When I watched the videos I saw many signs of the broad autism phenotype in Piailug’s speech, expressions, and behavior.  To a trained eye, there were numerous signs of autism on display.  Yet the films did not depict a disabled man.  They showed an exceptional man telling his story for an appreciative listener.   

Watching Piailug speak, I thought to myself, what would I say to him, if I were there?  Would I focus on the magnitude of his achievements, safely navigating open boats across thousands of miles of trackless ocean? Or would say the tendency to look at the ground when speaking is common in autistic people, and he does that.  I could go on to enumerate fifty points of diagnosis, but in the end I could not help but think, so what?  It’s not his autistic behaviors that matter, it’s his life work.

Mau Piailug was a respected leader in his pacific island community and the west.  He came to the attention of American media when he navigated a Hawaiian voyaging canoe 2,500 miles from Hawaii to Tahiti with nothing more than his eyes and his mind to guide him.  He didn’t use charts or a compass.  In fact, he did not even know how to use them.  He did something we regard as extraordinary, but to him it was ordinary; so much so that according to him the outcome was never in doubt. 

He simply did what he’d been trained to do from childhood.  His grandfather started his training when he was a toddler, dipping him in tidal pools so he could feel the sea.  By age 18 he could navigate on his own, and by the time of the Tahiti passage he had been navigating the Pacific for 25 years.

He willingly shared his secrets – how he did it. You start by memorizing the sky.  Not the whole sky, he assures us, just a few hundred stars.  By memorizing how the stars move through the sky and how high they climb you can determine latitude.  Sound simple?  It is, if you have a photographic memory and the ability to make accurate measurements and comparisons in your mind.  Luckily some of us autistics have that ability.

Then there are the ocean currents, and the winds, and the evidence of fish and birds.  In America autistic people are disabled by our sensory sensitivity.  For navigators like Piailug our exceptional sensitivity isn’t disabling.  It’s life saving.

There is no evidence that anyone perceived Mau Piailug as disabled in his lifetime.  To apply a disability diagnosis now from afar would strike many people as disrespectful and wrong.  In the west we apply diagnostic labels when they serve a purpose.  Most of the time, that purpose helps the person being diagnosed.  When a person learns they are autistic they may understand why they were challenged in school, or making friends.  Knowledge of autism may help them succeed better.  But that’s here, in America.   America is not an atoll in the southwest pacific.  What purpose would be served by making a person like Mau Piailug aware of autism?

A significant number of Polynesian wayfinders may have been autistic throughout the years.  We have no way to know. The fact is, autism per se had nothing to do with their finding their profession. They were chosen for their ancestry or their behaviors – both of which might suggest “autistic” to us but suggested “navigator material” to the Polynesians.  It’s worth pondering which worldview is more personally empowering.

The place autism diagnosos has meaning is in our hi-tech western world.  It’s here that autistics are disabled, and seeking explanation and insight.  For an autistic teen in a modern-day Hawaiian school, the idea that a great wayfinder like Piailug may be “autistic like me” is very empowering.  What it shows is that a class of people who are mostly disabled and less capable in our society can be exceptional in other circumstances and cultures. 

What do you think about that?

What about the idea of autism in history?

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