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The Milky Way rises over Island Point in the Peel-Harvey estuary, Western Australia.

Photo by Luke Busellato CC BY-SA 4.0 cropped

Emu in the Sky

Source: Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, Volume 17, Issue 2, Preprint. 1 The Emu Sky Knowledge of the Kamilaroi and Euahlayi Peoples Robert S. Fuller, Michael G. Anderson, Ray P. Norris, Michelle Trudgettaccessed from: https://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200907/r404883_1906918.jpg

This resource can be used by students as part of a guided inquiry or for independent inquiry, depending on the ability of the students. It can be used to develop knowledge of how science and technology, in particular around astronomy and navigation have impacted on our history.

This resource uses the NSW Science Stages 4 and 5 knowledge and understanding of Earth and Space to explicitly address the learning across the curriculum content:

    • Cross-curriculum priority: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and culture

    • General capabilities: intercultural understanding and personal and social capability

The resource comprises two sets of activities, organised as two tabs. Within each tab, learning experiences are organised using the 'Five Es' inquiry model.

Activities within each tab can stand alone and do not need to be completed sequentially.

Overview of learning experiences

The two strands, astronomy and navigation, are intertwined, as reflected in some of the activities.

Astronomy

Astronomy investigates the scientific mission that took the Endeavour to Tahiti in 1769: to observe the Transit of Venus. European science and technology of the eighteenth century is examined in the first section of this webpage.

Astronomy then looks up at the night sky from an Aboriginal perspective, with a focus on the Emu in the Sky and some of the stories, science and technology associated with it.

The final section guides students to reflect on their learning and to compare and contrast the astronomy of the different cultures who encountered one another on the east coast of our continent in 1770.

In this set of activities, students:

  • describe science and technology behind the 1769 transit of Venus observations by those on HMB Endeavour

  • develop an understanding of aspects of Aboriginal astronomy

  • compare and contrast different approaches to astronomy.

Navigation

These activities compare the technology and navigation techniques used by Captain Cook and his crew on board the Endeavour, that of Tupaia from Tahiti and those of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of Australia. The relationship is explored between Aboriginal people and the songlines used to help navigate across Australia and the continuing connection Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have with Country, including the night sky.

In this set of activities, students:

  • research and investigate early European navigation technologies and techniques

  • write a user's guide for a navigational tool

  • explore aspects of Polynesian navigational techniques

  • appreciate the contribution of Tupaia to the success of the Endeavour's first voyage in the Pacific

  • investigate songlines and their significance to Aboriginal Peoples

  • examine different views of the Pleiades

  • appreciate the depth and complexity of astronomy as a science.


Learning activities - answers

Modern map online

For the task of measuring the distance from Raitaea, your measurements should be within these ranges:

  • Tahiti: 200-250km

  • Huahine: 45-50km

  • Taha'a: 20-25km

  • Bora Bora: 45-50km

What do you think?

Possible answers are given after each question:

In Source 6, the video, the way to read Tupaia's map is discussed. Why has it been a mystery for so long, do you think?

  • For many years, people tried to interpret Tupaia's map with Eurocentric views of maps and how to read them. It is only recently that people have been able to bring an understanding of Polynesian navigation techniques to their reading of the map.

Compare Tupaia’s map (Source 5) to Cook’s map of Kamay Botany Bay (Source 1). What differences can you see? How might you explain the differences?

  • Tupaia's wasn’t meant to be used by others. It acted like a mud map to show where the islands in the region were located from his home island of Raiatea, the way Tupaia saw it, and when using his own navigational techniques.

  • Cook was mapping only a small area in Kamay Botany Bay. He wanted to include as much detail as possible – directions, coastlines, fresh water, depths, everything carefully done to scale. He used every tool he had to help him like a compass, a plane table surveying equipment like calipers, rulers and so on. He was very good at it and was keen to accurately record everything he saw for possible future use by other users of his map.

When you look at Tupaia’s map, the islands nearby Raiatea and Tahiti are fairly accurately mapped. Presumably Tupaia visited each of those islands. But then Tupaia includes almost 70 other islands, some possibly a very long way from his home island. Do you think he could have visited all of those islands? If not, how could he know of their existence?

  • It’s unlikely that Tupaia could have visited all of those islands. It’s likely that he knew about them because part of his culture was to know exactly this type of information and he possessed the knowledge handed down to him over the generations.

Transcripts

Star Tales: Milky Way | Stargazing Live: Australia Episode 1 Preview - BBC Two

Ghillar Michael Anderson:

The Milky Way for us is the Wurrum-Boorrool. It's a big river in the sky. And when we look up there we see that river. We can show you where that river is on the earth and we show you where it starts and where it finishes and where the water spills out would be what they call the coalsack or what we call the Head of the Emu.

The Goolee-bhar tree is an old tree that that died as a result of the water being drained when the universe tipped upside down and when we want to go home, when we’re finished here on Earth, and we've done our ceremonies we go up through the hollow of that that old tree. And then we see the light at the other end and we come out at the other end and we're home. It’s boolee-mah.

65,000 yrs - the great history of Australian Aboriginal Astronomy | Kirsten Banks | TEDxYouth@Sydney

Kirsten Banks:

I want you to think back to the last time you looked up to the night sky. And I mean really looked. Was it last night? Maybe it was last month. The night sky is riddled with sparkling stars and glittering galaxies that can look within an arm’s reach yet, in reality, are unfathomable distances away, and I find it incredibly beautiful. Ever since I could remember, I've enjoyed looking up to the stars. It gives me a sense of place and meaning within the everlasting universe. And I could be having the worst day ever, but when I appreciate the universe above me, all of those problems melt away for just a little while. But we are quickly losing the opportunity to enjoy the stars in the sky. We are losing the darkness to overbearing bright city lights. But imagine, if rather than turning off every bright light in the city so you can really see the stars, we instead opened our eyes to its beauty. Today I want to encourage you to take the time to understand the night sky, and the long history of indigenous astronomy that accompanies it. To take the time to look up. I've been looking up at the stars since I was a little girl. I remember my science teachers took my year group on an excursion to see the Hubble documentary on a gigantic movie screen, and I sat there with the one-size-fits-none 3-D glasses slipping off my face, looking up in awe of these magnificent photos, taken by this phenomenal telescope. And ever since then I've been hooked on space and astronomy. Now I'm onto my honours year at university, studying great galaxy clusters in the near universe, and I've spent almost four years working at Sydney Observatory. So I guess you could say I've spent a fair share of my time looking up. I want to take you on a journey back in time now, to a time when the words "light pollution" were foreign tongue. I want you to imagine yourselves standing on the banks of Sydney Harbour in the days before British settlement. On a moonless night, you feel the winter chill whip around the water, as the last rays of sunlight catch the top of the trees. As the Sun goes down, its light is scattered more and more by each and every particle in the atmosphere, transforming the sky from a brilliant sky blue to beautiful pinks, oranges and reds before fading to a deep royal blue as the shadow of the earth dominates the sky. With every minute that passes, new twinkling lights appear above you. Some are bright, and some are dim, but all of them are beautiful. Once the Sun has completely retreated from the sky, you can see it all. In the clean air, you notice some of these twinkling lights shine in different colours. Most appear to be white in colour, but some shine with hints of blue or red, showing off a little bit more about their nuclear fires. A shooting star, also known as a meteor, dashes across a dazzling carpet of stars that stretches across the entire night sky. It looks milky, like a stream, but also oddly resembles clouds, sparkly clouds. This is the Milky Way galaxy. Toward the south, you can see two other separate blobby clouds, one larger than the other. These are the small and large Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies that orbit the much larger Milky Way in a romantic eternal dance choreographed by gravity. I remember the first time, very clearly, I ever saw the Milky Way in all of its grandeur. My parents and I were traveling across the lower part of Australia by car and playing a game of golf on the longest golf course in the world, the Nullarbor links. This golf course starts in Ceduna, South Australia and finishes all the way over in Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. At almost every little town stop along the way, there's at least one golf hole. The fifth hole is located at what's called the Nullarbor Roadhouse. This place has five things: a servo, a small pub - very important - motel, and caravan park, and one golf hole. The one night we stayed there, after a long day of driving under the intense Australian sun, we decided to stay, and for some unknown reason, the main generator blacked out, and all the lights in this tiny "town" turned off, The view of the night sky was so pristine and so incredible I felt like I was swimming in space, or maybe I was just swimming in sweat. Trust me, it's hot in Central Australia, but there were just so many stars, and so many colours dancing around, it was so beautiful, it brought me to tears. With no artificial lights, we could be seeing up to 2,500 stars. But in present-day Sydney, you can see a pitiful 125 stars at best with the naked eye, a mere five percent of what you could be seeing without the addition of light pollution. A lot of people around the world don't know the real beauty of the natural night sky. People have gone their entire lives believing that the night sky is only filled with less than a few hundred stars. Data collected from the Helmholtz Centre in Potsdam, Germany, reveals that the Milky Way is hidden from one-third of the global population, and 80 percent of the world's population live under light-polluted skies. But not only are we losing the opportunity to enjoy and explore this gorgeous night sky, we are also losing the rich cultural history that is veiled in and around each and every single star. My relationship with Aboriginal astronomy started in my first year of university. Around the same time I started working at Sydney Observatory. I learned about great celestial bodies from my Wiradjuri heritage, and found a new perspective of the universe. For those who aren't aware, Wiradjuri land is located in what's now more commonly referred to as Central New South Wales. As soon as I opened my eyes to this new perspective of the universe, I delved into learning more. There are hundreds, if not thousands of cultures scattered across the globe and each one has a rich history connected to the stars. In Australia alone, there are more than 250 indigenous groups that have used the stars for the last 65,000 years and their knowledge is still exercised to this day. When you take a closer look at the Milky Way and notice all the little details, you'll see that it's not just a uniform carpet of stars. There is light and dark in the Milky Way and this darkness, this dust and gas that naturally blocks the light from distant stars possesses one of my absolute favourite constellations from my Wiradjuri heritage: Gugurmin, the Celestial Emu. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. It is incredible. Its head begins up here, below the Southern Cross. This dark patch is a dark nebula known in Western astronomy as the Coalsack. It is connected to the neck, which stands down towards the east, and this live bulge here is the body of Gugurmin, and the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. In Wiradjuri culture, and in many other indigenous nations as well, the position of the Emu in the night sky indicates at what time of the year is the right time to go looking for Emu eggs. When Gugurmin is on the eastern horizon, it looks like it's running along the horizon. This indicates to us that the emus are now running around, looking for a mate. Later in the year, as the earth travels a little bit further around the sun, Gugurmin's body travels up, and up, and up to the point where it's directly above you in the night sky just after sunset. Now we don't see it as an emu's body anymore, but instead as an emu egg in a nest, and this indicates to us that now is the time to go looking for emu eggs. So once you know it's the right time to go looking for emu eggs, you and a friend will go out to the bush with something like this, an emu caller, and find yourselves an emu sitting on a nest. Now, usually it's the males that sit on the nest. So to lure away a male, you have your friend hide behind a bush and make the sound of a male emu.

(Low-pitched echoing sound)

When the emu hears that sound, it's going to get very territorial and go looking for the imposter. So, while your friend is being chased by the emu, you can then safely go to the nest and take one or two emu eggs. But a very important question for you all right now: Do you take all of the emu eggs?

(Audience) No.

Of course not, we want to leave some emu eggs behind to have more emus develop to have more emu eggs next season. It's this fantastic thing called sustainability.

(Laughter)

Now this technique of using the stars to find emu eggs has worked for over 65,000 years. Not only does this guide act as a seasonal menu of sorts, it can also be used as a tool to teach many lessons. You can learn a lot about what's happening on the land just by looking up at the stars. In many indigenous cultures, the night sky can be used as a map, or it can be used to predict changes in the weather. You can also learn about Aboriginal law and it can teach you fundamental workings of the universe. But we're losing this knowledge because we're losing the darkness. The National Australian curriculum now includes subjects in Aboriginal astronomy and other indigenous sciences. This is a great step forward for our nation in an effort to close the gap, and gain a mutual understanding between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. But there's still one problem: a lot of Australians still can't see the Milky Way or these dark constellations that it possesses. So, the next time you look up to the night sky, think about what great knowledge is thinly veiled in and around each and every single star, and think about what you can do to help preserve and appreciate our wonderful night sky. Go on a tour at an observatory, or take some time out of your day to explore the world of indigenous astronomy at home. And if you find yourself in Outback Australia, take a moment to look up and find that Celestial Emu.

(Low-pitched echoing sound)

Thank you.

(Applause)

Through Our Eyes - Dhinawan 'Emu' In The Sky with Ben Flick

Ben Flick:

I’d just like to talk about some traditional knowledge that was handed down to most of us indigenous fellows in this area and it's the Emu in the Sky. Around April, May every year the Emu will appear in the Milky Way. Just underneath the Southern Cross you'll see a dark spot, a rounded dark spot. That's the Head of the Emu. In front of him, of course, is his beak and as you follow it down you can see his neck in the dark spots of the Milky Way. Comes right down to his body. You can see his legs. And you can see a couple of eggs underneath. At that certain time of year it's the time that, for us to go out and collect emu eggs. We go out, of course, into the bush, always leaving some eggs for next year and for the generations to keep going. They only last up until early June. Any time after early June they start getting chicks in them but before that from April, May, you're pretty right to go gather.

Australian Indigenous Astronomy - 65.000+ Years of Science

[Highlights of a lecture and interview with Dr Duane Hamacher from the Monash Indigenous Studies Centre, recorded at the Royal Society of Victoria in February 2018.]

We know that Aboriginal cultures are the oldest continuous cultures in the world and if you're like me and you're interested in the subject of the crossroads of astronomy and culture, what better place to come than a place that is this ancient?

When I go to communities and I sit with the elders and they - we just have an open conversation.

Usually you just ask some very basic questions, you know, what kind of stuff do we have about the Moon and the Sun or certain stars. And as we have these conversations, the stuff they start telling me really opens up, they start telling about the traditions, the songs, the dances, the stories; just about sort of the abstract knowledge as well. But what I find really fascinating is when we're having these discussions and they're not - they don't sit here and say, ‘Well, here's the science behind this tradition,’ they just have a general discussion about it. But at the back of my mind I'm going, ‘Oh my God, there is so much science here,’and I'm just ticking all these boxes off: ‘and chemistry, and physics, meteorology and geology’ -

running down the list and the knowledge is incredibly deep.

Everything on the land is reflected in the sky. Everything you need to know to survive, about

how the seasons work, the animals, the plants, the landscape, is reflected in the sky.

The sky is a textbook. It's a law book. It's a science book.

You can't talk about that star without talking about this plant, this animal, this landscape feature, this season. Everything is linked, and one of the fascinating things about researching astronomy from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective is that as a researcher, as an academic, with my background training in astrophysics and, y'know, learning about Indigenous cultures, I have to learn about ornithology, about herpetology, about insects, about meteorology and geology, all these areas that I don't know that much about! I have to learn about all that. And the breadth of knowledge you need to try to understand that is quite significant.

There's all kinds of layers of knowledge and some communities talk about there being over thirty layers of knowledge. And a lot of what I've learned from this and what my students have learned from this really are the bottom levels of knowledge. Everything that I've learned here I've learned from community, from elders. Obviously this is not my knowledge. But they've been very generous in sharing some of their lower levels. And their lower levels of knowledge are quite detailed.

It's like a pyramid. The base level everybody knows. But as you get higher and higher and higher, fewer and fewer people know some of that really high, detailed knowledge. Some is restricted by initiation, some is restricted by gender, whether it's men's business or women's business. There's all kinds of different restrictions and qualifications on ‘who can know that,’ or who can possess that knowledge and be curators of that knowledge.

I'd heard something about the twinkling of stars meaning something. So I asked one of the elders, ‘Can you talk to me a bit and tell me about what the twinkling of stars mean?’ I had multiple elders going into all kinds of detail about how you read the twinkling of stars. Not just that they twinkle - but how you read it.

So they sat with me and they say, ‘Well, we look at how the stars twinkle. We know how to read the stars.’ It's one of the phrases they use quite often, the Torres Strait and with Aboriginal people, how to ‘read the stars.’ And they'll say, ‘You look at the bright stars that are high above,’ because they're the best ones to look at, you look at the bright ones, you look at how they twinkle, are they twinkling really rapidly, are they twinkling slowly? Are they kind of sharp, are they kind of fuzzy? What colours are they? I'm like, ‘This is neat. What does that that tell you?’ And they start explaining to me how they use this to predict weather, how they use this to predict seasonal change, trade winds. When the stars appear very blue and a bit fuzzy, they know they need to begin planting crops right now, they know they're not going to go out onto the reef that night to go hunting for dugong or turtle for example, because the rain's coming.

So up in the tropics you've got the cooler, drier south-easterlies and the hot, humid north-westerlies. The north-westerlies bring the monsoon rains. So what you see at that time of the year, when the stars are twinkling, is a shifting of the trade winds, and they know how to read that and know when the next season's going come.

As we're sitting with the elders I'm recognising all the science encoded in these stories and this knowledge and I just find that - I find it fascinating, but not surprising at all. We would expect people over 65,000 years to figure this stuff out, of course.

For the Torres Strait Islanders, this is the island of Moa. The village of Kubin, here. But actually, look, there's lots of little islands all over the place, out here. What the people do is look at where the sun sets, between the islands or over the islands. So there's one particular island right here - it's got a peak there and a peak there and there's a bit of a flat part in the middle. When you look and see the sun setting on the flat part, then you know that it's the solstice. When it's down here, it sets between, right at the very edge of this island, you

know it's the summer solstice, and that the monsoon wet season is going to be pretty much imminent. This happens on the 21st of December, wet season starts at the end of December. Ties in very nicely.

There's so much knowledge encoded in the landscape, it's the landscape that's literally telling a story. And there are lots of examples about how that links to the sky.

Aboriginal and Islander cultures in Australia didn't have a structured written language. Was information put to writing? Yes, it was. But it wasn't a structured written language. What we had here, and have here, are oral cultures. And this is pretty much everywhere around the world up until a few thousand years ago. Orality is really a phenomenal concept, and it's one that's critically important to understanding not only the scientific information encoded in oral tradition, but how this knowledge can be passed down for so long without degrading.

The ways that the elders are able to encode so much knowledge and pass it down is something called the method of loci. And that term itself comes from the ancient Greeks, the ancient Greek orators would use the idea that you could associate a memory with a place. And the ‘place’ can be anything, it can be an object, it can be the landscape, it can be the skyscape. So when I work with communities, I notice they encode everything into stories and to narratives, into songs, into dances, and it's also encoded in the landscape, and all of that is reflected in the skyscape. So there's multiple layers of memorisation, so to speak,

where you can take all this knowledge and apply it to anything.

The human brain has evolved to memorise vast quantities of information. It's the human brain's ability to associate memory with place. And a ‘place’ can be anything, it can be something intangible, it can be something a little more abstract. But when I say ‘place’ I mean the landscape, the skyscape, it can be a physical object, this thing here, I can associate memories to the different colours, the different textures, the different appearances, the different feeling. Pretty much anything.

We tell stories. I try not to use the word ‘story’ too much. And I don't like to use the term ‘myth and legend,’ because ‘myth and legend’ are very loaded terms. Modern colloquial English: ‘myth’ is the opposite of ‘fact.’ So when we talk about - I don't use the term

‘Aboriginal myths.’ But these are narratives, these are stories where you pass on, you encode information in a story, you pass it on. So if you're going to memorise everything, you don't want to have long, dry lists of boring facts. Well, having a very interesting narrative, where you tell a story - and you've got supernatural figures coming down from the sky and morphing into animals with superhuman feats of strength, these kinds of things - are going to be things you remember. It doesn't necessarily mean that you believe that this is

actually what it was, physically was like this, as each community's got their own different types of traditions and narratives. But the idea is you can remember information a lot easier if you do that.

Song and dance. We've got a pretty amazing ability to remember song lyrics. So if you take that knowledge, encode it in story, you also encode it in song, and you action it out through dance - and then, through social practices, through craftsmanship, through artefacts, you're able to take huge amounts of knowledge, encode that in these things then pass it on through the generations.

We don't have to worry so much about that knowledge degrading over time because there's very strict protocols on how this is done. It's done through ceremony, where there's reward for doing it correctly and punishment for doing it wrong. Each of the different languages in Australia is different. There are some that are similar families, there are some that are completely and totally different, they're a completely different language group altogether.

So what we've learned from the communities is, y'know, there's a lot of trade, there's a lot of networks to go with that, criss-cross the country, and the idea that Aboriginal communities were somehow isolated in these little spots just isn't true. There was trade all across the country, trade with Indonesians, with Melanesians, and one of the major ways these trade networks were put together was through songlines.

So basically you're singing the traditions as you go across the landscape, and the songs tell you where the waterholes are, they tell you where the shelter is, they tell you where the animals are. But the songlines can stretch from coast to coast, north, south, east, west. And the songlines are in different languages. As you're singing the song, when you get to new country, the language of the song changes. So you can actually navigate your way across the landscape by knowing these songlines.

For tens of thousands of years, Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people have paid incredibly close attention to the world around them, and still do today, have developed knowledge systems that are more complex than we could ever imagine, are as intellectually capable as anybody else, if not much more, and that their traditions have a very detailed scientific component that we can learn from if we just shut up, and listen.

Tales of Toanga – Tupaia [9:24]

Awanui Ririnui-Ryan, Tauranga Moana, Ngapuhi, Kuki Airani:

How do I navigate the world? Like this. [Speaks in Maori for a short while.] I live in Tamaki Makaurau and like many other rangatahi, keep connected to the world online. Our tipuna were amazing navigators who made their way here without the devices of today. One of the tipuna was Tupaia, a legendary navigator and definitely a taonga of the moana. He created a map that's become famous because no-one could figure out how to read it until recently.

So who was Tupaia and what was so special about this map?

[Title: Tales of Taonga – Tupaia]

[Auckland Museum – Tupaia Exhibition]

[Reads in Maori for a short while.] When I first walked into the Tupaia exhibition it was intriguing to actually find out more about him. He seemed to be good at a lot of things. It said he was the man of mana, he was an arioi, a high priest and expert navigator. He seemed like a person who liked to observe and learn new skills too.He was also a guide in Tahiti - probably why he hopped on the boat with Captain Cook.

Then I found Tupaia’s map. Apparently it's something that's taken 250 years for people to read. As a rangatahi raised with a Polynesian way of seeing the world, I'm trying to imagine how he saw it. When I see a list of names I think fa’apapa [?] first. When we relate to where we are from we link everyone to us so people understand who we are. Is that how Tupaia started when he drew his map? From what I know just as a rangatahi, not everyone sees things the same way. Is that why it's taken so long for other people to understand how to read his map?

[Text on screen ‘Fa’afaite in Rarotonga 2019 – To mark 250 years since Tupaia’s arrival in NZ, Fa’afaite Vaka replicate the journey of their tupuna Tupaia from Tahiti to Aotearoa.']

India Tabellini – Fa’afaite captain:

His map was different because the names of the islands were like similar like to what we know, even if they were written you know like with English style, the location was different. The direction was good but the distance from a point was different. He was taking consideration for example if there's a current that push against you even if an island is closer than another one, well you're gonna take longer to get there because the current is gonna push against you.

Moeata Galenon – Fa’afaite navigator:

His map is not like written with north on the top. Well I guess the first people who made a map decided that north was gonna be on top, so we come with this frame of mind and we look at this map and we sit thinking, ‘First of all the north is on top,’ which is wrong already. It's definitely a way for him to know how to get to the different places.

Sam Timoko – Marumaru Atua – Cook Island voyaging Society:

It's not a conventional map as you see these days, I mean if you compare the differences between the two maps there's a lot of space in the actual map of the South Pacific but I think that brings to light how not only Tupaia but how Polynesians viewed islands, navigation and finding those islands. I think Polynesians for one have a lot to learn from not only his map but the celebrations that are happening with the Tuia 250 in New Zealand. Well, it gave the opportunity for New Zealand Maori in particular to voice their feelings about that meeting, that encounter, that collaboration back in the day and I think for the Tahitian people it's even more special for them being their ancestor Raiatea. I think it's a wonderful thing for all Polynesians to recognise, and obviously it will give us an opportunity to open discussions on the subject.

Awanui Ririnui-Ryan:

So Tupaia and the Endeavour made it to Aotearoa. The Aorearoa map is awesome. It’s got so much information right there and you can see the whole story. There are red lines of where the boat was going and the silly turns they made because they went in blind, trying to guess where things were. Tupaia seemed like he was good for making peace with us as nei [?] Maori but I feel like he was a bit unfair on himself because he took the journey for far too long and should have gone home.

Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr, Tetoki Voyaging Trust:

Tupaia, ah, I guess he’s more famous in Maori stories, in Tahitian stories but he’s a guy who managed to get on board the Endeavour and sail with Cook and all his guys.

Courtney Sina Meredith, author of ‘The Adventures of Tupaia’:

Tupaia is an incredible Polynesian iconic navigator, he was a high priest of Tahiti and he was actually the brilliant mind who helped Captain Cook to navigate his way down here to Aotearoa.

Pita Turei, Ngai Tai ki Tamaki, Nga Rauru Kitahi:

The key to reading Tupaia’s map for us today - decolonize our minds. See the world in the way our ancestors saw it, then Tupaia’s map makes complete sense.

Courtney Sina Meredith:

Because he was coming from such different concept of ta [?] and va [?] and of time and space he was coming from a worldview where the horizon comes to meet you not the other way around, where it's quite Eurocentric, that you kind of travel towards a fixed destination. And the conversation that he was having with Captain Cook at the time, is he was actually trying to take him to explore those islands but Cook wanted to come and explore the great southern continent, or to discover it for himself. At the time they believed it was a huge land mass at the bottom of the Earth to kind of balance out the top of the Earth. And that's why they were down here. It wasn't that they came to actually discover New Zealand. This is the fabled great continent that they were looking for.

Pita Turei:

It’s important everywhere but it's important in Aotearoa at the moment because we're nationally celebrating Captain Cook. We cannot celebrate Captain Cook and be true to ourselves without acknowledging Tupaia.

Hoturoa Barclay-Kerr:

The key thing for future generations is to understand that Cook wasn't the only important person on that ship and that Tupaia brought his own knowledge and understanding to travelling around the Pacific. Discovery doctrines of the West often forget the huge discovery and the nature of exploration that our ancestors undertook thousands of years before we knew them.

Courtney Sina Meredith:

We come from brilliant thinkers, incredibly intelligent, incredibly courageous people. The story of Tupaia is one to really uplift us all. I think we all need to kind of be out there sharing our stories, cutting our own paths, pioneering and being really ambitious in what it is that we want to do. There is nothing we cannot achieve and I think Tupaia demonstrates that for us all.

Awanui Ririnui-Ryan:

Tupaia never made it home. Being stuck on the boat I would have wanted to escape personally but I felt like someone had to leave their country one day and explore and come back with stories, otherwise he would have been stuck there, not experiencing finding New Zealand. He's legendary for that and obviously it wasn't forgotten. But how many people

actually know this? It's relevant for me because it's part of my history but it's important for everyone because if the world can understand Tupaia and his map maybe the world can understand more about me and other rangatahi and the way we navigate and see the world too.

[Credits]

Voiceover:

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Further Reading and resources

Digital collections

The Endeavour botanical illustrations, Natural History Museum of London

Cook's journal transcript at Kamay, National Library Australia

Captain Cook’s Voyages of Discovery, State Library NSW

James Cook and his Voyages, National Library of Australia

South Seas: Voyaging and Cross-cultural Encounters in the South Pacific, National Library of Australia

Encounters – Botany Bay, New South Wales, National Museum of Australia

The Voyages of James Cook, British Library

Endeavour 250: Natural History through Colonial Encounter, Natural History Museum of London

University of Melbourne / Indigenous Knowledge / Astronomy

Other resources

An Indigenous perspective on Cook's arrival by Dr Shayne Williams, British Library

Bruce Pascoe: Aboriginal agriculture, technology and ingenuity, ABC Digibook

Aboriginal astronomy, ABC Education

Trove, National Library of Australia

The Emu Sky Knowledge of the Kamilaroi and Euahlayi Peoples Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage

James Cook and the Transit of Venus, NASA

Captain Cook’s 1768 Voyage to the South Pacific Included a Secret Mission, Smithsonian Magazine

Captain Cook’s 1768 Voyage to the South Pacific Included a Secret Mission, ABC Education

Star Stories of the Dreaming, Macquarie University

Fuller, RS, Trudgett, M, Norris, RP & Anderson, MG 2014, 'Star maps and travelling to ceremonies: the Euahlayi people and their use of the night sky', Journal of astronomical history and heritage, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 149-160.

Resource history

This resource was published by NSW Department of Education in 2020 in support of the project, Endeavour: Eight Days in Kamay.