Our Honolulu
New canoe has vast heritage
By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist
Picture twin hulls 57 feet long, graceful, elegant and low in the water. This is the first floating classroom in Our Honolulu to offer four college courses for credit at sea, and the newest addition to Hawai'i's growing fleet of voyaging canoes.
The canoe is just a baby now on Hukilau Beach in La'ie, officially born last Sunday. It was supposed to be a small birthing, but 1,000 people came.
"Nothing in my 35 years at this campus has generated more goodwill and warm feeling than this project," said Eric B. Shumway, president of Brigham Young University-Hawai'i.
So the baptism on Saturday should be a blowout — including singers from Tahiti, New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji and Hawai'i, two bishops, a Fijian canoe and maybe a Samoan canoe.
The canoe will be christened Iosepa — Hawaiian for Joseph — by elder M. Russell Ballard, representing the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints. The Tongan canoe carver, Tui'one Pulotu, is a Mormon. Prayers will be Christian.
For a Hawaiian voyaging canoe, Iosepa has a distinctly cosmopolitan personality. The hulls were hewn from Fijian iakua wood. There are pieces of Hawaiian 'ohi'a in the single mast. The vessel is an excellent example of how Polynesian cultures are mixing and mingling.
Master carver Pulotu came from Tonga to help build the Polynesian Cultural Center in 1960. The concept of Iosepa came from Uncle Bill Wallace, director of the Jonathan Napela Center for Hawaiian Language & Cultural Studies at BYUH. Wallace hails from Moloka'i.
The money was put up by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in a $619,000 grant to support the development of a Hawaiian studies curriculum, a malama 'aina program, for care of the land, and a malama kai program, for care of the sea.
"The grant allowed us to offer a bachelor of arts in Hawaiian language and culture studies," said Wallace. "The second year we focused on building lo'i (taro patches) and growing taro to teach the lessons of the land. Seven months ago, Tui'one began work on the canoe."
Clay Bertelmann and Chad Paishon, captains of the Makali'i on the Big Island, are training a crew, Wallace said. Makali'i navigator Shorty Bertelmann will teach navigation.
"In the spring we plan to begin cruising for 6 1/2 weeks from island to island, with Hawaiian studies students on board," said Wallace. "Each student will be required to take three of the four courses offered. We'll come back to La'ie for the final exam."
Saturday's program on Hukilau Beach will include the naming, blessings and canoe launch, from 8:30 a.m. for as long as it takes to go through speeches, prayers and songs by choirs from all over the Pacific. It's free.
A 30-foot Fijian camakau will be on display, the gift of former Fijian Prime Minister Ratu Mara.
