Chief Kaveia’s Guidance by Mimi George For 16 years Chief Koloso Kaveia of Taumako (Duffs Group of SE Solomon Islands), strived to train a new generation to build canoes and make voyages using only ancient designs, methods, and materials. For several years he had in mind that he and his students would make a voyage from Taumako to Vanualava Island in the northernmost province of Vanuatu. The distance of that route is only about 300 miles. But making a north/south voyage in th

Aloha Kakou! I am so happy to tell you the good news. At last, the educational vision of the late Chief Kaveia is being fully realized! Taumako has a new generation of leaders in place, and now the small children who prepared coconut husks for sennit and who gathered and crushed seaweed into paint for the 1997 te puke, and the mature adults who made several vaka since then, are all fervently focused on learning to be voyagers. There is no confusion about the value of this anc