Gregorio Sablan: “Before there was GPS, before there were compasses, the people of the Pacific navigated over thousands of miles of open…”

“Before there was GPS, before there were compasses, the people of the Pacific navigated over thousands of miles of open ocean, including Hawaii and Samoa and Tahiti and New Zealand and hundreds of tiny islands and atolls in between. Yet in our lifetime, this ancient knowledge of navigation was all but lost until one man on the island of Satawal, who may have been the sole remaining practitioner, made it his mission to spread the Pacific art of navigation once again from island to island and keep it alive. Mau Piailug succeeded in preserving thousands of years of accumulated understanding of how to sail using the stars and the rhythm, taste, and temperature of the oceans. He trained others to distinguish each region of the sea by the life it harbors, when to the untrained eye these ocean reaches seem uniform, even empty of life. He reawakened pride in the unimaginable competence and courage of our ancestors, who over the course of so many generations populated the Pacific. Mau Piailug died on his home island of Satawal yesterday. As a fellow Pacific Islander, I thank him for all he gave us. I wish him well on his final journey. I rise to pay special tribute to the life of a remarkable man, a hero of the Micronesian Islands and the entire Pacific, Master Navigator Pius Mau Piailug.”