PRINCESS: Good afternoon Dr. Kihleng! What an honor to have you here. Before anything ese, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Princess Mhay V. Hernandez, an M.A Art Studies: Curatorial Studies major, a student of Prof. Tessa Maria Guazon. I would like to ask for your permission to record our conversation, and this interview would probably be published and available to the public. Please let me know if you have any concerns po.
Emelihter: Yes, of course. No problem.
PRINCESS: I would like to start our interview by asking, you are both a Micronesian and Pohnpeian poet and a Micronesian curator, when first curated an exhibition or organized a curatorial project when did you start realizing that curating is your passion?
Emelither: I was a humanities scholar, sort of like a curator for an exhibition in 2010. It was in Guam, it’s called Humanities Guåhan, a humanity organization in Guam. They promote the humanities and they fund a lot of projects and stuffs. I was responsible for organizing some of the Micronesian communities here because there’s a lot of islanders from another region who lived here in Guam. Guam is a sort of hub for other Micronesian, Filipinos, indigenous people so it is really mixed here. The exhibition was supposed to focus on something to do about Micronesian cultures. I organized group of representatives of different island , to get together and figure out what kind of exhibition they want that represent us, so we choose to focus on food because food is so important especially in Pacific Islands. We decided to look at food as a kind of a carrier of culture.
PRINCESS: Is that what you call food culture?
EMELITHER: Yes, the exhibition was called as Food is life, it talks about Micronesia’s diverse traditions. It was really fun because it was more community based. It wasn’t through any museum, we had different exhibition, different spaces where people can loan us and let us have the exhibition for free. It was very collaborative, and community based, and I just really enjoy working and collaborating with different people, sharing ideas and work that went to creating an exhibition, but also a more on homegrown grassroots exhibition. That was my first experience of co-curating an exhibition, but I really fell in love with curating when I worked in Wellington Museum New Zealand, Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand. I worked there for about five months because they’re curator was on maternity leave so I replace her. I was a student that time during my PhD, I was lucky to get to work there for those five months. And I fell in love with curating there.
PRINCESS: That’s so nice to hear Dr. Kihleng, have you ever tried Filipino food? I’m actually interested about your food exhibition. That is so interesting!
EMELITHER: I love Filipino food. You can get some Filipino food here, especially I love lumpia.
PRINCESS: Lumpia is like a royalty food her in the Philippines. When there’s a party, even it’s a birthday, wedding, and when someone invited you like “Hey come over to my house, we have a birthday party here”, then they will reply “Do you have lumpia? If you don’t have lumpia, I’m not going to go there”
E and P laughs.
EMELITHER: I love lumpia and pancit!
PRINCESS: we have different pancit here, like pancit bato, pancit habhab—it’s a pancit where you only eat it on banana leaf, best with spicy vinegar.
EMELITHER: I would like to try that; I thinks it’s one of the best!
PRINCESS: Moving forward, who were the people that influenced your style in curation?
Emelither: My aunt, my mom’s twin sister has spent her career in the arts and museum. She’d done a lot of curating in Los Angeles, and now in Toronto. Actually now, she moved up in museum world and now she’s a director of MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto) in Toronto, Canada. I always admire her, she’s a very well career woman and I always look up to her. But as far as I have worked with, one of the people who really influenced me, his name is Sean Mallon. He’s a senior museum curator at Te Papa, National Museum in New Zealand in the Pacific cultures team and he’s done a lot of work like to raise a profile of Pacific Islander artist and curation by indigenous Pacific people. He taught me a lot about curation, for caring for objects and notions of authenticity, things like that are so important and critiquing that.
PRINCESS: Amazing! So, you grew up with a relative that is into art, and there’s this someone influenced your career so much. It’s interesting you really have a fantastic journey in curating. May I also ask why you chose Micronesian Studies as your field of specialization?
EMELITHER: I actually started off in literature, in English literature. That was my passion, cause I’m a poet and I love nobles, poetry. And my bachelors and masters are in English literature, Pacific Island literature and creative writing, but after that I didn’t want my PhD in English literature. I wanted to do a Pacific Islander study. I think I just want to be out of literature. I wanted to study under a well-known Pacific Islander scholar named Dr. Teresia Teaiwa she passed away actually. She worked in Wellington, and New Zealand, she runs a Pacific Islander studies program at Victoria University of Wellington for more than 10 years and I really wanted to study under her. So I decided to just try and apply there. I got in.
PRINCESS: I actually have a question about you being a writer. Based on my research on 2008, you published a poem titled “My Urohs,” and translated it into English. It received praises from well-known writers like Teresia Teaiwa and was described as an ethnographic poet with the languages and imagery of Pohnpei and Micronesia. This is indeed an exciting new contribution to Pacific literature. With this, I assumed you see a connection between poetry and curatorial practice. I wonder, how do you apply your knowledge in ethnographic studies to poetry and curatorial practice? Are there formulas needed, or does it come naturally?
EMELITHER: I think I wrote in my PhD thesis about a poetry of things. And I feel like writing about objects or things if you choose to call it that, I feel like it’s so important to write about material culture and to feelings and sense like multi-sensorial feelings. I sense for reality and feelings like touch, smell, taste. Especially when you think of these objects, in Pohnpei we call it “dipwisou kesempwal” or precious things. If you’re thinking about it as like your ancestor or your relatives, things that your genealogically connected to, maybe it’s from your region or it actually comes from your island or where you from, then it is so much than just an object. And so, how you write something about that right? Even for an audience, or for yourself and even your community, I always feel like I want to go beyond just like the objective and scientific ethnographic description. I want to take steps further and feel like poetry, is a way to merge and connect the object which for many of us that is like a living thing or our ancestor. I think it does come naturally to me because I’m a poet and I write poetry. I always written forms about things because I’m in love with material culture and there so much you can write about a thing or an object. You can bring it to life. And connect with it through poetry. I think that’s what missing in a lot of museums, is that human connection and poetry can provide that feeling. I feel like it could be a method. And I used it as a methodology in my thesis, writing poetry about this skirts Urohs
PRINCESS: I read the Urohs, and it’s beautiful. We actually have the same pattern of writing about material culture. You’re connecting it to something that is really related to you, not just on your blood or genealogy but more like this is my spirit guide. We have this kaduwa here in the Philippines. It would be best to choose something that could be your spirit guide. You can call it your ‘twin spirit if you see these things.’ That’s one of the things that caught my interest when I entered studying ethnographic and material culture. In addition to this, I watched one of your Youtube videos. I really like it because it’s like you’re asking yourself, what should be my animal spirit? Maybe I’m a cat cause I’m a cat person? I’m curious about the symbolic animals concerning genealogies in your poem “To Swim with Eels.” What’s with the eels, and what is the significance of this symbol in your genealogy and oral history?
EMELITHER: I’m not genealogy connected to freshwater eels, they’re not my spirit animals–I wish. I grew up in a small village like a province, it’s called Saladak. That area lot of people there are members of a clan called Lasialap, and that clan they see themselves as their spirit animals, they called it Eni, the freshwater eels. They cannot eat it or anything like that. They don’t worship it but they see it as a relative. So this area, where I grew up, some of my friends are Lasialap, in Pohnpei they call it part of culture or society, you earn your descent or your clan membership. All my friends are Lasialap (lasyala). My mother is an American so I don’t have any clan membership, so in that poem (to swim with eels) I’m writing about what it is about me growing up in this community where everyone is Lasialap but I wasn’t. I didn’t have a clan. But I still belong to that community.
PRINCESS: Wow, that is a good one. You connected yourself to the community. Something caught my attention; this may be off-topic, I watched the Disney film movie “Moana” and the grandmother of Moana, she’s always near the seashore and dancing with the sea animal, we call it here “pagi” (marine ray). And Moana always asked her, “what are you doing? Why are you dancing with them?” and answered her back that she’s one of these sea animals.
EMELITHER: I love the Grandma She’s the best part there!
Princess: I actually think that we Pacific Islanders, we have connections with each other like Filipinos, Micronesian, Austronesian in general, we shared the same genetic mark.
EMELITHER: Yes, even the indigenous Taiwanese.
PRINCESS: Yes, whenever I see someone from Indonesia, Malaysia, I had to look at them twice thinking if they are also Filipino. Just like you Mam, you really look like a Filipino.
EMELITHER: If you see my dad, everyone thinks my dad is a Filipino. The Filipino’s here, they don’t believe him, and they are convinced he is a Filipino. And he replied “No , I’m a Micronesian”.
PRINCESS: When Prof.Tessa Guazon, introduced you to me, she told me that she know someone who’s a really good curator. I started looking for your profile on Google, I was stunned and asked myself, is she a Filipino? Cause she really looks like one. And when I saw the details that you’re a Micronesian, I realized we do share a common genetic mark.
EMELITHER: Yeah, you’re lucky you have Prof. Tessa as your adviser, she’s really a wonderful curator.
Princess: How did the two of you meet? Did you have had any project with her related in curating an exhibit?
EMELITHER: Not yet, but I want too. Oh wait, so we’re actually collaborating, we’re both interlocutors for the Asia Pacific Triennial, so that’s how we met and got to know each other virtually.
PRINCESS: Wow, what an interesting collaboration po. I’m interested also in your curation career. Your present studies about revisualizing and repositioning Pohnpei’s material and visual culture center on the handiwork or menginpeh of Micronesian women. Your works are essential additions to archival research on Pohnpeian materialities and their representations in German museums, such as MARKK Hamburg. Are there challenges in presenting the narratives you write to Western countries? Related to this, there is a rising concern in curatorial practices, the decolonization of an ethnographic museum, are you in favor of the decolonization of museums?
EMELITHER: Yes, definitely, well in Germany right now is kind a reckoning with their colonial legacy or their colonial baggage. Well, it’s literally a colonial baggage. During the German empire, they had colonies in the Pacific Island, in Africa, and they took so much, they took took took material culture from Oceania and from Africa, now they’re dealing with having like a reckoning of these excess baggage (colonial baggage). Of all these things they took during colonial times that are primarily in the storage facilities because they do not have enough space in their museums. So they are trying to decolonize their museum right now in Germany. I was working like you, in an ethnographic museum, one of the oldest in Hamburg. They are trying to figure out, how to deal with all this stuff that they took. It’s very complicated because they don’t know the provenance of a lot of material, they don’t know where it came from or who made it. This issues about repatriating/ repatriation law. Trying to talk about writing or doing exhibit about Oceania material. Is very much kinda like an education at the same time because the audience in Germany, they don’t really know about their colonial history in the Pacific Island. They know about Africa, but they don’t know they have colonies in Samoa, Papua New Guinea, Micronesia, they have no idea. And they don’t know about the Pacific Islands at all. It’s like an education to teach Germany, their audiences, or people about the material they took from these places that are been in their country now. So, it’s a sort of a weird situation where they have all of these things from places like where I came from but then they are pretty much ignorant about these things.
PRINCESS So they can’t define the materials?
EMELITHER Yes, it’s a strange dynamic trying you to educate. My role was part of this decolonization of this museum but as the same time it’s not really my job to educate them about these things they took you know. I was more interested on how to create an indigenous space for myself and other islanders in the museum. How to connect the material culture their back to Pohnpei, and how to make people in Pohnpei aware of these materials, because they still don’t know that it exists. They don’t know all these heritage in Germany. They just know that Germans were in Pohnpei. We know that is violent time and challenging but they don’t know Germany took all of this stuff and has it there in their museum.
PRINCESS Well, that’s actually one of the problems with all the museums right now. Like, you can’t return the things that they took or ask them to return it, for instance, telling them “hey return that to my country if you don’t know the history of the item. Who gave you the permission to take it?”
EMELITHER Yes, it’s very complicated and difficult to have difficult conversation.
PRINCESS So, are you in favor of the decolonization of the museums?
EMELITHER: Oh yeah, definitely. But I don’t think museums can be decolonized. It is important to try to decolonize or whatever that means. I feel like it means different things to different people or museums. You know, the museum itself is a colonial establishment. It is something that Westerners develop. So, it’s always been about displaying other people’s culture, putting other on display. I feel like it’s always rooted in colonialism and empire. To decolonize a museum—to really decolonize the museum you almost take it apart and it is more about how you do curatorial work, consciously indigenous or collaborative.
PRINCESS: Yeah I agree with you po. I think we should avoid words that carries excess baggage. For example, calling ethnolinguistic people “tribe” because that’s a Western thing. So, I guess when writing about material culture we need to be careful with our words, because words are powerful and dangerous.
EMELITHER Yes, there’s actually a great article, I’ll send you about the word ‘traditional’. There’s a famous Samoan, he’s a writer and also a painter. His name is Albert Wendt. He wrote this article, or he didn’t write the article, Sean Mallun did, my former boss. But Albert, he seeks the word ‘traditional’ and when we’re planning the Pacific cultures exhibition at Te Papa, he told them not to use the word ‘traditional’. Because you know, traditional cultures, you would never call a white culture and you don’t want anyone to use the word ‘traditional’, use like Tagalog or Visayas or Pohnpei just don’t use the word ‘traditional.
PRINCESS: I encountered a lot of that in most of the books that I’ve read, specifically books that are related in cultural anthropology. I observed that there’s this tribe calling. One of my interest studies is about blade smithing, and some of the books labeled it as blacksmithing, I wondered, why they do call this blacksmithing, then I found out that they connected this word to black peoples who’s making blades. Therefore, we really need to be carefully with words that we use when writing about material culture.
EMELITHER Definitely. I agree.
PRINCESS: If we continue this kind of activity in the future, do you think curatorial, and art can help heal the past wound caused by slavery, racism, and colonization?
EMELITHER I definitely think it can help, I know for instance, there this wonderful museum Leiden in the The Netherlands, I’m trying to remember the name, but they have Volkenkunde. In the Netherlands, their National Museum is spread throughout the Netherlands. They have a main one and they have exhibition about slavery. I didn’t get to see it but I really want to go there. And they worked with the communities that I asked for the African and the Netherland history and also South African, and then the curatorial collaborative project, it’s also a form of healing. To have an exhibition like that focus on slavery, it’s history and legacy. I think it is an avenue in healing, reconciliation. Museums has so much potential, and many are doing a lot of incredible work is healing. Others, I think have a long way to go towards that.
PRINCESS: I agree with you, we have so much to think beyond healing through art and exhibition. I’m curious, about your experience, you have traveling exhibitions. What are the challenges in curating different cultural arts?
EMELITHER Honestly, I only had to work with Pacific collections, or I guessed I have the honor and I’ve been lucky to work in the Pacific collections, so I hadn’t dealt a lot about the issues of representation, even if it’s something perhaps not from Pohnpei but maybe something from Māori and Sāmoan, I feel like we’re connected in some way. I don’t see myself as an expert on material from out there or wherever, but I have friends who are from these places, so I tried to get their assistance. I curated a large temporary exhibition, and co-curated with the Oceania curator in Hamburg. It was called in the shadow of the venus, Lisa Reihana and the Pacific Taonga, so the highlight piece in the exhibit is Reihana’s “In Pursuit of Venus [Infected]’. She has this large-scale video installation, it’s huge like a panorama, so that was one of the highlight pieces and one of the walls. It’s groundbreaking, her video depicts an interaction between Pacific people and Europeans, when they first came in the Pacific. For the first time, you’ll get to see the Pacific Islanders viewpoints depicted during the first encounter, it’s really interesting and beautiful. Also hypnotic, when you’re watching it, you’re like you’re in the video. So, that’s one in one wall and other side of the room is exhibited the collections from Oceania collection in the MARKK. There’s one only object from Pohnpei in the whole exhibit.
PRINCESS: Only one?
EMELITHER Yes, everything else is from Papua New Guinea, Samoa, so it’s a wide variety of objects that me and my co-curators selected. A lot of these material items, I don’t know about so I tried to read and also contacts friends of mine who are from these places to get further information and just to get their indigenous viewpoint. I didn’t just want to display these things without having some of kind of indigenous voice. Also, for the didactics and wrote for the exhibition catalog. That was a bit challenging because I never wanted to offend people whom these objects belong.
PRINCESS: I guess, there’s really a lot of challenges in curating diverse materials. Moving forward, in one of my research projects, I see that you have an upcoming exhibit at Griffith University, the “Air Canoe, Connecting Northern Oceania.” Can you tell us more about how you came up with this project? Can you give us some tips on creating linkages, especially with international curators?
EMELITHER: Actually, the Griffith’s Asia perspective, it was a panel last night. I was in a panel discussion last night with another curator Ruha Fifita, who’s a curator at Queensland art gallery (to be confirmed) who hosted the Asia Pacific Triennial, and she’s one of the co-curators in the exhibition. Professor and Australian National University (ANU) Professor Dr. Katerina Teaiwa, it was hosted by a media in Australia. That was last night, I think it should be available online soon. But the exhibition is really for the Asia Pacific Triennial at QAGOMA, air canoe and it’s focus in the islands of Northern Oceania, which primarily Micronesia, but not all the island, just the Pohnpei, Kosrae and the Marshall Islands – there’s quiet some island that weren’t presented in the exhibition. That wasn’t up to me, that was up to the main curator, Dr. Greg Dvorak, and the Oceania curator. But they ask me to participate because of my work with, in Pohnpei and with material culture, so I co-curated with a friend of mine in Pohnpei as section in the exhibit, focus on Urohs or Pohnpeian skirts. Because for me it was really important that there was a woman’s art form as part of the exhibition, because women wore it, especially with the textile it is significant throughout the Pacific especially with Micronesia and Pohnpei. Women have had this long relationship with cloth, and cloth is a form of wealth today in Pohnpei. And I really wanna exhibit, I feel like you cannot have an exhibit focusing on Micronesia without including the skirt because they’re the most visible art form in the Islands right now. So, my friend and I co-curated this exhibition and we acquired new skirts from the artist, the Uroh’s artist but then we also loaned our own skirts. So, I loaned about seven of my skirts and my friend loaned about five or six, and then our photographers loaned some of hers. We wanted to have new skirts, but we also wanted to have skirts we have worn and loved from our own collections, we felt that would be so important to exhibit those as well and not just the new one. Another woman I know is an avid collector, I ask her to be our photographer, she took photos of some other women, some of the artist in Pohnpei. That was the primary focus I think, I didn’t just want to exhibit the Urohs because people wouldn’t have a cultural context or they wouldn’t known the function that the skirt play on the island, just from them seeing it hanging. So I thought, it would be so important to have visual component with some other photographs. We created this collage with photos of women wearing the skirts and shown the way they worn and the way they display on the store, and some historic photographs.
PRINCESS: The representation of the textiles is really interesting. It’s fascinating to hear that with these textiles, you already show to the people that this is Urohs and this is my culture.
EMELITHER: Well, the Philippines has amazing textiles. I love the artist Rocky Cajigan and he’s been exhibiting some of his work at the APT10: Asia Pacific Triennial 10 (happening in Brisbane, Australia at QAGOMA: Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art). He does a lot of work with communities and a lot of the make textiles. I forgot the name of the province in the Philippines, but he has amazing work in AP.T . I listened to him when he was in the panel over the weekend and that was really good.
PRINCESS: It’s nice to hear that there’s a Filipino who exhibit’s textiles. I’m not familiar with him po, but maybe I can ask Mam Tessa or other people who knows him.
EMELITHER: Yes, he collaborates with the communities, and they make things together.
PRINCESS: That’s another thing to learn po, speaking of these amazing textiles. We both know the quintessential connection of Micronesian and the Austronesian, the roots of Filipinos. In fact, other countries sometimes call us “Pacific Islanders.” I am a Filipino, and we indeed shared a common ancestor (this includes culture and history-the second Filipino, a Cebuano, Saint, in fact, there’s this history about Chamorros.) Can you tell us more about the connection between the Austronesian and Micronesian in terms of cultural heritage?
EMELITHER: I don’t know a lot, but what I know is that anthropologist and linguists have been able to trace connections primarily through linguistic. Our shared Austronesian language. I know that some of there research words that are connected throughout Austronesia, and I think of these is the number five, I think five is something similar to all Austronesians speakers, for us it’s limau, and I don’t know what number five is in Tagalog.
PRINCESS: Number five is lima in tagalog po.
EMELITHER Yes, lima. I think throughout Austronesia the number five is always lima, limau or something close to that. What I know is they’ve been able to trace our connections primarily through the linguistic history and connections. Also in the migration history, the migration route throughout Austronesia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. That’s what I know.
PRINCESS: Thank you for that Mam, I’ve asked this, Ma’am, because I am conducting preliminary research about symbols embedded in Filipino bladed weapons, which are also rooted in Austronesian culture. Just to share what I have found so far, Ma’am, designs, and patterns like suns and animals can be seen in bladed weapons. And these designs have cultural/spiritual meanings. Does Urohs have cultural/ spiritual meanings? Can more about the cultural significance of designs in Urohs?
EMELITHER Urohs are a form of contemporary dress, they’re not something that has been made throughout the history. They evolve in this kind of contemporary dress. Actually, the word Urohs comes from the Japanese word, I think zurōsu or something that means undergarment in Japanese. It’s origin
come from the Japanese colonialism. The Urohs themselves today, the designs they do have meanings, certain designs where certain women will create, they draw it and then they applique it to the skirts. They machine embroidered it into the skirt. So there is that meaning, but it’s not necessarily designs or patterns that comes from the past. It’s all primarily contemporary.
PRINCESS: So, are you also into contemporary art, Dr. Kihleng?
EMELITHER Yes, these skirts are contemporary, I love fashion, especially Pacific Island fashion. It makes me happy, you know the bright colors, and the flow and patterns. I just always love that. But the Urohs, there something that there’s an evolution occurred and then produced the Urohs. First there was women used to make cloth from banana fiber and breadfruit fiber, but we don’t make that anymore, with imported cloth women started sewing a lot of machineries inspired dresses and stuff. Eventually women also made undergarments, slips and stuffs. The slip came from under the dress and became the Urohs. I think women no longer want to be burden with all of the layers, it’s a tropical climate. The fashion evolves, slip came from under and became the main dress. There aren’t any specific patterns or designs that I can trace to pre-contact or something like that.
PRINCESS: So, you anchored designs in the contemporary period, but still, it’s a mark of Micronesian people. Especially when I look at Google, it provided a lot of information about Urohs. Just last night, I watched the One Micronesia podcast, you’re the resource speaker there. I’m just confused on some things, have you mentioned that when you’re a child, instead of playing you like to read books? You love to write, is that right po?
EMELITHER: Reading as a child? Oh no, I was saying I did not like writing.
PRINCESS: Oh, but you love reading po? And people find it unusual?
EMELITHER Oh no (laughing). I was saying, I grew up on Pohnpei in that small area or community, I didn’t like reading and writing. I wanted to play outside because if I stay inside and read a book that would be really weird, and strange. Because me and my friends, everyone played outside.
PRINCESS: So, when did you realize that you want to write po?
EMELITHER I didn’t start writing poems probably not until college.
PRINCESS: So you did not see to yourself that you will become a writer and a curator?
EMELITHER When I was in high school, I don’t think I was too focused on my career. I thought more about that when I went to university, that’s what I think I got more serious about my studies. As a child, I hated reading and writing (laughs together). It took me a while to figure it out and I’m still figuring it out Princess.
PRINCESS: Wow, what an amazing journey and soul searching it was. Just like canoe, you’re traveling. Canoe is in Micronesia or Pohnpein?
EMELITHER People still use canoes. Not as much now, people like to use motorboat for convenience, and you don’t have to paddle. Paddling is a lot of work, my dad grew up paddling canoes, he said its so tiring. So everyone likes the motorboat now with the engine.
PRINCESS: Oh well, same here in the Philippines, people here preferred motorboat than bangka. We call our boat in tagalog bangka. Fisherman still use though for their occupation. Is there any specific area in Micronesia or Pohnpein where people use canoe for fishing or is it use for tourism only?
EMELITHER: It’s not use for tourism, its mainly for people, they still use it for fishing or going around the island. They still use canoe more on Chuuk and Yap, the other islands close to Pohnpei. In the outer island they still use it there. They are more into seafaring because the island is small at all, so they have to have a knowledge in navigating from one island to the next. Where Pohnpei is a high island, a volcanic island. So sailing is not as important to us because the land is very bountiful and very fertile so people are not as reliant to the ocean. But the people from the smaller islands, they still rely on the ocean.
PRINCESS: Is the Air Canoe, exhibition connected to the canoe of Micronesia?
EMELITHER Yes, actually that’s the important part of the exhibition. I didn’t co-curate that portion, but there’s a canoe at the center of the exhibition and that really represents the culture of Chuuk and Yap, the outer islands I mentioned. They still maintain the knowledge of wayfinding and navigating, so they know how to travel from one island to another by the stars. And they still rely on that knowledge that’s pass down from their ancestors. That’s really an important part of cultures and some parts of Micronesia where they still practice that.
PRINCESS: Do they use hands to measure the location?
EMELITHER Yes, they do that, they know how to read the stars, how to read the waves, and the patterns, to look at the birds, it’s a whole knowledge system.
Princess: so that’s why it became part of the exhibition?
Emelither: Yes, because the exhibition is really looking now at the canoe culture, wayfinding still important on those islands. Today, the Air Canoe is the airplane. That is why it is called air canoe. Now we’re traveling using the airplanes, although a lot of people still travel by canoe, but obviously if you want to go somewhere outside in Micronesia, you need to travel by airplane.
PRINCESS: That is why it is called air canoe, because the modern canoe is the airplane. Now I finally understood the main subject of this exhibit. I learned a lot from you today, especially on creating linkages and collaboration with other curators. It was my honor to have you in my interview.