As the double-hulled voyaging canoe Hokule‘a returned to its home dock at Sand Island from Maunalua Bay on Valentine’s Day, 23-year-old crew member Lucy Lee texted her boyfriend to postpone their planned celebration a day because she was still sailing.
Fifty years ago, the 42-foot-long Hokule‘a, a now internationally celebrated and revered pillar of Polynesian culture, was preparing to launch at Kaneohe Bay. At the time, Lee and cellphones were not yet in existence; today, she is part of the next generation of Hokule‘a volunteers who are captaining a voyage of values and ideologies — one that began a quarter of a century before many of them were born.
Hokule‘a, which translates to “Star of Gladness” for Arcturus, the zenith star over the Hawaiian islands that signaled to ancient mariners they were close to home, was built in the 1970s without the benefit of modern carpentry to disprove claims that the first Polynesian settlers had simply happened upon the island chain by chance.
In a quest to reconnect with ancestral knowledge, Hawaii artist and historian Herb Kawainui Kane, anthropologist Ben Finney and famed waterman Tommy Holmes led efforts to design, build and navigate in a traditional waa, or double-hulled canoe — the first of its kind to exist in the Pacific in 600 years, according to Lee.
Nainoa Thompson, 71, Polynesian Voyaging Society chief executive officer and master navigator, was a student of Hokule‘a’s founders. He said education in Native Hawaiian history and culture, much less navigation and voyaging, was nonexistent in his childhood and for his father, Myron “Pinky” Thompson, who was born in 1924 and became a noted community and cultural leader in his own right.
“When I graduated from high school, I had no idea who my ancestors were. I didn’t know where they came from, I didn’t know how they got here and I didn’t have any reason to feel proud of who I was,” Thompson said. “They were the greatest explorers, the greatest navigators on the face of the Earth, but I didn’t know.”
Validating ancient ways
From 1896 until 1987, the Hawaiian language — olelo Hawaii — was banned in public school instruction. Thompson, whose grandmother was beaten as a student by her teachers for speaking her native tongue, said the ban effectively “outlawed the talking of genealogy, of who we are.”
In the midst of the 1970s-era Hawaiian Renaissance — an ongoing cultural movement to preserve and progress Native Hawaiian traditions — Hokule‘a became a symbol of resistance and renewal, what Thompson called “a vehicle of change.”
Thus, on March 8, 1975, Hokule‘a was launched into Kaneohe Bay. In 1976, Micronesian master navigator Pius “Mau” Piailug led the first successful 2,500-mile voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti without Western or modern navigation instruments. The feat validated the highly skillful and ancient method of wayfinding that relied on reading the stars, ocean currents and waves, and wind patterns to accurately navigate deep-sea waters.
In 1980, Thompson replicated Mau’s voyage, becoming the first Native Hawaiian to navigate from Hawaii to Tahiti using traditional wayfinding methods. Since then, he has captained more than a dozen voyages, including trips to Rapa Nui, one of the most isolated islands in the world, and stops on the “Malama Honua Worldwide Voyage” from 2014 to 2019 that included New Zealand, Indonesia, Australia, Canada, Samoa and South Africa.
Despite his achievements, Thompson, who is dyslexic, identifies himself as “just another crew member” who is a student of the canoe and the ocean.
“The institutionalized school, I wasn’t really enrolled in because it was a place I feared. Every day I would go to school there would be a signal of failure,” he said. “In many ways, I didn’t really enroll in school by choice until they launched the Hokule‘a. I’m in kindergarten still, and I’m proud of it.”
Normalizing traditions
Today, Hokule‘a — and the core values of taking care of the canoe and the people — are ingrained in the more than 400 volunteers who make up its team at the Polynesian Voyaging Society, with roles ranging from cultural protocols and food provisioning, to educational and community outreach.
While initial efforts to build and use Hokule‘a sought to revitalize Native Hawaiian culture, the newest generation of crew members and volunteers seeks to normalize traditional cultural practices rather than see them as relics of the ancient past.
“All of these things that we were fortunate to inherit from our kupuna have the same right as we do to be in existence and to achieve revitalization to a point where it’s no longer labeled as revitalization and it’s just normal,” Lee said.
Lee’s generation and the one before her grew up with Hokule‘a as part of the cultural fabric of Hawaii. Lehua Kamalu, 38, Hokule‘a crew member and voyaging and partnerships director at the Polynesian Voyaging Society, recalls when she was a 5-year-old student at the Hawaiian-language immersion school Kula Kaiapuni o Pu‘ohala and witnessed Hokule‘a’s homecoming after a voyage to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands for the Festival of Pacific Arts in 1992.
“As a child, we probably didn’t realize how special of a moment it was, but I kind of loved how the canoe was just part of the language, and I know that was not the same for the generation ahead of us,” Kamalu said.
First female captain
The COVID-19 pandemic sparked a resurgence in younger volunteers who were forced to attend classes online and longed for social interaction. Apprentice navigator Kai Hoshijo, 27, did not expect to become a voyager when she was invited to join Hokule‘a’s dry-dock hui in 2020, but quickly found a deeper connection beyond its maritime demands.
“We all needed something, an outlet, and all of us, when we talk about that time as our introduction to Hokule‘a, remember how cool it was to hang out with like-minded young people,” Hoshijo said. “It really changed that time for me, and it made that time very comforting because I felt like we could all be ourselves. We were all new to it, we were all learning.”
In 2022, Thompson handpicked a young crew — half of whom had barely sailed before — to take Hokule‘a to Tahiti without him as a means of advancing its mission. He handpicked Kamalu to become the canoe’s first female captain and voyage navigator.
“That had never happened before,” Thompson said.
As a result of the crew’s values-based training and Kamalu’s leadership, Thompson said the crew completed the sailing in a record 17 days. By comparison, it took Thompson and crew 33 days to make their 1980 voyage.
The momentum is one that Kamalu hopes to build upon to ensure Hokule‘a never loses its relevance in an ever-changing world, especially one more vulnerable to climate change. She said it ultimately comes down to caring for the planet as one might care for the canoe.
“Over the years, getting a navigator who does it in the old way without instruments and go down that ancestral path has gotten harder each year,” Kamalu said. “Whether it’s because the weather has changed in the last 10 seasons or we live in a modern world where insurance (is a factor), there has to be all these other elements that have to line up for a voyage to happen.”
That also means the vision for Hokule‘a extends beyond the boundaries of the canoe and the ocean, according to Kamalu; it extends to educational outreach programs such as the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s Wa‘a Honua website, an online platform and digital archive of moolelo (stories) from previous voyages and crew members that launched in 2022.
Jonah Apo, a 25-year-old crew member and the voyaging society’s development coordinator, said Wa‘a Honua is considered “the third canoe” — the first two being Hokule‘a and her sister canoe, Hikianalia — that encapsulates Hokule‘a’s mission of not only navigation education but preservation of history.
Apo said he feels a responsibility to Hokule‘a’s first voyagers and all the others who have worked over the years to support and sustain its mission.
“When a canoe leaves, it’s because the community it’s leaving from is in a good place,” Apo said. “All of the prep work, all of the practitioners that need to take care of the canoe, grow the food, learn the oli for the departure ceremony, make up the thousands of people that are behind the 10 people on that canoe.”
The next 50 years
The 50th anniversary celebration is no different. Since August, Hokule‘a has embarked on her “Pae ‘Aina” statewide tour, sailing into each of the 27 ports in the state and hosting schoolchildren and providing public tours of the canoes. Thompson said the Hawaii-only tour is a “vital” part of the “Moananuiakea” voyage that, since 2023, has traveled the world.
Lee said Hokule‘a’s longevity is interconnected with the health of the community, the ocean and the education of the next generation.
“As I’ve started to think about the next 50 years, I’ve started asking myself, the other crew members and the students, ‘Will voyaging still be relevant?’” Lee said. “Our teachers worked very hard on their story, which is one of revitalization and bringing voyaging and navigation back from extinction. Now our job is about remaining connected and not straying too far from the origin of the knowledge, keeping it relevant but not watering it down in a way that makes it less valuable.”
Following Saturday’s 50th birthday celebration, Hokule‘a will continue its “Moananuiakea” voyage, setting sail for Polynesia, New Zealand, Asia and Central and South America. Thompson said there are approximately 39,000 nautical miles left on the voyage after the 2023 Maui wildfires prompted the crew to return home from California, where they were set to sail to Mexico and Central America.
For now, Lee said the upcoming 50th anniversary is a reminder of an essential question the crew asks while voyaging: “Can you see the island?”
“In voyaging, there’s always that need and desire to get to the island, but all you can do is observe what’s currently around you,” Lee said. “There’s this constant reflection back to people who endured the same challenges, achieved the same triumph and knowing that that’s what allowed you to be on the deck of the canoe in the middle of the ocean.”
