Master navigators Topias Urupoa and Sisario, the brother and son of Micronesian master navigator Dr. Mau Pialug, led the voyagers from Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia who sailed for five days in the Pacific Ocean on small canoes without using modern navigational tools.
Urupoa, is 70, one-legged and blind.
Fitial said the visitors have no passports and other identification documents but are allowed to enter and stay on Saipan because the CNMI government invited them.
“Without a passport, they wouldn’t be allowed to come in [under the federal immigration system],” said the governor.
A Carolinian, Fitial said his family is among the descendants of the Satawal people who first sailed to Saipan centuries ago.
Satawal is a tiny atoll in Yap with a population of less than a thousand people.
Their navigational skills are recognized throughout the Pacific region.
“In the Carolines, navigation is a language of its own,” said the governor during his weekly press conference yesterday.
Urupoa, who has diabetes, said his condition is not a hindrance to their goal of teaching and passing on to islanders in the Pacific their traditional navigational skills.
He said he’s using his five senses and his students to determine their direction when sailing.
“I use my sense of touch and smell to feel the wind direction,” he said in an interview with his son Cecilio Raiukiulipiy as interpreter.
He said he wants to pass his skills to the younger generation.
“I believe that traditional navigation will survive for many years. The young islanders are eager to learn,” he said.
Francis Temaungil of Palau said he joined the group because he wants to “empower” himself.
A self-employed father and grandfather who used to work as an aircraft mechanic, Temaungil said traditional navigation is “a lost art” that should be cherished.
