Talk:Micronesian navigation

Justification for Micronesian navigation

Micronesian navigation is discussed in Polynesian navigation, although it deserves its own page. This page incorporates some of the information and references found on Polynesian navigation, Austronesian people, Mau Piailug, & Marshall Islands stick chart, and the work of the authors of those pages is acknowledged. (MozzazzoM (talk) 03:18, 4 October 2021 (UTC))

But there is nothing as "Micronesian people", so Micronesian navigation looks like a ghost. Micronesia is mainly a racist traditional concept, invented by Dumont d'Urville in 1831. Can we go further?--Arorae (talk) 18:10, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

From Arorae User page (not the right place)

Arorae, I apologise for not acknowledging your communications regarding the changes I have made to the Pacific Ocean pages. I appreciated your acknowledgements of my work.

− I am concerned about your comment: “I am a little perplex with Micronesia navigation, because Micronesia is only a traditional and very racist division of the Pacific. If Polynesians exist, Micronesians do not. it is not a scientific category.” My motivation in adding the “Micronesia navigation” was to give equal status to the skills of the navigations of the Caroline Islands & Marshall Islands (and related cultures) and especially Mau Piailug – equal status to that provided in “Polynesian navigation”. Indeed, you will note from the Polynesian navigation, that modern Polynesia voyaging relies heavily of the skills retained in the Caroline Islands and taught by Mau Pialugi to those recreating Polynesian voyages in the late 20th Century.

− I don’t understand your comment “If Polynesians exist, Micronesians do not”. I had understood it was generally accepted (including by the scientific community that: “The Micronesian people are considered, by linguistic, archaeological, and human genetic evidence, a subset of the sea-migrating Austronesian people, who include the Polynesian people and the Melanesian people.”

That is, the parent culture was the Austronesian people, who in their migration into the Pacific Ocean, separated into 3 distinct (and equal) cultures (Micronesian, Melanesian & Polynesian). I do appreciate that “Micronesia” as a word, was imposed on the people of Caroline Islands & Marshall Islands (and related cultures) by the scientific community, and those Pacific Island communities, like other first nation cultures have their own words to describe themselves, and to describe others; e.g. Māori / Pākehā ; tagata Sāmoa / Pālagi, etc.

− If you have a better way of naming the page, please change it. In any event I didn’t properly proof the title, it should “Micronesian navigation” with an "n" at the end of "Micronesia" (if it is to retain that name).

− − My expertise is not in evaluating “linguistic, archaeological, and human genetic evidence” about people of the Pacific. My interest in attempting to improve these pages comes from my great-grandmother coming from Niutao, although I don’t identify as being Tuvaluan – as my subsequent lineage is very much Pākehā / Pālagi.

− − I apologise for this long communication to explain my work on Micronesia navigation. (MozzazzoM (talk) 03:28, 5 October 2021 (UTC))

@MozzazzoM: Dear MozzazzoM. Thank you very much for your long reply (I have just placed it here and not on my personal page, not the good place to be).--Arorae (talk) 17:45, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

the subdivision made in 1831 by Jules Dumont d'Urville is completely obselete in 2021. Of the 4 parts he divided Pacific in front of Société de Géographie are wrong on an ethnographic, linguistic and cultural basis (and of course anthropogically and genetically). There are not such things as "Micronesians" and "Melanesians", as scientific groupings. Of course, tradition of this racist way to divide Pacific is so strong that it is always used (by UN and some leaders) but scholars always consider it as completely obsolete.--Arorae (talk) 00:07, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

if you can speak or translate from French, there is an essay on that issue:

Polynésie / Mélanésie - L'invention française des "races" et des régions de l'Océanie (XVIe-XXe siècles) by Serge Tcherkézoff

Résumé

« Polynésie, Mélanésie… mais aussi Australie, Micronésie : on ignore souvent que le découpage actuel de l'Océanie résulte d'une théorie raciste des "couleurs de peau", élaborée en France au début du XIXe siècle et préparée par des siècles d'interrogations européennes sur la présence des " Nègres du Pacifique ". C'est aussi l'histoire d'un regard européen-masculin qui admira bien plus les femmes polynésiennes que les femmes des " îles noires " (Mélanésie).

En rassemblant les divers traités français (ainsi que le traité anglais de J.R. Forster de 1778) qui ont prétendu donner une classification des peuples du Pacifique, en retraçant l'origine des appellations savantes, ce livre propose une histoire générale et une déconstruction - des visions européennes, raciales et sexistes, sur la nature physique et morale de ces peuples, entre les XVIe et XXe siècles. Cet examen permet aussi de s'interroger sur l'histoire générale du racisme européen, en suivant le bouleversement qui s'est produit à la charnière des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, quand le naturalisme a laissé la place à la " zoologie " et l'humanisme au racisme moderne. La conclusion fait le point des connaissances actuelles en convoquant l'archéologie, la linguistique et la génétique. Un dossier de cartes présente la vision et les explorations européennes depuis l'Antiquité. On s'aperçoit qu'il faut repenser une partie de nos programmes d'histoire et de géographie. Ce livre s'adresse ainsi tout autant aux enseignants, du secondaire et du supérieur, qu'aux chercheurs spécialisés.» --Arorae (talk) 00:18, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Translation from French:

Abstract

"Polynesia, Melanesia ... but also Australia, Micronesia: it is often ignored that the current division of Oceania results from a racist theory of "skin colors", developed in France at the beginning of the 19th century and prepared by centuries of European questions about the presence of the "Negroes of the Pacific". It is also the story of a European-male gaze that admired Polynesian women much more than women from the "black islands" (Melanesia).

By bringing together the various French treatises (as well as the English treatise by Johann Reinhold Forster of 1778) which claimed to give a classification of the peoples of the Pacific, by tracing the origin of learned appellations, this book offers a general history and a deconstruction - visions European, racial and sexist, on the physical and moral nature of these peoples, between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. This examination also makes it possible to question the general history of European racism, by following the upheaval which took place at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, when naturalism gave way to "zoology" and humanism to modern racism. The conclusion takes stock of current knowledge by bringing together archeology, linguistics and genetics. A folder of maps presents the vision and European explorations since Antiquity. We realize that we have to rethink part of our history and geography programs. This book is therefore aimed as much at secondary and higher education teachers as at specialist researchers.--Arorae (talk) 00:21, 6 October 2021 (UTC) Or directly in English:

"In 1778, Johann Reinhold Forster, a naturalist from the Royal Society of London, claimed to have identified a caste of hereditary “nobility” in the islands around Tahiti who were lighter-skinned and more European-looking than islanders of inferior rank. A passenger aboard Cook’s third Pacific voyage in 1772, Forster had catalogued a number of “races” in the Polynesian archipelago, whose physical appearance seemed to be directly influenced by their social station. Georg Forster, Johann’s son and companion on the voyage, also wrote an account of the physical effects of social hierarchy in Tahiti, claiming that the physical debilitations resulting from wealth discrepancy would one day lead to revolution in Europe. Johann Reinhold’s "Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World" (1778) and Georg’s "A Voyage Round the World" (1777), mark a key moment in the beginnings of modern racism. Employing the English word “race” as a synonym for human variety, they interpret the multiplicity of Polynesian culture in terms of a linear hierarchy that naturally ascends towards the white European ideal. In their empirical evaluations of human society, physical features become a gauge of civilisation; the human bodies they observe are readable objects, whose shapes, dimensions and colours are to be compared and contrasted. Yet, the Forsters’ identification of a physically superior nobility also illustrates the importance of civility in the eighteenth-century discourse of human variety. Their light-skinned Tahitian élite not only showcase the extent to which New World cultures were being explained in terms of Western hierarchy, but also highlight the racialised thought underlying European notions of social rank. Indeed, the Forsters’ equation of idealised nobility with physical superiority offers an unusually clear insight into the relationship between the tradition of “pure” noble bloodlines and the major contemporary theories of human variety. Through an analysis of the Forsters’ interpretation of élite ranks in the South Pacific, as well as the conclusions they drew for racialised blood purity in Britain itself, this article considers the extent to which noble traditions of linear bloodlines and uncontaminated noble “race” influenced the development of human variety theory, and ultimately, the development of modern race theory."

--Arorae (talk) 00:31, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Follow up by MozzazzoM

@Arorae:

Dear Arorae, unfortunately, I cannot speak or read French, however I accept the argument that is summarised in the translation of the Abstract of the article by Serge Tcherkézoff, and as you set out in your comments, that the scholarship of 18th Century writers, is flawed and tainted by racial bias and also represents the “European male-gaze” of the women of Pacific cultures. I also accept that the subdivision made in 1831 by Jules Dumont d'Urville (and others) is completely obsolete in 2021.

The page on Austronesian peoples discusses the competing theories and to the origins of the cultures that have been subdivided (by some scholars) into the Micronesian, Polynesian, and the Melanesian people. While the page on Micronesia navigation links to these pages, it does not attempt to dive into the competing theories as to the origins of the people of those cultures – readers can link to those pages for that discussion. The page on Austronesian peoples also discusses modern scholarship (20th & 21st Century) on theories that are derived from linguistic, archaeological, and human genetic evidence about the migration of people across the Pacific; which appears to reach a consensus about some aspects of the history of Pacific migration – although it is clearly an incomplete history.

As described earlier, I see the purpose of the Micronesia[n] navigation page is to give equal status to that provided by the Polynesian navigation page to the development of the oceangoing sailing technologies by the people who migrated across the Pacific Ocean to the Marshall Islands, Caroline Islands (and other islands) in the north-western Pacific.

There seem to me to be a fundamental question: if the page on navigation techniques of the people who migrated across the Pacific Ocean to the Marshall Islands, Caroline Islands (and other islands) in the north-western Pacific is not to be titled “Micronesian navigation”, what is the appropriate title?

The Early Voyaging section could start with a qualifying statement “Based on the current scientific consensus” to acknowledge there is an evolving body of scholarship of the origins and migration pathway of the people who migrated across the Pacific Ocean.

What can be done to this page to bring it to a state that is does not have the flaws you describe? (MozzazzoM (talk) 23:27, 6 October 2021 (UTC))

Title

Micronesian is a worse title than the previous one. As there is nothing of "Micronesian" in Micronesia.--Arorae (talk) 21:19, 10 October 2021 (UTC)

Follow up by MozzazzoM to change of title

@Arorae:

Dear Arorae, I appologise for the delay in responding to your comment. I accept that "Micronesia/Micronesian" is a description that is imposed on the people(s) who migrated across the Pacific Ocean to the Marshall Islands, Caroline Islands (and other islands) in the north-western Pacific. The change from "Micronesia navigation" to "Micronesian navigation" is merely a grammatical correction (according to what I understand are the grammatical conventions of the English language).

There remains the fundamental question: if the page on navigation techniques of the people(s) who migrated across the Pacific Ocean to the Marshall Islands, Caroline Islands (and other islands) in the north-western Pacific is not to be titled “Micronesian navigation”, what is the appropriate title?

If there is an existing descriptive title (such as how the people(s) of the north-western Pacific describe themselves), then such a change can be considered. However, if there is no apppropriate alternative to "Micronesian navigation", then I suggest that no change can be made, until such time as "Micronesia/Micronesian" ceases to be used to describe the people(s) of the north-western Pacific. (MozzazzoM (talk) 01:34, 15 October 2021 (UTC))