UH Hilo alumna takes her heritage management knowledge to Yap
Shania Tamagyongfal’s master’s thesis explored the use of ancestral knowledge to address the modern challenge of climate adaptation.

By Susan Enright.
An alumna of the heritage management graduate program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo says in a recent interview that her thesis work on the potential impact of ancestral knowledge on modern climate adaptation is making an impression on the island of Yap.

Shania Gootineg Tamagyongfal, of Yapese descent, was born and raised in Hilo, but along with her family has retained close ties to Yap. Her family is from the village of Toruw in the municipality of Maap, located on the northeast side of the island.
Tamagyongfal received her bachelor of arts in anthropology and certificate in Pacific Island studies in 2020 from UH Hilo, where she continued her studies and received her master of arts in heritage management in May of this year. Her master’s thesis focused on using oral histories of Marshallese and Yapese voyaging to support the development of community engagement for sustainable sea transport.
“I focused on the oral histories of Yapese voyaging for climate resilience as a form of sustainable sea transport through remathau practices of community engagement,” she says in a recent interview with the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center (PI-CASC) where she was a graduate scholar. “The term ‘remathau’ refers to the people of the outer islands of Yap as ‘people of the sea,’ emphasizing the significance of voyaging in their daily lifestyle and how it has become a big part of their cultural identity and representation.”
The project was done by a multi-faceted research group that included fellow graduate student Jerolynn Myazoe, UH Hilo faculty from several different departments, seafaring experts, and other scholars. Her advisor was Joseph Genz, a UH Hilo associate professor of anthropology.
- UH Hilo faculty and students conduct research for e-book on Pacific seafaring (UH Hilo Stories, May 13, 2022)
Climate adaptation calls for ancestral knowledge
“Climate adaptation is important because it calls for the need to turn back to our ancestral knowledge of our environment and ways of sustainability within the Pacific,” says Tamagyongfal about her thesis work. “Especially considering that many parts of the Pacific will face the long-term effects of climate change before continental countries feel those impacts, our traditional environmental knowledge and the relationships built within communities will help support climate adaptation efforts.”
With the project, which was done jointly with Myazoe, Tamagyongfal showed that “by using these oral histories and the major themes of the sawei system, women as stewards of knowledge, bodies of seafaring knowledge, perpetuation efforts, and voyaging as a metaphor, the relationships that once supported the ancestral Yapese voyaging networks serve as the foundation for modern solutions in facing social, environmental, and economic issues, along with adapting to the effects of climate change.”
Tamagyongfal was supported in her project by PI-CASC, an agency of the Department of Interior that provided real-world experience to the upcoming scholar including travel to workshops and events where she could interface with seafarers and cultural experts and also present her work.

Tamagyongfal values the networking she did while in the climate center’s graduate scholars program saying it helped her garner support and resources to further develop her research project.
“The program also helped me become more comfortable with presentations and public speaking,” she says. “I had the chance to present at a seminar and at a symposium. It definitely made me realize the value of sharing my research more and opening up the conversation to include other regions of the Pacific as well.”
- Students travel to Stanford University for workshop on seafaring, present their research (UH Hilo Stories, Jan. 9, 2023)
The need for cultural preservation

Tamagyongfal recently spent a month in Yap and found it “really awesome” to visit some of the elders who helped with her fieldwork last summer.
“Hearing everyone’s support and feedback after they learned that I recently graduated was also quite reassuring to know that more projects and work related to my master’s are in support back home on my island of Yap,” she says in the interview. This is especially important, she says, “considering the need for cultural preservation in not only the cultural and environmental sites of value but also the intangible parts of our culture, such as the oral histories of traditional navigation and the relationships within voyaging that supported their networks for so many generations.”
Tamagyongfal hopes to find a job position that allows her to serve as a resource to her community in building more projects and programs relative to “our cultural knowledge and academic opportunities that can tie into the knowledge of our elders for our youth to expand on.”
Read the full interview at the Pacific Islands Climate Adaptation Science Center’s website.
Story by Susan Enright, a public information specialist for the Office of the Chancellor and editor of UH Hilo Stories. She received her bachelor of arts in English and certificate in women’s studies from UH Hilo.