It has been almost 40 years since the first ocean-going vaka of the modern age arrived to the Cook Islands. Some readers will remember Hōkūle’a’s first visit in September 1985, and since then a growing fleet of canoes has come and gone from these shores, including several built or based here, such as Takitumu, Te Au O Tonga, Marumaru Atua, Paikea, and canoes built for the Festival of Pacific Arts in 1992. Jennifer Kingsley writes.

This puts the Cook Islands at the centre of one of the most powerful stories of cultural revival on Earth. This story has resonated around the world, yet some of it – particularly the role of these islands – has yet to be fully documented.

I am a writer and journalist from Canada. Two years ago, Master Navigator Tua Pittman asked me to help write his story and a history of Cook Islands voyaging, beyond what had already been published about Hawai’i and Aotearoa. Our goal is to publish a book full of action and history, from voyages across the ocean, to how new vaka came to be, to details on the Cook Islands’ role in the rise of modern voyaging.

Visiting all corners of the Polynesian triangle, including Rapanui (2022) 24112005.

This book will be for Cook Islanders, other Pacific Islanders, and also those outside of Pacific culture, an audience Tua has been educating for 10 years through his work as a Cultural Navigator with National Geographic, Lindblad Expeditions, and other organiSations.

As Tua says, “It’s important that we know our own story, and that we share it. We hope our book will help to keep very important parts of our history in the forefront rather than in the background. It’s about understanding how we came to be who we are today.”

I made my first visit to these islands two years ago. Since then, Tua and I have been on a quest to document as much as we can through interviews, archival research, and travel. This project has taken us to many islands, including the three corners of the Polynesian triangle. We visited Hawai’i, where navigators-in-training studied under Mau Piailug and Nainoa Thompson; Rapanui, one of the farthest reaches of the original vaka moana; and Aotearoa, a place with so many connections to the Cook Islands. We also made special trips to Raiatea, home of the sacred Marae Taputapuatea, and to Taiwan, the place of origin for the Pacific migration.

There is no doubt that the Cook Islands have played an outsized role in the story of traditional navigation. These islands have always been both a meeting point and a jumping off point, starting with the ancestral voyagers who first travelled to Aotearoa.

In the modern age, Sir Tom Davis used his deep knowledge of both history and engineering to build canoes whose designs live on around the Pacific to this day. And when the legendary Navigator from Satawal, Mau Piailug, took on students to carry his legacy forward, he chose a very small group of people, and two of them come from here: Tua Pittman from Rarotonga and Peia Patai from Mauke. 

My home is far away from the ocean, in Canada’s capital, a place where most people have never heard of voyaging, yet every place has a version of this story – a story where people commit to practicing their culture, beat the odds, and educate the rest of us in the process. “We worked so hard to bring our voyaging culture back,” Tua says, “Now we need to keep it and refine it so it can remain a source of knowledge and pride.”

Our work will take another year to finish. In the meantime, institutions like the Cook Islands News and the National Archives have been essential to our work. So have all of those who voyage. You are the beating heart of this movement, and you’ve made every visit an honour.

I’d like to thank the many people and organizations who have helped us so far, including John Woods, Rashneel Kumar, and Melina Etches at the Cook Islands News; Emile Kairua, Secretary of Cultural Development; Paula Paniani, and Toni Moeroa at the National Archives, Tauranga Vananga; Peia Patai and Cecile Marten at Te Puna Marama; Deon Wong, Evangeline Wong, and the amazing crew members of Marumaru Atua (past and present); and especially the Pittman-Keil family.

>We are still searching for archival material for this story. We are particularly interested in photos or videos from the launch of Vaka Takitumu in May 1992, and the launch of Vaka Te Au O Tonga in March 1995 – especially the mist that came in that morning. If you have something to share with us, please email Jennifer at jk@jenniferkingsley.ca as soon as possible. We promise to treat your materials with care.

Jennifer Kingsley is an author and National Geographic Explorer. Her first book won the National Outdoor Book Award, and she has since become a contributor to The New York Times, National Geographic Magazine, the BBC, the CBC, and other publications. Jennifer has also guided trips with National Geographic and Lindblad Expeditions to dozens of islands across the South Pacific. She met Tua in Antarctica in 2021. www.jenniferkingsley.ca