The University of Guam Press is taking island storytelling into a new era, with help from a $200,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation.

The grant will fund a pilot digital publishing project centered on Micronesian seafaring and navigation, turning traditional knowledge into an immersive, interactive digital publication.

Unlike a regular e-book, this platform will blend text, sound, and visuals to bring oral traditions to life, capturing the rhythm, emotion, and depth of chants, songs, and Indigenous navigation techniques.

The project will be co-authored by UOG professors and master navigators, Dr. Melissa Taitano and H. Larry Raigetal, and serve as a textbook for future courses on seafaring.

To guide the initiative, UOG Press has partnered with Brown University Digital Publications and the University of British Columbia’s RavenSpace, two leaders in Indigenous and digital scholarship.

A symbolic da’ok tree, often used to build canoes, was planted on campus to mark the beginning of this cultural voyage.

UOG says this project is about more than publishing, it’s about perpetuating the wisdom of the ocean, honoring tradition, and paving a digital path for future generations of navigators.