• “The ocean is vast, and deep, and impenetrable.
    It has never been conquered by human beings.
    With its infinity of life forms, it holds many secrets."

    Think Like a Fish: New Oceanic Histories

    Photo: Kimberly Jeffries | Ocean Image Bank

Goals

The goal for Voice of the Ocean is to work with indigenous communities to gain recognition of the Pacific Ocean as a natural entity that has its own legal rights.

We will develop the argument that, to protect the ocean, what is needed is a global paradigm shift to recognize the intrinsic rights of the ocean to exist in a healthy natural state. We will network with collaborators to build a coalition, hold workshops with elders and young covering ocean issues – spiritual, cultural, historical, modern, practical, legal, and future, and participate in global meetings to present this project. Meetings will be documented, and each community/culture will add their stories, traditions, and concerns. This collection of traditional and modern wisdom from the indigenous cultures of the Pacific will become the Voice of the Ocean.

sailing

A 1994 statement from the Indigenous Environmental Network puts it best:

"Western science and technology, while appropriate to the present scale of degradation, is a limited conceptual and methodological tool—it is the “head and hands” of restoration implementation. Native spirituality is the ‘heart’ that guides the head and hands … Cultural survival depends on healthy land and a healthy, responsible relationship between humans and the land. The traditional care-giving responsibilities which maintained healthy land need to be expanded to include restoration. Ecological restoration is inseparable from cultural and spiritual restoration, and is inseparable from the spiritual responsibilities of care-giving and world-renewal."

Kimmerer, Robin Wall. Braiding Sweetgrass (pp. 336-337)
Milkweed Editions. Kindle Edition

& Next Steps

The Voice of the Ocean is now in position to move to the next level and develop a coalition to advance the rights of the Pacific Ocean. This involves building the network and coalition, creating a website, making presentations and attending important international meetings (for example, a Ted Talk at MIT in Boston in November 2024, and an International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) meeting in Nice in June 2025), and hosting a meeting in Tahiti in mid to late 2025.

This is a unique time in history where there is real momentum for a Rights of the Ocean concept and we want to seize this opportunity to establish rights that will have a lasting impact.

Financial Needs

The Voice of the Ocean needs $150,000 over the next year to advance its work. This includes:

  • $50,000 – Travel costs to meetings for Hinano and Frank Murphy for coalition building
  • 60,000 – communications/grant writer and webmaster
  • $40,000 – to host a workshop in mid to late 2025 in Tahiti to work on an indigenous rights of the ocean movement.