Who Are the Carolinian?
The Carolinians (Refaluwasch) are a Micronesian people living primarily in the Northern Mariana Islands (Saipan, Tinian, and Rota), numbering approximately 5,000-7,000. They are descended from voyagers who migrated from the central Caroline Islands (modern-day Yap, Chuuk, and surrounding atolls) beginning in the early 19th century after typhoons devastated their home islands. They speak Carolinian (Refaluwasch), an Oceanic Austronesian language related to languages spoken in the central Carolines. The Carolinians are renowned for maintaining traditional star navigation and canoe-building skills that enabled their original voyages across 500 miles of open ocean.
Traditional Navigation
Carolinian navigators (palu) preserved traditional wayfinding techniques enabling open-ocean voyaging without instruments. They used star paths, wave patterns, bird behavior, and phosphorescence to navigate between islands separated by hundreds of miles. This knowledge, passed from master to apprentice through years of training, represents one of humanity's great navigational traditions. Though motorized vessels have largely replaced sailing canoes, Carolinians have worked to preserve navigation knowledge. The Polynesian Voyaging Society's revival of Pacific navigation drew partly on Carolinian expertise. Master navigators like Mau Piailug trained voyagers across the Pacific, ensuring this knowledge survives.
Dual Identity
Carolinians in the Northern Marianas navigate between their Caroline Island heritage and their Marianas home. They maintain connections with relatives in the central Carolines while building lives in the Marianas. Their relationship with the indigenous Chamorro population has evolved from wariness to intermarriage and shared CNMI citizenship. Carolinian identity emphasizes navigation heritage, matrilineal clan organization, and connections to ancestral islands. Language maintenance faces challenges as English dominates education and commerce. Cultural festivals, canoe-building projects, and navigation training programs work to transmit heritage. This balancing of multiple identities—Carolinian, Marianas Islander, American—characterizes contemporary life.
Contemporary Carolinian
Modern Carolinians participate fully in CNMI economic and political life while maintaining cultural distinctiveness. The tourism economy provides employment though creates land pressure. US citizenship through the CNMI's commonwealth status provides opportunities but also creates brain drain as educated Carolinians leave for the mainland. Cultural programs in schools teach language and traditions. Climate change threatens both the CNMI and the ancestral Caroline atolls. Traditional canoe building and navigation continue as cultural practice if not transportation. How the Carolinians preserve their navigating heritage and distinct identity while integrating into the CNMI and broader American society shapes this voyaging people's future.
References
- Alkire, W. H. (1965). Lamotrek Atoll and Inter-Island Socioeconomic Ties
- Gladwin, T. (1970). East Is a Big Bird: Navigation and Logic on Puluwat Atoll
- Spoehr, A. (1954). Saipan: The Ethnology of a War-Devastated Island