For various reasons, this story cannot be proven. But that does not matter to me because in my Aboriginal way of being and knowing, stories like my uncle’s do not need modern scientific proof to have validity — the role of story in Indigenous community is key to all aspects of our culture.
Victor Briggs’ slim volume, Seafaring: Canoeing Ancient Songlines, explores the idea that Indigenous Australians sailed to Hawaii in canoes, on the trade winds. The distance from Australia to Hawaii (some 20,000 nautical miles) makes this seemingly impossible, however, Briggs presents evidence to suggest otherwise.
The bulk of the book is the evidence – the logistics and importance of seasonal winds; celestial navigation; the building of different types of canoes; trade between Australia, Papua New Guinea, and the Polynesian islands; and the discovery of ancient Indigenous Australian skulls in places as far as Brazil. Interestingly, Briggs emphasises the fact that for the most part, Indigineous communities in the southern parts of Australia had no imperative to travel, as everything they needed was in their immediate environment. In contrast, those in the north, developed dugout canoes, and traveled significant distances over water to trade with other groups.
The evidence is clearly laid out and thoroughly cited – and for the most part is dry, and reads like exactly what it is – an academic paper.
No, the beauty of this book is in the opening and closing chapters, where Briggs lets the narrative take over. In the first chapter, he discusses how Indigenous ‘history’ is recorded, and specifically the racial bias that ensured that white Australian historians ignored the fact that Indigenous people were just as much a culture of the sea as they were of the land.
…but Aboriginal ways of telling history have always been discounted in terms of the academic white way, so the validity of oral history has been questioned. But that’s the way Aboriginal people convey their history.
Briggs counters the calls for ‘scientifically based’ research as being the only justifiable form of research, stating that stories and oral knowledge as real and legitimate forms of data are acknowledged under the the eighth tenet of Critical Race Theory.
Stories are not separate from theory; they make up theory.
In the closing chapter, Briggs acknowledges that he has never been deep sea fishing or snorkeling, and has never made a journey on a boat, and yet, this story of seafaring has changed his life, allowing him to connect with his history and community. It also gave him an academic focus.
Eventually I was awarded my degree. When the day came to graduate, my family attended the ceremony and declared happily, ‘Yes, we got a degree!’ That’s how much we live with community values rather than individual ones.
Read this book and allow your imagination to take you on a wild ride – in a canoe, across the seas, for days and nights, with only the stars as a guide and the winds to propel you. Astounding.
3.5/5