Elizabeth Lindsey: Curating humanity's heritage

As a child,

I was raised by native Hawaiian elders --

three old women

who took care of me while my parents worked.

The year is 1963.

We're at the ocean.

It's twilight.

We're watching the rising of the stars

and the shifting of the tides.

It's a stretch of beach we know so well.

The smooth stones on the sand

are familiar to us.

If you saw these women on the street

in their faded clothes,

you might dismiss them

as poor and simple.

That would be a mistake.

These women are descendants

of Polynesian navigators,

trained in the old ways

by their elders,

and now they're passing it on to me.

They teach me the names of the winds and the rains,

of astronomy according to a genealogy of stars.

There's a new moon on the horizon.

Hawaiians say it's a good night for fishing.

They begin to chant.

[Hawaiian chant]

When they finish,

they sit in a circle

and ask me to come to join them.

They want to teach me about my destiny.

I thought every seven-year-old went through this.

(Laughter)

"Baby girl,

someday the world will be in trouble.

People will forget their wisdom.

It will take elders' voices

from the far corners of the world

to call the world into balance.

You will go far away.

It will sometimes be a lonely road.

We will not be there.

But you will look into the eyes

of seeming strangers,

and you will recognize your ohana,

your family.

And it will take all of you.

It will take all of you."

These words, I hold onto

all my life.

Because the idea of doing it alone

terrifies me.

The year is 2007.

I'm on a remote island in Micronesia.

Satawal is one half-mile long

by one mile wide.

It's the home of my mentor.

His name is Pius Mau Piailug.

Mau is a palu,

a navigator priest.

He's also considered

the greatest wave finder in the world.

There are fewer than a handful

of palu left on this island.

Their tradition is so extraordinary

that these mariners sailed

three million square miles across the Pacific

without the use of instruments.

They could synthesize patterns in nature

using the rising and setting of stars,

the sequence and direction of waves,

the flight patterns of certain birds.

Even the slightest hint of color

on the underbelly of a cloud

would inform them

and help them navigate with the keenest accuracy.

When Western scientists would join Mau on the canoe

and watch him go into the hull,

it appeared that an old man

was going to rest.

In fact, the hull of the canoe

is the womb of the vessel.

It is the most accurate place

to feel the rhythm and sequence

and direction of waves.

Mau was, in fact,

gathering explicit data

using his entire body.

It's what he had been trained to do

since he was five years old.

Now science may dismiss this methodology,

but Polynesian navigators use it today

because it provides them

an accurate determination

of the angle and direction

of their vessel.

The palu also had

an uncanny ability

to forecast weather conditions

days in advance.

Sometimes I'd be with Mau on a cloud-covered night

and we'd sit at the easternmost coast of the island,

and he would look out,

and then he would say,

"Okay, we go."

He saw that first glint of light --

he knew what the weather was going to be three days from now.

Their achievements, intellectually and scientifically,

are extraordinary,

and they are so relevant

for these times that we are in

when we are riding out storms.

We are in such a critical moment

of our collective history.

They have been compared

to astronauts --

these elder navigators

who sail vast open oceans

in double-hulled canoes

thousands of miles

from a small island.

Their canoes, our rockets;

their sea, our space.

The wisdom of these elders

is not a mere collection

of stories about old people

in some remote spot.

This is part of our collective narrative.

It's humanity's DNA.

We cannot afford to lose it.

The year is 2010.

Just as the women in Hawaii

that raised me predicted,

the world is in trouble.

We live in a society

bloated with data,

yet starved for wisdom.

We're connected 24/7,

yet anxiety,

fear, depression and loneliness

is at an all-time high.

We must course-correct.

An African shaman said,

"Your society worships the jester

while the king stands

in plain clothes."

The link between the past and the future

is fragile.

This I know intimately,

because even as I travel

throughout the world

to listen to these stories and record them,

I struggle.

I am haunted

by the fact that I no longer remember

the names of the winds and the rains.

Mau passed away

five months ago,

but his legacy and lessons live on.

And I am reminded

that throughout the world

there are cultures

with vast sums of knowledge in them,

as potent as the Micronesian navigators,

that are going dismissed,

that this is a testament

to brilliant, brilliant

technology and science and wisdom

that is vanishing rapidly.

Because when an elder dies a library is burned,

and throughout the world, libraries are ablaze.

I am grateful for the fact

that I had a mentor like Mau

who taught me how to navigate.

And I realize

through a lesson that he shared

that we continue to find our way.

And this is what he said:

"The island is the canoe;

the canoe, the island."

And what he meant was,

if you are voyaging

and far from home,

your very survival depends

on everyone aboard.

You cannot make the voyage alone,

you were never meant to.

This whole notion of every man for himself

is completely unsustainable.

It always was.

So in closing I would offer you this:

The planet is our canoe,

and we are the voyagers.

True navigation

begins in the human heart.

It's the most important map of all.

Together, may we journey well.

(Applause)