“Masawa—bogeokwa si tuta!”: Cultural and Cognitive Implications of the Trobriand Islanders’ Gradual Loss of Their Knowledge of How to Make a Masawa Canoe - Chapter 11

Aug 26, 2026

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Explores how the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea historically constructed large seagoing masawa canoes and their sails, focusing on the culturally embedded, distributed expertise required across multiple communal construction stages. Based on fieldwork accounts spanning the 1980s and 1990s, it traces a striking decline: by 1992 only one canoe remained, and from 1996 onward no masawa could be found in Tauwema. Examines why this complex knowledge gradually disappeared, and the resulting implications for cultural life, shared reality-making, and indigenous cognitive capacities.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages28

Reading Time1 h 11 min

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Chapter 11: “Masawa—bogeokwa si tuta!”

Fieldwork background and the loss of masawa canoes

The art of making a masawa canoe

Types of canoes used by the Trobriand Islanders

Knowledge distribution across construction stages

Implications of losing canoe-making knowledge

Chapter 11 “Masawa—bogeokwa si tuta!”: Cultural and Cognitive Implications of the Trobriand Islanders’Gradual Loss of Their Knowledge of How to Make a Masawa Canoe Gunter Senft Kwatuyavesa waga, Turn round the sail of the canoe, rakeda milaveta! its course is to the open sea! (Oruvekoya song cycle, ﬁrst stanza) A few days after I had set foot on the Trobriand Islands for the ﬁrst time in 1982,1 Ispied a masawa canoe sailing close-hauled toward Kiriwina, the main island of the Trobriands. Although I had seen Malinowski’s (1922/1978) photographs of these impressive canoes in his monograph Argonauts of the Western Paciﬁc, I was overwhelmed by the grace and beauty of this sight. Three weeks later I had the opportunity to sail on such a canoe from Kaibola, the northernmost village on Kiriwina Island, back to Tauwema, the village on Kaile’una Island that has been my place of residence during my ﬁeld research on the Trobriands for more than 25 years now. My sailing experience with a masawa canoe is one of my dearest memories so far. In Malinowski’s times Kaile’una Island as well as Vakuta Island, Kitava Island, and the village of Sinaketa on Kiriwina Island were known as the best centers for canoe-building and as the places where most expert canoe-builders and carvers lived (Malinowski 1922/1978, pp. 121–145) . In 1982 Tauwema had eight masawa, 1 This chapter is based on more than 40 months of ﬁeld research on the Trobriand Islands. I thank the National and Provincial Governments in Papua New Guinea; the Institute for PNG Studies, especially Don Niles; and the National Research Institute, especially James Robins, for their permission for and assistance with my research projects. I express my great gratitude to the people of the Trobriand Islands and, above all, to the inhabitants of Tauwema and my consultants for their hospitality, friendship, and patient cooperation over all these years. Without their help, none of my work on the language of the Trobriand Islanders (Kilivila) and on the Trobriand culture would have been possible. G. Senft (*) Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, 310, 6500 AH Nijmegen, The Netherlands e-mail: [gunter.senft@mpi.nl](gunter.senft@mpi.nl) © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 229 P. Meusburger et al. (eds.), Ethnic and Cultural Dimensions of Knowledge, Knowledge and Space 8, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-21900-4_ 11 230 G. Senft each of which had a proper name and were proudly owned by men living in the village.2 In 1992, when I returned to Tauwema for my third period of ﬁeld research, only one of these canoes remained (Nusai’s Seguvagava), and ever since 1996 there have been no masawa in Tauwema anymore. My fascination with these canoes led me to collect descriptions of how to make a masawa from Kilagola, at that time both the chief of Tauwema and a toliwaga (an owner of a masawa), and from Tosulala, another toliwaga in Tauwema, during my ﬁrst 15 months of ﬁeld research in 1982 and 1983. Mokeilobu, an expert on sails, told me how to make one, and Kilagola described how canoe prows are carved. He also informed me about canoe magic (as did Yoya, another expert magician in 1989) . The men of Tauwema greatly appreciated my interest in their big canoes. I was thus quite shocked to observe the gradual loss of the masawa in Tauwema over the years. In 1996, when I asked former owners of such canoes why nobody in Tauwema had taken the initiative to build a new masawa, their answer was simply,“Masawa—bogeokwa si tuta!”(Masawa canoes—their time is over!) . In what follows I draw on the collected descriptions3 to describe how the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea used to construct their large seagoing masawa canoes and how they used to make their sails, what different forms of knowledge and expertise they needed in order to do so during various stages of the construction processes, how this knowledge was socially distributed, and what the social implications were of all

FAQs

What changes occurred in Tauwema regarding masawa canoes between 1982 and 1996?

In 1982 Tauwema had eight masawa canoes. By 1992 only one remained, and from 1996 there were no masawa canoes in Tauwema anymore.

How does the chapter describe the knowledge needed to make a masawa canoe?

It describes a complex, socially distributed body of knowledge and expertise, including skills for constructing canoes, making sails, carving prows, and related canoe magic, organized across different stages and specialists.

What broader cultural effects does the chapter connect to the loss of masawa-making knowledge?

It links the gradual disappearance of this distributed knowledge to implications for the Trobriand culture, their social construction of reality, and indigenous cognitive capacities.

Aug 26, 2026

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