Hawaiian Star Compass: Mahalo Sea and Stars Presentation on Highlights and Behind the Scenes Art as Social Practice

“Hawaiian Star Compass: Mahalo Sea and Stars”

In 2018 veteran Hōkūle‘a captain and master navigator Kālepa Baybayan selected Kumu Barbara Sarbin, Kumu Lisa Barnard, and the Volcano School of the Arts and Sciences to work with and share his teachings like the Hawaiian Star Compass through a Native Skywatchers NASA grant awarded to Annette S. Lee in 2019. This work is done to honor his legacy.

The Native Skywatchers research and programming initiative has been recording, mapping, and sharing Indigenous sky and earth place-based knowledge for nearly two decades. From NASA to Fond du Lac Tribal College to exoplanet research at the USQ-Centre for Astrophysics … Native Skywatchers is a local and global leader in Indigenous science methodology and research with long-term broad impacts. More recently Native Skywatchers began working in partnership with OSPAPIK, (Ocean and Space Pollution, Artistic Practices and Indigenous Knowledges), through the work Annette S. Lee who is a Senior Researcher on the OSPAPIK team.

Presented here will be highlights from a performance installation entitled “Hawaiian Star Compass- Mahalo Sea & Stars, Giving Thanks to the Koholā Nation” that was on exhibit at the Wailoa Art Center in Hilo, Hawai’i in March 2025. Using a 10-week interdisciplinary, project-based co-learning, co-creating model, students in the Kula ‘Amakihi program at the Volcano School of Arts & Sciences were asked to follow a professional design process to first brainstorm, evolve, conceptualize, and then fabricate a solution to the creative challenge:

• How do you express mahalo/put down thanks for life through soundscape using whale song, the star compass, mo’olelo, and movement?
• Can you create empathy through soundscape performance to show what is the human’s kuleana (responsibility) in relationship to ocean/land/sky environments?

In the era of the Anthropocene, the real-time effects of global climate crisis and animal extinction are increasingly common. Plastic pollution, forever chemicals, ocean acidification, deforestation, the ever-growing list is enough to make anyone stop reading and walk away. Yet this is one of the most critical moments in all of history — not only a time of ecological devastation, but also of human identity loss. For those who are willing to tackle the ultimate challenges of our western culture, where to begin? This exhibit dares to reimagine our growing disconnection from nature and aims to foster a renewed sense of connection with the cosmos. By combining blended perspectives of indigenous culture and western science, we hold the ‘gift of multiple perspectives for the benefit of all’.

Fri, May 23
4:30-6:00pm French Time/CET
9:30am:11am CT (Central Time)
7:30am-9am PST (Pacific S Time)
5:30am-7am: Tahiti
+1 day: 24 May: 2:30am-4:30am: Melbourne

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85130463972

Meeting ID: 851 3046 3972