Na'puti receives funding for Indigenous research and connections with the canoe at UCI

In 1968, three years after UC Irvine officially opened its doors, a canoe hand carved on campus by the experienced Samoan boat-builder Taloolema’agao Uliulileava Olano was launched in the Back Bay of Newport Beach. Grainy footage from the time, archived in the university library, shows the outrigger gliding seamlessly through the water, Uliulileava proudly at its bow. UliUli, as he was colloquially known, was in residence at the time as a UCI instructor, part of an early initiative that brought various experts and practitioners - including Samoan nobles, navigators and canoe-builders, and Guatemalan Ixil Indigenous peoples - to campus to teach students and help faculty members develop signature theories of apprenticeship, cognition, economic behavior and social science methods.

While UliUli’s outrigger remains mounted today in the stairwell of the Social Science Tower, missing from the display is a detailed account of its origin, stories and complex history. Tiara Na’puti (pictured right), UC Irvine global and international studies associate professor, aims to fill this gap. She was recently awarded a $12,000 grant from the American Council of Learned Societies to use the canoe as a gateway for detailing the stories, knowledges and migrational paths of Indigenous peoples in Southern California, home to the fastest growing population of Indigenous Pacific Islanders, and the state with the largest concentration of Samoans.

“UC Irvine was built upon ancestral homelands of the Acjachemen and Tongva peoples. These Indigenous peoples, much like diasporic Samoans and other Pacific Islanders, face climate change and urban development that make it difficult to carry on their seafaring traditions in California today. Yet, they continue to sustain connections with the ocean by building traditional canoes,” says Na’puti. “The canoe at UCI provides both metaphor and material element for organizing this project that will address the multifaceted experiences of the Samoan American diaspora navigating life on occupied lands, while striving to maintain connections to the ancestral homeland, Samoa. It also builds community bonds around a shared sense of cultural continuity across other diasporic communities of Pacific Island origin and among Tongva and Acjachemen in Southern California.”

The project will support four graduate research assistants in the effort and the final work will be displayed and hosted by Pilele Projects, an LA-based exhibition and workshop space dedicated to supporting projects by Pasifika artists in Southern California. More information will be shared as the project comes together.

“Traditional canoes are key symbols of ancient ecological knowledge and seafaring cultures of Oceanic peoples,” says Na’puti. “They teach us lessons about our environment today and remind us that these traditions continue with Indigenous communities respecting and honoring our ancestors and the places that we call home.”

-Heather Ashbach, UCI Social Sciences
-canoe photo by Luis Fonseca, UCI Social Sciences