Brigham Young University-Hawaii is set to launch its new floating classroom -- a 57-foot, double-hulled teaching canoe. BYU-Hawaii sets sail
in classroom on canoeThe new tool will teach students
about Hawaiian sea cultureBy Treena Shapiro
tshapiro@starbulletin.comThe canoe, crafted for the Jonathan Napela Center for Hawaiian Language and Cultural Studies, will be used to teach students "malama kai" (stewardship of the sea), a complement to the center's taro loi, which teaches Hawaiian studies students "malama aina" (stewardship of the land), according to the center's director William K. Wallace III.
The canoe's reach will extend beyond BYUH into surrounding elementary and high schools and the community "to try to regenerate our interest and understanding of how important it is for us to take care of the land and the sea, how important it is to have respect for the ocean," Wallace said.
The canoe will be available for viewing by the public at Hukilau Beach from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. today and tomorrow and will be formally launched at a public ceremony Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to noon, followed by a luau.
The ceremony includes naming the canoe Iosepa, the Hawaiian name for Joseph, in honor of Joseph F. Smith, a missionary from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who brought the Mormon religion to Hawaii.
Wallace said the name came to him in a dream about his grandparents, who sold all their possessions to attend the Mormon temple in Utah where they lived in a colony with other Hawaiians and Polynesians, named Iosepa. They eventually returned home to found Laie. "I felt that this would be a good testament to the faith of these ancestors of ours," Wallace said.
Wallace said that like the colony of Iosepa, the canoe brings together many cultures because it is built with hardwood dakua logs from Fiji, parts from Samoa, Tonga and Hawaii and gifts from the Maori. "We felt it would be appropriate because it would represent a multitude of people," he said.
In cultural deference to an older canoe, the Fijian camakau-style sailing canoe that has been on display at the Polynesian Cultural Center since 1986 will also be launched Saturday, before Iosepa. A camakau is a double-hulled canoe, where the smaller hull acts as an outrigger.
Iosepa's first voyage early next year will be a short one, from Laie Bay to Kualoa, to pay respect to ancestors. After that, Wallace said the canoe will be taken out every spring to Molokai, Maui, the Big Island, voyages that will teach students navigation and wayfinding, malama aina and malama kai, Hawaiian medicine and healing, and Hawaiian language, which will be the primary language spoken.
One of the themes for the crew will be the same as that of their ancestors, Wallace said: "voyagers of faith."
"It's a symbol for peace, especially (important) in these troubled times."