To this day, the single most transformative experience in my life was a day spent on the Hōkūle'a in Hawai’i.
For the uninitiated, the Hōkūle'a is a full scale replica of an ancient Polynesian double-hulled voyaging canoe. On these oceanic caravans, our Moana ancestors navigated and settled the Pacific, using only the celestial bodies and the murmurings of mother nature as guides.
The Hōkūle'a was birthed in 1975, the crowning achievement of the Polynesian Voyaging Society in a time of Hawaiian cultural renaissance. The initial goal of the Hōkūle'a was to redefine scientific theories about Polynesian navigation and settlement of the Pacific Ocean. But the political atmosphere in Hawai'i was blazing hot, and the emergence of the Hōkūle'a was the major strike indigenous Hawaiians needed to reassert their rightful place after years of oppression.
Though the Hōkūle'a is constructed of fiber-glass, resin, plywood and other modern materials, don’t let that be a point of distraction.
What’s more important is what the Hōkūle'a embodies: the audacity of our navigating forefathers to defy the ridiculous odds, to subdue the waves and settle the vast Pacific Ocean, while on the other side of the globe, bigger, and supposedly more advanced ships were still hugging coastlines because they afraid of falling off the earth.
On a dewey Sunday morning in June of 2005, our voyaging group, comprised of fellows from the Pacific-American Foundation leadership training program, embarked on the experience of a lifetime - sailing the Hōkūle'a from Moloka’i to ‘Oahu.
Normal people yearn for celebrity encounters, for vacations is an exotic locale, to win the lottery - I was the weirdo who dreamt of sailing on the Hōkūle'a. As we arrived at the wharf, I looked at her and gushed like an oversexed teenager.
We met our captain, the legendary Nainoa Thompson, a man small in stature who speaks very gently, but, oh, he leads big. Nainoa briefed us on proper protocol on the deck, but most importantly, the core values of voyaging - to be of one mind, to care for our shipmates, to be kind and to nurture our kinship. Clearly, this was not the time and place to be selfish.
And so we sailed.
The smell of the sea took me back to my young years of growing up in Tonga, where my curiosity of all things oceanic led to several near-death encounters, from drownings to heat exposure that resulted in a severe sunburn (my brother and I hijacked a boat and set out for open sea...and fell asleep) and a stare down with a moray eel in low tide (the eel won by sheer intimidation, but I ran faster) - but I still went back for more. The ocean became my life.
As my shipmates learned how to steer the canoe, I sat in the back and for ten hours, I was in my own place. I silently devoured and savored every motion of the sea. I dipped my hand into the ocean as the waves would drop and rise. The mist salted my lips and my eyes. I was empowered by the knowledge that these were same watery highways traveled long ago by our ancestors. The Hōkūle'a experience fully validated what I always knew about us and our nature as ocean voyaging people.
Voyaging and navigating the vastness of the Pacific wasn’t a haphazard exercise in island hopping, as once was popular theory. It was carefully planned and orchestrated, and required not just consensus of the voyaging party, but also the blessings of mother nature.
Anciently, successful voyages hinged on the values of kinship and nurturing social spaces. These values also transferred to communal life in a village setting and also to the political sphere. Nurturing spaces also extended to the environment, whether on land, on air or on sea. This still rings true today, as Nainoa demonstrated.
Earlier this year, I spoke at an education conference for Polynesian high school students at the University of Utah. I asked, ‘What is the greatest feat accomplished by Polynesians in the history of mankind?” Not one person knew about their ancient seafaring ancestors. As the presentation went on, the students became fascinated and in the end, empowered. Yet, some harbored bitter feelings that this was something they never learned at home.
Just as the Hōkūle'a served as a catalyst for reframing scientific theories about Polynesian navigation, it can also serve another purpose in reframing the dialogue about Polynesians today.
For too long, we’ve been grossly misrepresented in the media, education, politics and crime (you name it) through the lens of a cultural deficit model. It’s the same old tactic ripped from the colonial manual of oppression - erode the culture, erode their identity, their values and they will be rendered powerless. Today, we continue to be portrayed as a savage people with a propensity for violence, with no aspirations, with no intelligence. We must step up and redefine the rules.
One of the things I find disheartening is when one of our own join in this denigrating exercise of marginalizing Polynesian people. It’s even worse when we internalize the cultural deficit model and tell our children that culturally, we have nothing to offer, thus shutting the door on connecting our values to a larger system of universal values that connects humanity.
This needs to stop.
In 2012, the Hōkūle'a will embark on a 36 month world tour to promote sustainability. It’s an ambitious undertaking, but Nainoa, channelling the audacity of our ancestors, is confident it can be done. Likewise, we should channel the same energy to mobilize and speak out against social injustice, to build our communities and promote the cultural values that define who we truly are.
----- Richard
Link to the Hokule'a site
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