Traditional Pacific navigators bring the intricate science of wayfinding to the Bay Area

Sophia Perez thought her 2018 visit to Saipan, in the Pacific Ocean’s Northern Mariana Islands, would only last a few weeks. 

She’d graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in rhetoric in 2014, and went on to work in commercial film and media production in Los Angeles and Brooklyn. After a while, she felt a pull toward a different kind of storytelling. She thought visiting Saipan — one of the primary homes of the Indigenous Chamorro and Carolinian people, and her own ancestral homeland — would be the right place to ground her new creative direction in her family’s history.

Sophia grew up hearing stories of the Mariana Islands from her Chamorro grandfather, Herman Perez, who survived the Japanese occupation of Guam during World War II. When she arrived in the Marianas, it felt like home. 

She stayed with her aunt and uncle, Emma and Pete Perez, who a few years earlier had opened a nonprofit organization called 500 Sails, which is dedicated to the revitalization of Indigenous seafaring. Sophia spent a lot of time at the Guma Sakman (canoe house), learning the history and mechanics of traditional proas — the legendary, high-speed sailing vessels of the ancient Chamorro. A month went by, and Sophia decided to stay. 

I’m interested in how we as Pacific Islanders approach technology — ancient and modern — to serve our own purposes within our own value systems.

Sophia Perez, Berkeley Ph.D. student and Indigenous Technologies Coordinator at the Berkeley Center for New Media

“I went back to my apartment in Brooklyn, sold all my stuff, then moved to Saipan,” she says. “It changed my life forever.”

Sophia spent five years living in Saipan, where she worked as a reporter at the Marianas Variety, produced a children’s show called Island Time and volunteered for 500 Sails. Then she decided to move back to the Bay Area to start a Ph.D. program in Berkeley’s Department of Geography, where she’s studying militarism in the Mariana Islands and decolonial efforts rising in response to it. 

This year, she’s also the Indigenous Technologies Coordinator at the Berkeley Center for New Media, where she has been organizing a weeklong workshop that brings four traditional navigators from the Pacific Islands to lead sessions on the sophisticated science of traditional seafaring. It’s a role that bridges her Berkeley academic life with her years in Saipan, proving that wayfinding is just as much a technology as the digital tools we use today.

“I think there is a fair amount of new media theory behind the argument that while this is ancient knowledge, it’s also technology,” says Sophia. “We just have to be open to an idea of technology that’s not limited to Western inventions.”

The weeklong series is the culmination of a massive cross-departmental effort led by the Critical Pacific Islands Studies Collective (CPISC), a student research group that Sophia co-founded at Berkeley. With mentorship from geography professor Clancy Wilmott, CPISC spearheaded the grant proposal that made the navigators’ visit possible — a collaboration among CPISC, the Berkeley Center for New Media, the Department of Geography and the Pacific Islander Initiative. Awarded by the Campus Advisory Committee on Student Services and Fees, the grant reflects the collective’s dedication to bringing traditional Pacific knowledge to campus life.

“Instead of seeing Indigeneity as connected to the absence of technology, which is often how it’s framed by the Western world,” Sophia says, “I’m interested in how we as Pacific Islanders approach technology — ancient and modern — to serve our own purposes within our own value systems.”

The workshop, titled “Native Seas: Traditional Micronesian Navigators Visit the Bay Area,” runs from March 9-12. The navigators — Sesario Sewralur, Mario Benito, Cecilio Raiukiulipiy and Milton “Jun” Coleman Jr. — arrived on March 7, when they attended an opening ceremony and welcome reception at the UC Gill Tract Community Farm. The event was hosted by the Pacific Islander farming organization Planting Oceania and Lisjan (Ohlone) leaders of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, to honor the visiting seafarers within the local Indigenous community.

The public programming begins Monday, March 9, at 7:30 p.m. in the California Academy of Sciences’ Morrison Planetarium, where the navigators will lead an immersive session using the planetarium dome to demonstrate traditional seafaring methods and Indigenous scientific knowledge systems. Following a keynote lecture on Wednesday at 5 p.m. at Berkeley’s Jarvis Auditorium, the series concludes on Thursday at 1 p.m. with a hands-on demonstration of traditional canoe technology at the Berkeley Boathouse. All events are open to the public; registration is required.

A lifetime on the water

One of the featured visitors, master navigator Jun Coleman, is the executive director of 500 Sails, and brings with him a lifetime of work dedicated to reclaiming Chamorro and Carolinian maritime heritage. 

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1972, Jun grew up throughout the Pacific Islands, spending a lot of time on Saipan and Mulinu’u in Nu’uuli, a village on the island of Tutuila in American Samoa. As a child, he learned to respect the ocean — its deep power and mystery, and all the creatures that live within it. “That’s their home,” he says. “We’re just visiting.”

He’d heard about traditional sea navigators — people who were guided by the stars and read the language of the clouds, waves and animals to find even the smallest islands in a vast ocean. It didn’t occur to him, though, that it was something he could do; he’d always imagined navigators as 90-year-old men with long white hair and flowing beards.

But at age 13, Jun watched the 1983 documentary The Navigators: Pathfinders of the Pacific. In it, he saw the legendary Micronesian master wayfinder Papa Mau Piailug, then 51 and in his prime, talking about his mission to teach the younger generation how to sail traditional canoes. “I remember thinking to myself that maybe I could be one of them,” Jun says.

Jun went on to learn how to build traditional canoes under master builder Wright Bowman Jr. in Honolulu. At a canoe-launching ceremony, Jun finally met Papa Mau, who recognized the young man’s dedication. Mau invited him to his home island of Satawal, in Micronesia, to learn the sacred art of navigation from him firsthand.

“He was pretty shocked when I showed up a few months later,” Jun laughed. “He’d invited a lot of people from Hawaii over the years, but no one had actually come to his island before. That’s when he took me under his wing, and affirmed me as part of his family.”

Over the next six years, Papa Mau taught Jun a way of life that went far beyond the stars — how to navigate the sea, how to build canoes and houses, and how to identify specific plants needed for making different things, from traditional medicine to rope. For Jun, this wasn’t just a technical education; it was an apprenticeship in how to survive and thrive using only what the island and the ocean provided.

“I didn’t realize how much I was learning until I started doing my own sailing and building,” he says. “It’s been a great adventure.”

Traditionally, this knowledge has been kept and passed down within families, a sacred secret guarded by a select few. But Papa Mau, worried that the ancient knowledge would be lost because of the lure of modern technology and the migration of the younger generation to westernized cities, decided to break with tradition. He chose to look outside his own bloodline to find successors. “He wanted to teach people who were eager to learn,” Jun says. 

Every navigator has their own style and approach, says Jun, but the basics stay the same: They know how to read the elements of nature — the sun, moon, stars, the wind, the waves, the clouds and the different animals of the ocean. 

They use a intricate system of “sea-marks,” which are location-specific creatures that act like landmarks in the open ocean. Jun explains that a navigator might know a specific turtle is located to the southeast of the island of Satawal, and in the school of navigation, these animals aren’t just species — they often have their own personal names. Even a creature as small as a butterfly can serve as a sea-mark, providing a vital connection to a course correction. 

For Jun, these elements are far more than just tools; they are constants. As he recalls, “Mau told me one time, ‘The stars are better than your best friends, because they’ll never lie to you if you know them well enough.’ You do really develop a deep respect for them.” 

Jun says that he hopes their visit to the Bay Area encourages Pacific Islanders at Berkeley and across the Bay Area to look to their ancestors for inspiration. “They used what was available in nature, and they worked in harmony with nature,” he says. 

“Each of the navigators has a great story,” he continues. “We all share in the responsibility of keeping the knowledge and traditions alive by continuing to practice the art and teaching the next generations. We support each other and all the canoe families and culture organizations across our ocean.”

“They offer an example of expertise that is not reliant on Western science,” adds Sophia. “As we see Western technology change faster and faster, we wonder, ‘Is there going to be a breaking point? What happens when these systems fail?’ Because they do. 

“I hope these navigators can help Bay Area audiences think outside the box, instead of being completely invested in Western ways of knowing.”

To learn more about the “Native Seas” weeklong workshop and to register for events, visit the Berkeley Center for New Media’s website.   

Learn more about 500 Sails.