Photo: RNZ / Layla Bailey-McDowell
'If you're on a canoe, you're in the same space your ancestors were - just a different time."
Those are the words of Billy Richards, an "OG sailor", one of the original Hōkūleʻa navigators whose 1976 voyage helped reignite Pacific wayfinding.
On Monday, his presence - alongside fellow original navigator John Kruse - gave added weight to over a dozen Indigenous educators who stepped aboard Haunui, a double-hulled waka carrying the legacy of their tūpuna.
Guided by kaihautū from Te Toki Voyaging Trust, manuhiri (visitors) from Indigenous nations around the world spent the morning learning the whakapapa of waka hourua and the mātauranga that carried their tūpuna across the Pacific.
Photo: RNZ / Layla Bailey-McDowell
The excursion is one of many offered at the World Indigenous Peoples' Conference on Education (WIPCE), which has returned to Aotearoa for the first time in 20 years.
Leading the voyage was Kaihautū Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr (Tainui), who said the aim was not just
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