Wayfinding as Pasifika, indigenous and critical autoethnographic knowledge

This chapter establishes the landscapes (or seascapes) of both wayfinding and critical autoethnography from a Pacific perspective. It offers definitional work around both terms, and the rich and ancient practices they only hint at. We hope our resistance to the notion of representation is clear; by sharing culturally embedded practices we are not intending to represent anything; indeed we are hoping to convey the ways in which such rich knowledge cannot be represented but must be practised. Critical autoethnography is no different. It is not a story on a page, any more than wayfinding is a canoe moving through water. Critical autoethnography and wayfinding are embedded and embodied storytelling practices, with a cumulative vision as wayfinding is. It cannot happen alone. Neither wayfinding nor critical autoethnography, this chapter asserts, are individual practices.