Voyaging and carving in the Marianas: traditional seafaring in Oceania and maritime spatial performativity

For thousands of years circulatory voyages occurred between the islands of Oceania establishing the world’s farthest-reaching culture defined by a network of shared customs. The descendants of these seafarers still engage in and teach this knowledge today, particularly in Micronesia. On a voyage in August 2023, aboard the Alingano Maisu, a recreation of a traditional doubled-hulled canoe, I assisted grandmaster navigator Sesario Sewralur use ancient wayfinding techniques to navigate from Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands to Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia. In this article, I introduce the notion of maritime spatial performativity by examining how land- and logocentric constructions are resisted through a theoretical interpretation of Indigenous traditional seafaring in Oceania. Drawing from performance studies scholarship in the context of decoloniality, I note how this body of knowledge based on material objects and embodied performances composes a theoretical approach that involves historical presence, performative space, nonhuman and human actors, conceptual and material objects, present and distant forms, and metaphysical intersections. Each is always capable of becoming at some point a traditionally performed, viewed, and slightly more durable text. By embracing these disruptive moments, we might forge a future of performance research that broadens sites of struggle and culture, which can expand Western structures of knowledge.