes commissioned especially for this weeklong celebration: one constructed using traditional methods and materials, and one with 3-D printed thermoplastics! The two expert makers of the canoes will present their techniques, dive into the rich and enduring history of Carolinian and Chamorro boat-building, and explore what Indigenous and new technologies can learn from one another.
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Pacific Studies scholar Dr. Damon Salesa observed that, prior to Western contact, not one of the over 1,000 Pacific Island languages contained a word for “the Pacific”— this was because, to Indigenous Pacific Islanders, "the Pacific" was not a place. Each island culture created and belonged to their own, distinct reaches of the Pacific, defined in part by their voyaging traditions and techniques. Salesa calls these lived oceanic regions “Native Seas,” which “blanketed the inhabited Pacific, like an intricate weave of maritime places, constantly being made and unmade, with Islanders holding all of it together with warp- and weft-like voyages.”
By embracing Salesa’s PI-centered Native Seas framework, this workshop series intends to explore and celebrate the perseverance of ancient seafaring knowledge in our modern era, where oceanic worlds are sustained not only through traditional voyaging, but also through new technologies spanning from airplanes to planetariums.
A special week-long series of events, presented as part of BCNM's Indigenous Technologies program, New Media & Oceans program, and Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium, supported by the Chancellor's Advisory Committee for Student Services (CACSS), co-sponsored by the Arts Research Center (ARC), the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Department of History, the Asian American and Pacific Islander Transpacific Futures Initiative, and in collaboration with the Critical Pacific Islands Studies Collective (CPISC) and the Pacific Islander (PI) Initiative
About Traditional Navigators
Sesario Sewralur was still a little boy when his father, the legendary navigator Mau Piailug, embarked on a historic voyage from Maui’s Honolua Bay to Tahiti in 1976 and helped revive an endangered art. “Skills of navigation were not shared with others, it was just passed down within the families,” Sewralur explains. “That’s how we lost all these schools of navigation. My father stepped outside the box and taught the navigation to the Hawaiians.” Now a legendary Grand Master Navigator himself, Sewralur teaches traditional voyaging using the stars, the sun, wind, clouds, seas, swells, birds, and fish. His knowledge was passed down through the generations of navigators in his family, from his great-grandfather to his grandfather and on to his father. Piailug taught these traditions to the Polynesian Voyaging Society, which helped revive the art of voyaging, which was nearly lost in Polynesia after colonization. During the Japanese colonial administration of the 1920s, Indigenous navigating knowledge almost disappeared because inter-island travel was forbidden. He is captain of the voyaging canoe Alingano Maisu, a gift to his father from the Hawaiians as a token of their appreciation for his having shared his traditional navigation knowledge with them. Alingano Maisu serves as a floating ocean classroom for teaching traditional sailing and traditional navigation at Palau Community College. Each year Sesario invites students from around the Pacific Rim to learn traditional navigation.
Cecilio Raiukiulipiy has been sailing since he was seven years old with his father Tobias Urupwoa, a canoe builder and Master Navigator from the island of Satawal. He sailed across the Pacific, including voyages from California to the CNMI, Japan to Australia, and Guam to the Philippines. Raiukiulipiy has extensive connections to the Carolinian seafaring families and is a Master Navigator initiated by Grand Master Navigator Rapwi Aluwairh of the Weriyang school of navigation on Polowat island.
Mario Benito is a member of the Houpolowat clan, and its canoehouse, Utt Wenimai. He also belongs to Utt Hopweilal. Benito was educated in the Weriyang school of navigation and, as a child, studied under some of the most famous and revered old-time navigators from Polowat, including Hipour and Manipy Onopey. As an adult Benito studied with the late Teo Onopey and Rainam Edward. A long time cameraman, photographer, and archivist of Polowat images based in Saipan, Benito was the lead photographer for the documentary "Sacred Vessels: Navigating Tradition and Identity in Micronesia" (1997) and has shot for many visiting documentary teams over the past two decades. Benito serves as an informal ambassador of Polowat seafarers in Saipan, served as one of the coordinators and translators in the building of the Lien Polowat in 2012, and its sail to Guam and final resting place at the Oceanic Culture Museum in Okinawa in 2013. In 2016, the Pwo ceremony, which names navigators as masters, took place at Paseo in Guam, where navigators were staying for the Festival of Pacific Arts. Benito was one of five ordained by Grandmaster Navigator Rainam Edward of Polowat.
Milton Coleman Jr. (aka “Jun”) was born on Oʻahu, Hawaii and is of Hawaiian, Samoan, Chamorro, and Refaluwaar (Carolinian) descent. Jun is the Executive Director of 500 Sails, a 501c3 Non-Profit Organization committed and contributing to the perpetuation, promotion, and preservation of Northern Mariana Islands maritime traditions and heritage. Jun sees traditional navigation, sailing, and canoe culture as "an important part of the healing process for our Indigenous peoples and planet, as it helps us to continue the legacy of our ancestors for future generations." In the early 1990s, as a volunteer working on the construction of the 54-foot wooden voyaging canoe HawaiiLoa, Jun earned the trust of Kahuna Kālai Waʻa (Master Hawaiian canoe builder) Wright Bowman Jr. and was chosen to be his apprentice. After two years, with the blessing of Bowman, he spent six cherished years building and sailing under the tutelage of beloved Dr. Pius Mau Piailug. Jun has had the honor of sailing on several long-distance voyages with the Hōkūle’a, Makali’i, Hawai’loa, and Simion Hokulea. Since then he has led and participated in the building of various styles of sailing and voyaging canoes, which are the tangible expressions of knowledge and passion for our seafaring heritage. Jun holds a USCG Master/Captain license and was initiated in the Pwo ceremony conducted on Satawal, under the Weriyang Traditional School of Navigation.
About Indigenous Technologies
Indigenous Technologies is a program of BCNM that engages questions of technology and new media in relation to global structures of indigeneity, settler colonialism, and genocide in the 21st century. Our Indigenous Tech events and ongoing conversations with Indigenous scholars and communities aim to critically envision and reimagine what a more just and sustainable technological future can look like. We highlight Indigenous engagements with robotics, computer science, telecommunications, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, social media, online activism, video games, and more.
Accessibility
BCNM events are free and open to the public. These events will be held in-person, on and off the UC Berkeley campus. We strive to meet all access and accommodation needs. Please contact info.bcnm [at] berkeley.edu with requests or questions.
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