Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018. xiii, 240 pp. (Illustrations, maps.) US$68.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-6791-1.
Joseph Genz’s well-researched work contributes significantly to scholarly discussions in anthropology, as well as cross-discipline conversations about Oceania, voyaging, Indigenous studies and science, and resilience to colonialism. Perhaps most importantly, however, Genz brings to the foreground a critically important narrative about the people of the Marshall Islands as skilled seafarers with knowledge about the environment that surpasses the instruments and abilities of Western scientific traditions, such as the buoys of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that cannot detect the subtle wave patterns discernible to Marshallese navigators. Genz’s sensitive portrayal shatters dominant narratives that view the Marshallese primarily as victims of United States nuclear weapons testing during the Cold War; when viewed as such, the Marshallese are denied their agency as strong advocates for their islands and culture. Yes, the impacts of the sixty-seven detonations have been devastating and continue to affect the lives of the Marshallese people in countless ways, but as Genz’s research underscores, the cultural practices of the canoes are based on ancient knowledge that predates 400 years of colonial disruptions. By documenting Marshallese efforts to reclaim canoe practices, including the highly scientific realm of wave piloting, Genz demonstrates the powerful role that canoe vitalization plays in giving strength to the Marshallese people as they address contemporary challenges, such as the nuclear legacy and the pernicious impacts of climate change.
Genz’s book, including detailed endnotes, an extensive bibliography, and a glossary of key terms from the Marshallese language, documents the active efforts by Marshallese leaders to pass along the embodied knowledge of seafaring to successive generations. Readers learn about the ways that US nuclear weapons tests have contaminated the islands of Rongelap, and disrupted the education of young Marshallese men and women who have not had the chance to complete their canoe training because residual radiological contamination means the Rongelapese cannot live on their home islands. As Genz notes, canoe knowledge and skills are embodied practices that can only be obtained from experiential learning as practitioners need to feel and listen to the patterns of the waves to determine their location on the open ocean. The exile of the Rongelapese from their ancestral homelands disrupted the continuity of canoe building and transmission of knowledge, a direct consequence of the US government nuclear weapons tests that is critical to recognize.
As a result of his close relationships with the Marshallese people, Genz accompanied Korent Joel from Rongelap as Joel worked to complete his navigational training and demonstrate his abilities to the traditional leaders who maintain the authority to confer the title of ri-meto, or person of the ocean. Korent Joel successfully sailed the long distances between atolls and demonstrated his skills sufficiently to earn the equivalent of the English-language “captain” before his death in 2017. Genz’s relationships also enabled him to accompany Alson Kelen on a long-distance inter-atoll voyage that underscored Kelen’s unwavering commitment to obtaining the skills of his ancestors so he, in turn, could carry them forward to future generations through his Waan Aelõñ in Majel (Canoes of the Marshall Islands) program to build and sail traditional canoes. Through Genz’s careful ethnography, we see the deep attachment of the Marshallese people to the sea, as well as their fierce dedication to retain and transmit the knowledge to future generations, even if this requires unconventional methods at times.
In addition to the robust scholarly contributions of Genz that put the Marshall Islands into regional and global conversations about the role of canoe revitalization as a form of cultural resilience and strength, Genz’s work builds on scholarship regarding the importance of language to communicate worldviews and cultural meaning. Breaking the Shell, a title referring to the degree of strength required to break a turtle shell or successfully navigate low-lying islands that are only visible to navigators when in close range, is filled with Marshallese terms and proverbs that denote the symbolic importance of the canoe to the people, and communicates the depths of scientific understanding required by Marshallese navigators, including physics (of wave movement), astronomy, meteorology, ornithology, and ichthyology, as well as the memory and ability to put complex knowledge into context.
A strength of Genz’s work that is not included in the book’s structure—perhaps because he reflects the importance of humility that Genz describes in the Marshallese community—is Genz’s ethical approach to research. From the beginning of his interactions with the Marshallese, Genz develops reciprocal relationships with the people and explores the role he can play as a non-Marshallese to document the brilliance and importance of Marshallese canoe knowledge. At the request of Korent Joel, Genz arranges for a university physicist and oceanographer to join inter-atoll travels to acknowledge the validity of Marshallese wave piloting science, but also to give Joel a chance to learn about the ocean from others, given the interruption of Joel’s own training. Genz models what respectful, engaged, supportive research looks like. He draws attention to the knowledge and commitment of people like Alson Kelen, for completing an inter-atoll journey in the high winds, even when others advised against it. Genz comments: “I cannot help but admire what Alson has just accomplished” (172), language rarely seen in academic accounts of fieldwork.
A poignant discussion in the book centres around the “paradoxical dilemma” of the impact of sharing closely guarded family knowledge regulated by the iroij, or traditional leaders. The efforts of the navigators and the iroij to share canoe knowledge outside of families and clans so the knowledge will endure simultaneously “erode(s) their identity and status” and reshapes “the special relationship between navigators and their iroij” (121). Genz communicates effectively his understanding of the social costs for his collaborators, and places Korent Joel, Alson Kelen, and the Marshallese navigators in conversations with the famed Satawalese navigator, with Papa Mau Piailug, and native Hawaiian navigator Nainoa Thompson for their commitment to reclaim ancestral navigation routes, and to spark canoe projects in numerous Indigenous communities. The Marshallese, as Genz helps us understand, are part of a regional and global tidal wave of Indigenous canoe revitalization that celebrates the ingenuity, brilliance, and complexity of the ancestral knowledge that shapes and guides the future.
Read this book. Talk about this book. Teach with this book.
Holly M. Barker
University of Washington, Seattle, USA