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BYU-Hawai'i Set to Launch 57-Foot, Double-Hulled Teaching Canoe

Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles will preside over the launching of a 57-foot long, double-hulled canoe, carved for the Hawaiian Studies program at Brigham Young University-Hawai‘i, during a community ceremony on Nov. 3 at Hukilau Beach.

The launching ceremony will culminate three days of tribute and festivities surrounding the vessel, which has been under construction for nine months at a site adjacent to the Polynesian Cultural Center.

“The completion of this canoe has been an awesome project,” said Eric B. Shumway, president of BYUH. “Nothing in my 35 years at this campus has generated more good will and feeling between BYU-Hawai‘i and the Hawaiian community as this project. We’re anxiously anticipating this momentous launch.”

The canoe, its developers and master carvers will be available at Hukilau Beach on Nov. 1-2 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Student groups, local residents, natives of Hawai‘i and the islands of the Pacific, and other interested individuals will have the opportunity to observe it and pay their respects during those days.

On Nov. 3, the launching ceremony will begin at 8:30 a.m. and will continue until noon, when the canoe will be eased into the water amidst blowing of conch shells and other pageantry. Following the launch, a luau will be offered for all guests and the community.

The pre-launch program will include musical numbers by choirs from Hawai‘i, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti, and the Maoris of New Zealand.

Pres. Shumway will offer remarks, and speeches also will be given by William K. Wallace III, director of the Jonathan Napela Center for Hawaiian Language and Cultural Studies; by the master carvers; and by Dr. Valerie Johnson, education program director for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, a significant donor to the Hawaiian Studies program.

Elder Ballard will offer the concluding remarks, then will bless the canoe and pronounce its official name.

The double-hulled canoe, called a wa‘a kaulua in Hawaiian, will serve as a floating classroom for the Hawaiian Studies program at BYUH. Future voyages are planned to Moloka‘i and other islands of Hawai‘i, so students in the program can learn the ancient traditions of sailing, navigating, and other aspects of Hawaiian culture that were so vital to their ancestors.

Wallace said the building of the vessel has helped unite the Hawaiian community. “We’re seeing a resurgence of Hawaiian village culture,” he said. “We’d be working and cars would drive up and people would bring us food.”

Institutions such as the PCC, the La‘ie Community Foundation, and the La‘ie Community Association, and Hawai‘i Reserves, Inc., also have been instrumental in completion and launching of the canoe.
The project has reached out and created goodwill far beyond Hawai‘i to all of the Pacific and to other parts of the world.

The canoe is carved from dakua wood imported from Fiji early this year. One of the master carvers, along with Hawai‘i’s Kawika Eskaran, was Tuione Pulotu, a Tongan artisan who has also carved a 105-foot canoe in Tonga. And Polynesians and Native Americans have come from around the islands, from the Mainland U.S., and elsewhere to pay their respects, to volunteer with the construction, or simply to satisfy their curiosity.

The canoe building project already “has been a real blessing” to the Hawaiian Studies students, said Wallace. “Students have chipped and helped shape the hull and helped to work on other things related to the canoe,” Wallace said. “It’s touched their lives, and I’ve had many of them tell me it’s helped them reshape their own direction.”

In addition to the original construction of the Hawaiian canoe, the carvers have been refurbishing a Fijian camakau that was gifted to the PCC 15 years ago. The canoe from Fiji will be launched before the Hawaiian wa‘a kaulua, in cultural deference to the elder canoe.

Maintained by University Advancement

November 2, 2001