18 Talks, 16 Exhibits, and 102 Projects: Five Continuity Cards for Indigenous Maritime Knowledge

On 25 October 2026, TITV reported on the Ocean Affairs Council's Maritime Culture Navigation Program workshop in Kaohsiung. The event featured Amis bamboo-raft construction, maritime knowledge, and boatbuilding skills, and it also noted Indigenous fishers' participation in preserving harpoon-fishing techniques. The Council's official results, published on 21 October, add that the workshop presented 18 exchange talks, 16 exhibits, and maritime-culture films to more than 150 participants. Across nearly three years, the program's three tracks—knowledge transmission, boatcraft, and ocean arts—have supported 102 projects.

Among the projects, the Amis Kakeng Musical Group presented the complete process of building the *Torik Katomayan* sailing bamboo raft, from selecting bamboo to launch. Films documented Tao plank-boat craftsmanship, seasonal ceremonies and traditional songs, as well as Amis raft building and star navigation. These examples show that Indigenous maritime knowledge is not a set of decorative objects for an exhibition. It is a living system connecting materials, skills, seasons, sea conditions, ceremony, safe navigation, and collective responsibility.

An Exhibition Is Not the End Point

A workshop can increase visibility, but attendance alone cannot prove that a skill has been transmitted. The more meaningful questions are whether a raft can be built again, whether plank-boat knowledge is taught by the proper people in an appropriate setting, whether learners receive sufficient practice, whether navigation safety is verifiable, and whether communities retain control after cultural material is recorded and published.

The Ocean Affairs Council's 2026 program organizes work into three tracks. The knowledge-transmission track supports documentation and interpretation of maritime knowledge and coastal-community histories. The boatcraft track covers building, restoration, navigation, and exchange. The ocean-arts track supports cultural creation and public experience. Official guidance also evaluates cultural subjectivity, innovation, and sustainability. These mechanisms create a policy entry point, but they do not mean that all knowledge should become public, every image may be reused, or one funded year will automatically create a lasting training pathway.

Public funding can support cultural work; it does not purchase cultural authority. Project results require accountable reporting, while Indigenous knowledge has its own disclosure levels, restrictions, timing, and relational responsibilities. The two requirements can coexist through tiered permissions, de-identified records, community review, and clear withdrawal procedures. Administration can remain auditable without forcing communities to disclose knowledge beyond its proper boundary.

Card One: Authority and Permission

Each record involving a raft, plank boat, star reading, fishing method, song, ceremony, or route should identify the knowledge holder or governing group, who may explain it, the appropriate context, its disclosure level, permitted languages, image and audio limits, commercial-use conditions, and a date for renewed confirmation. Recording at a public event should never be treated as permanent global permission or permission to reuse material for model training.

The card must also distinguish individual consent from collective authority. A participant may consent to the use of their voice, but may not have authority to open a method, ceremony, or account on behalf of an entire people. Implementers should check permission before collection and again before publication so authorized reviewers can correct translations, limit clips, delay release, or remove material that should no longer be public.

Card Two: Skills and Apprenticeship

Transmission must follow a capability chain rather than count class sessions. For a bamboo raft, records may cover material identification and treatment, the function of each component, binding sequence, tool use, buoyancy and load, pre-launch checks, repair, and retirement. For a Tao plank boat, the community itself must define which processes, terms, ceremonies, and learner qualifications may be documented or shared.

Every learner needs practice records, master feedback, and a defined next stage. Attending one demonstration is not the same as completing an apprenticeship. Preparation, demonstration, risk, material work, and continued mentoring by skilled practitioners are professional labour and should not disappear under the label of voluntary cultural contribution. If only a film remains after the grant ends, with no person able to teach again and no materials, site, or maintenance pathway, the project preserved a record but did not sustain capability.

Card Three: Navigation and Safety

When maritime culture returns to the water, safety cannot be reduced to a generic waiver. Each voyage should document vessel condition, load, operator capability, weather and sea-state sources, route, shore contact, rescue equipment, cancellation thresholds, and emergency or near-miss records. Traditional observation and modern forecasts can complement one another, but neither should be decorative, and AI must not decide whether a voyage proceeds.

The card must protect the legitimacy of not launching. Cancellation because of sea conditions, equipment, participant readiness, or cultural timing is not a performance failure. Recording the reason and the adjustment accumulates local risk knowledge and prevents reporting pressure from pushing masters and learners onto the water in unsafe or inappropriate conditions.

Card Four: Benefits and Return

If cultural visibility produces performances, guided visits, learning resources, products, film licensing, tourism experiences, or international exchanges, participants should agree in advance on who contributes knowledge and labour, who bears maintenance and safety obligations, how income is distributed, and what proportion returns to apprenticeship, materials, facilities, and the community. Project counts, visitor totals, and media exposure are not sufficient evidence of an Indigenous cultural economy.

A benefit ledger should separately show compensation for masters and collaborators, materials and equipment, insurance and safety, administration and marketing, shared community purposes, youth development, and future maintenance. Products that use people names, traditional imagery, boat forms, or narratives require a defined term, scope, attribution method, and termination condition. A cultural economy is not simply the conversion of culture into goods. It depends on the community's power to control interpretation and to retain capability from the value that circulates.

Card Five: Data and Long-Term Stewardship

Workshops, lessons, and boatbuilding generate photographs, recordings, interviews, plans, tracks, material lists, and learner data. Every item needs provenance, date, language, permission, sensitivity, storage location, authorized viewers, version, citation rule, and deletion or closure condition. Public sites should contain only public versions. Restricted knowledge, exact gathering locations, ceremonial limits, and personal contact details require separate protection.

AI can support transcripts, align Indigenous-language and Mandarin fields, index images, flag missing records, compare versions, and remind teams when permissions expire. It must not invent missing steps, infer cultural meanings, collapse different peoples' vessels into one generic template, or send restricted material to an unapproved external service. Any AI-generated summary must point to the original record, be reviewed by someone with authority, and retain a route for correction and removal.

Replace Vague Success Claims with Verifiable Indicators

Beyond event photographs, a near-term public report can show de-identified capability progress: the number of learners who completed material and safety instruction, which processes masters verified they could perform, actual launches and cancellations, vessel maintenance status, permission completion, community-review revisions, and whether compensation and benefit-return commitments were fulfilled. A missing field should remain marked as pending; AI and administrators should not fill it with an unsupported success claim.

Medium-term measures include whether a new apprenticeship cohort starts, whether learners become assistants or operators, whether vessels remain usable after one year, whether materials return to community schools, whether international exchange becomes reciprocal, and whether derived income covers materials, insurance, and practitioners' time. These measures are closer to combined cultural, educational, and economic outcomes than one-day foot traffic.

Make Every Launch Connect to the Next

The figures—18 talks, 16 exhibits, more than 150 participants, and 102 projects—describe the scale of policy implementation. They do not prove that culture has been sustained. The deeper result is whether communities still decide what may be explained, who teaches, when a vessel launches, how risk is governed, how benefits return, and when records are opened or closed.

Five maritime continuity cards connect these responsibilities. Authority and permission protect decision rights. Skills and apprenticeship create reproducible capability. Navigation and safety keep practice from being distorted by performance pressure. Benefits and return direct cultural value back to communities. Data stewardship prevents images, terms, and knowledge from losing their boundaries after digitization. With these cards, Amis bamboo rafts, Tao plank boats, and star navigation can move beyond exhibition visibility and continue toward the next generation under Indigenous command.

Sources

• TITV: Maritime Culture Navigation Program workshop adds momentum to transmission, 25 October 2026
• Ocean Affairs Council: 18 talks, 16 exhibits, and 102 supported projects, 21 October 2026
• Ocean Affairs Council: 2026 Maritime Culture Navigation Program tracks for knowledge transmission, boatcraft, and ocean arts, 3 February 2026
• Ocean Affairs Council: 2026 Maritime Culture Navigation Program application and implementation guidance