Pacific Islanders’ Ocean Festival of Hope 2024
Still no coronavirus here.
November 5th 2020
All of the countries credibly without COVID-19 as of November 5th 2020, are Pacific ocean states; Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Tonga, Samoa, Palau, Niue, Nauru, Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, and the Cook Islands. Their borders firmly closed, they are unable to safely repatriate their own citizens. Families are split, children haven’t seen their parents for nine months or more, while Pacific Islander communities overseas have some of the highest death rates of all. In case they had forgotten, nature once again reminds Pacific Islanders of their unique diversity, the strength of their family bonds, and the ocean that connects them.
Communities living across Pacific islands have contributed the very least to the global ecological emergency mankind has created. Yet Pacific Islanders had been on the frontlines of climate change long before it started knocking on the rest of the world’s front door.
It’s no coincidence that now coronavirus is everywhere but here.
Pacific island communities have continued through centuries navigating with island earth. A tree that came down in a storm can become a vessel to transport you from one island to another and back home again. People in 2020 got stuck because United Airlines aren’t flying and the world calls this development? The world has something very important to learn from Pacific Islanders. I cannot know what it is but I know that it is not dried ramen with Kool-Aid powder, nor is it Spam, turkey tail, nor asking ‘how much will I get paid?’ before helping the community.
Creativity, community, caring
Canoes
November 5th 2024
Community-built canoes share Prince William’s $1m Earthshot Prize for Protecting the Pacific Ocean.
A sea of islands in the Pacific ocean — Micronesia — is welcoming a world of voyagers to celebrate the ocean we all call home. This week sees the culmination of years of months of days and hours of community work and play. A flotilla of hundreds of hand-built wooden boats are enjoying a cultural festival party at sea.
Hand-carved voyaging canoes, wooden sailing yachts, a fishing kayak… the diversity of crafts meeting across Micronesia are testament to the creativity, ingenuity, and long labours of Micronesians and those they have inspired. A shared recognition that 2020’s pandemic was a wake-up call with no more chances left to live life differently, people around the world set to work learning sailing, carving, and preparing for the most important global voyage of all — to learn to love our oceans, to learn to love themselves.
Young people across the region, bored of online learning between power cuts and tired of waiting for the next tiktok video to load, set about learning the traditions of their elders to make them into their own for the 21st century. “I wondered how were they able to voyage across oceans while we’re stuck here waiting for these crazy-expensive flights from outside?” said Mahalo, from Chuuk. Angela, from Yap said “I realised that without taking care of our oceans, my grandchildren would not be able to enjoy fish like I do today. I’m sad that I never saw the ocean like my grandfather did, he says there were plenty fish.”
The festival of the Caroline Islands has seen voyagers from around the world sail over oceans, in skies, through storms, to meet together in celebration. To play in the world’s best protected and most pristine oceans, swim with a manta ray, to paddle against each other in round-island races, and to share a rich variety of foods from all around the world. Sunrise meditations, canoe-top hula-hooping, and synchronised sail-dances, the festival also provides chilled coconuts, bananas, and fresh drinking water for all. No fossil fuels were burnt in the making of this festival.
The $1m prize money is shared between all Pacific islanders who built and sailed a craft safely to and back home from the festival; 50 communities look set to be enjoying their $20,000 prize money. Communities choose how best they want to use the money to contribute to a network of ocean protectors across the Pacific, supported by “eyes in the sky” nanosatellites, which can spot illegal fishing in the exclusive economic zone and alert local teams.
We have to do all we can to protect, nurture, and tend what good we have. Know nature’s capacity to heal; healing happens naturally over time and excluding that which harms.
Know that you are nature.
Light, Love, Family, and a whole lot of ocean surround you.
The only person to carve your future is you — make full use of all of you, your heart, your head, and your hands.
Don’t know where to start?
Start with what’s on your plate. You are what you eat. Don’t eat shit.
See you at Caroline Islands Ocean Festival of Hope 2024.
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What We Do
I listened to leaves
Whisper the wonders of a thousand thousand years
Over oceans
In skies
Through storms
Waves caress the
Hidden hands who dare to manoeuvre
Over oceans
In skies
Through storms
Winds savour the
Salts of seven days and nights of sail
Over oceans
In skies
Through storms
Stars alter the
Traces of men whose scents made be lost
Over oceans
In skies
Through storms
Night swallows all.
We carved a way to see in the dark
Over oceans
In skies
Through storms
