Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Sorta Sophisticated with Pete and Amanda.
All right, so 50 years ago, 1976, this 50 or 60 foot wooden canoe leaves Hawaii for Tahiti. Like, I don't know, 2,500 miles away from each other, right? Fifteen people on board, no navigation instruments at all, no GPS, no satellite, no radar, no radio, nothing. Okay. Just literally 15 guys in the open ocean. And the captain was this dude from this tiny little island in Micronesia who had never even sailed to Tahiti or knew where Tahiti was and no idea how to get there. And miraculously, 33 days later, this crew and this captain just sail right into Tahiti like nothing happened. Like they'd done it a hundred times before. No sweat. So, Pete, why are you telling me this? Right? Is that what you're asking me? Of course you are. Spoiler. It has nothing to do with. With this little canoe and doing something impossible. Although that by itself is kind of amazing. It actually has to do with a culture that basically disappeared and then all of a sudden decided, never mind, we're not going to disappear. So keep listening because here's what we're going to give you today. One, the actual history of how Polynesians settled the entire Pacific Ocean and how we, like, in the west, we somehow said they did it all by accident. Spoiler. They didn't. To the story of the one man left on Earth who still knew how to sail across an entire ocean without any instruments whatsoever. And how he almost took that knowledge to the grave. Amanda. And finally, why a 62 foot wooden canoe that sailed 50 years ago is directly responsible for an entire culture, an entire culture coming back to life. So stay with us. This one is totally worth it. Welcome back to Sort of Sophisticated, the podcast where culture, curiosity and chaos collide.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: And here we are for another episode where Pete's going to tell us all about this culture that almost disappeared. Like, what are you even talking about?
[00:01:50] Speaker A: I know. It is crazy. The native Hawaiian culture. Well, technically, not quite the native Hawaiian culture, but close. Like the wayfinding culture. The. The open ocean voyaging culture.
[00:02:00] Speaker B: So you're gonna tell me, like, the Moana in irl?
[00:02:02] Speaker A: That is exactly what I'm gonna tell you. That is exactly.
Yes. The Wayfinders. Yes. This is so excited. Did you know that by 1970, the whole idea of, like, wayfinding and open ocean voyaging was already gone out of Hawaiian culture? Completely gone.
[00:02:16] Speaker B: Wasn't that, like, turn of the Industrial Revolution?
[00:02:19] Speaker A: No, no. Industrial evolution before that. No, this was just, like, how much we with Hawaii, like, literally no one in Hawaii knew how to do this anymore.
[00:02:27] Speaker B: I feel like you're going two different, like, ways here. So are we going the we invaded, took over Hawaii and fussed with their culture, or are we talking about of Hawaii?
[00:02:40] Speaker A: Oh, shit, that's crazy. We're gonna go. We're gonna go with neither one of those. We're gonna talk about how.
[00:02:44] Speaker B: Third option, right?
[00:02:45] Speaker A: We're gonna talk about how Hawaii took Hawaii back.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:02:47] Speaker A: Okay. That's what we're gonna. We're not gonna concentrate on all this other bs. We'll gloss over what we did to him, but then we're gonna talk about how awesome this was because. So check this out. Like, it's. I. I know I said one guy, but it was actually in the 1970s. Just bear with me here. Six people in the entire world were still alive that knew anything at all about wayfighting. Six. That's it. They all lived in Micronesia on all these little tiny islands that, like, nobody's ever heard of. It's insane. So wait, our official title. I guess we never even did that yet.
They had no compass, no map, and no business finding Tahiti. And they found it anyway. And so today we're basically going to talk about the whole 50 year anniversary, because that's what it is. 1976, 2026 of these three guys who started in Hawaii building this canoe to try to figure out this whole thing again, and then figured out they had to go to Micronesia to. To find somebody to kick off this entire Hawaiian renaissance and how Hawaiian culture came back to life all because of this.
[00:03:40] Speaker B: I'm fascinated already. But also, I love Hawaiian. I have so many questions.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: What? Oh, my God. You have. You have questions.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: I do. I already do. I think I have, like, three at the top of my head. But I guess we should probably do word of the week before I dive into all of my questions. But we also, I think, screwed up last week when we didn't say, what was it? Accruments.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: Accoutrements.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Accoutomance.
[00:03:59] Speaker A: We did. We did not do it.
So does that. Wait, do we have to fast forward it to this? Like, we have to later get a carryover.
[00:04:04] Speaker B: Gotta do, too.
[00:04:05] Speaker A: We'll see if we can do it. Oh, no, because I have a whole other word.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: What's our word?
[00:04:08] Speaker A: Our word this week is perpend.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Like, to apprehend.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: Perpendicular.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Could it work?
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Maybe? No. Like, apprehend is like when you, like, bring someone in to custody. So prepend is a verb when you expel someone from custody to weigh Something carefully in your mind to weigh. Something carefully in your mind. Like, I had to prepend if Ruth was gonna study abroad this summer.
[00:04:31] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Yeah, that, like, it comes from the Latin. Prependere. Prependere. Yeah. Per, meaning thoroughly and pendere, meaning to weigh. So you're literally putting something on a scale in your brain and then, like, examining it before you decide something. Dur. It makes sense. Okay. Okay. Fair accoutrements and perpend.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Here we go.
[00:04:49] Speaker A: Don't screw this up.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: Forget. Okay, so where are we starting? Because I think you said, like, Micronesia.
What's Micronesia?
[00:04:58] Speaker A: No, we're not going to start in Micronesia.
[00:04:59] Speaker B: We're not?
[00:04:59] Speaker A: No, we're going to start.
[00:05:00] Speaker B: I don't even know what that is.
[00:05:00] Speaker A: We're going to start in Hawaii. It's a little independent foreign country, like in the middle of the Pacific. It's just like a lot of clustered islands altogether.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: I mean, I just.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: They all have their own names.
[00:05:10] Speaker B: I just learned that there are tons of little islands in the Pacific.
[00:05:14] Speaker A: Yeah, tons.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: And, like, Hawaii isn't. I mean, we know it as having, you know, seven main islands or whatever, but there's like, hundreds that go all
[00:05:20] Speaker A: the way correct to mundo are. Right.
[00:05:22] Speaker B: So is Micronesia part of the Hawaiian?
[00:05:23] Speaker A: Micronesia, we're going to call it all part of the Polynesian culture that we're going to talk about. Right? Tahiti. That counts. Like Hawaii. It's all. It's all connected.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: So where are we starting? Tahiti.
[00:05:32] Speaker A: We're not starting in Tahiti. We're going to start in Hawaii. Oh, that's where we're going to start. But first, if you like what you're listening to, hit subscribe. Follow us, please. New episodes come out weekly on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you. Okay, so we're going to go back and understand what's going on in Hawaii in the 1970s. That's where we're going to pick up. Okay. Because this whole idea that I told you of, like, native Hawaiian culture, that was extinct, like, almost completely. I was not exaggerating. Think about it like we were. I said we'd gloss over this. 200 years of colonization by different countries. Then you had Christians go over there with do all the missionary shit, and we're like, yeah, your religion sucks, so just do ours. And then, like, 100 years or so later, America decides, yeah, we're going to annex it. And then it ultimately became a state. Right. So, like, they kind of were getting host a lot of shit going on. So by 1970, you want to guess how many people in Hawaii still could speak fluent Hawaiian. I thought, spoiler. It's not a lot. You want to guess?
[00:06:23] Speaker B: I don't even know what the population would have been.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: So guess how many people still knew actually how to speak Hawaiian.
[00:06:28] Speaker B: 10,000?
[00:06:29] Speaker A: 2,000 people.
[00:06:30] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: That's what we were down to. And most of them were old people. It was going extinct. Like, they were going extinct. It was like a big deal. Like, not just their language. We stole everything, all their traditional ceremonies, like, everything. At one point, they couldn't even hula. Do you know that Christians outlawed hula?
[00:06:46] Speaker B: I mean, hula is a very sensual way to.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: That's bullshit. Like, they couldn't even in their own country. Okay, sorry, don't get me started.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: It's true.
[00:06:54] Speaker A: My point is, Hawaii was in trouble. And collectively we did a lot of damage there. We could agree on that. Yes, that's still.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: Absolutely. But I mean, if only 2,000 people were still speaking the native language, I guess it makes sense why wayfinders were kind of going.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: I mean, it's like why they couldn't way find.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: Well, no, but like, you have to think about how tradition and culture is passed down, how language is passed down. I mean, a lot of times if you think back to villages, it is the women who are in the villages, they were the ones who, you know, tell the stories. Yes. In the community and yes, continue down. So when that way of life changes, all of it changes. Intentionality, like that needs to be there. Right. In order to continue those traditions, to be able to continue passing down wayfinding, all these things couldn't do it anymore. Right.
[00:07:40] Speaker A: So we. We have a part in that colonization.
[00:07:42] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: And Christian missionaries and the whole thing, we broke their system. So that oral tradition that you're talking about, they didn't know what to do with it anymore. So it just sort of sucked. People don't think about it. But if you go all the way back, the Polynesians just general, like people of the Pacific Islands. Right. They settled basically every island in the Pacific Ocean one by one, like on their own, like Hawaii, Tahiti, New Zealand, Easter island, all of them. Right. The space is like, massive. It's bigger than North America. Like, it's just in the ocean, but it's. It's huge. And they did all of that by wayfinding and by night, you have to,
[00:08:15] Speaker B: like, think about having to be in a canoe or.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: I mean, obviously not.
[00:08:19] Speaker A: I mean, I don't even know how you go pee and poo, but, like, I don't even get how they do all this.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: But it's not a cruise ship, you know what I'm saying? Like, I think that's.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: It's not a luxury for.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: Is how they traveled.
[00:08:32] Speaker A: It's incredible. Yeah, it's incredible. And. And like I said, we in the west, or like our Western historians or whatever, we basically thought they were making that up. Like we said, that's impossible. You got there by accident. Like, you didn't really settle each one of these. You couldn't do it.
You were just out on the ocean drifting, and you just found islands. And so our culture, American culture and all Western culture has taught that that's a falsehood. And, I mean, I'm making a little bit of a joke, but the whole idea of Moana and explaining it to kids that it wasn't an accident is, like, kind of a big deal. We're going to talk about how this canoe and this voyage proved the intentionality of it all. Does that make sense?
[00:09:12] Speaker B: Yeah. But I have a question. Was it because of their, like, folklore and stories that were passed down that they knew where these islands were? Because if not, how did they come upon these islands? How did they know that it was there? Because in theory, you would say that they stumbled upon them, but they didn't, I'm assuming. I don't know.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: So. So, yeah, I mean, obviously some of that's lost to history, but yes, of course, go all the way back to the first people to find the islands. Right. At some point, nobody knew where they were. So, yes, folklore works. After somebody goes, you come back, you tell them how to get there. That works. I get it. That's intentional. But before that, when the first person's going to go, it's incredible. Like, let me explain. Can I explain? Okay. Pacific Ocean, massive blue void, the moon, the tides, all these tiny little islands all over the place. I didn't realize how much the moon and the tide in the environment play a part in how this all works. So when you get near land, shit changes, like the currents and the wind patterns and the clouds and the birds and everything. So the Polynesians, specifically, like the wayfinder ones that were doing all this, spent their whole lives learning all this stuff from, like, grandma or grandpa, like you were saying, on how to figure out what was where. So, like, you could tell from the wind or the waves if there was a landmass in front of you up to 50 miles away, you couldn't see anything, but you knew that there was something.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Things are changing, right?
[00:10:29] Speaker A: Bingo.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: So not accidental, but Kind of accidental still, because, I mean, you have to go sort of find this, right?
[00:10:34] Speaker A: So, like, they could follow birds, right? Clouds, cloud pattern, clouds cluster over land, so on and so forth. But my point is, researchers ran computer modeling simulations or whatever, I don't know, too sophisticated for me to figure out random ocean drift patterns. And this is what blew my mind when I did all this research, because I was like, yeah, this is bullshit. I completely agree with you. It's all sort of on accident. No. So if you just, like, put a canoe in the water and you let it drift wherever you wanted to, none of the simulations matched the way the Polynesians actually settled the islands. Did not. It was like the opposite. Okay. So when they did the same thing with intentional wayfinding simulations, they did match how they settled each island. So they proved.
These simulations proved that it was absolutely intentional on purpose. And so then, of course, the next natural question is, but how did you know how they settled the islands? Right? Archeologists found, what do you call it, artifacts, like, think fossils, artifacts, whatever, on these tiny islands. Urban dating, they do all of that stuff. So they knew which order they showed up. So that order goes against the pattern of the winds and the currents. Against wind and current. Not with wind and current. Right.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: So you would argue, Wouldn't it have drifted there?
[00:11:44] Speaker A: Duh. Because you would argue, if they're being, if it's accidental, they would just let themselves drift. But if they're doing it on purpose, they're sailing into the wind because that's a strategy to sail into the wind. Because if something happens, they could turn around and get home safely. So, like, by default, we've proven finally that they did all this stuff with zero instruments. Zero. And all they used was wayfinding technique. Yes. Wayfinding, yes. Unbelievable.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: I'll go back quickly to kind of my question because I just, I'm curious. Maybe, I don't know, probably, maybe don't know the answer to this either, that did they know in wayfinding, this particular path and movement, what they needed to be following? Because again, when the, when I say folklore, I mean, like, even just like, of Maui, right? How Maui placed the stars and, you know, the hook and pulled it all out of the ocean. Like, there's a lot of history, Hawaiian history, that are in that story.
I'm just curious if the wayfinding was also part of, you know, their storytelling.
[00:12:48] Speaker A: Okay, so I, I, I don't know. I didn't look this up. So I'm just gonna, I'm guessing here my instinct Says that when you are using the Earth and, you know, the birds and the wind and the currents, and you have, like we were talking about in our last episode, like, the relationship with the Earth, it would be. It's very natural then that your stories start to all sort of come together around the God of Maui and, like, how the stars are behaving or, like the. The bad gods versus the good gods or the island. Like, that all makes a lot of sense all of a sudden because you're in communion with our Earth versus us, who want just scientific proof of everything, which is, like, totally different, Right? So, like, I think it's crazy because the first people that went out, these first wayfinders, they just left. They had no sense of an island anywhere. They were like, we're going to go explore, just like explorers did in Europe.
And they just left. Probably went 2, 300 miles, maybe found, maybe said, oh, there's something there, but we better turn around because I don't know what it is. We better get back. They going back. They told the next people, hey, once you get out that far. We saw some birds we weren't familiar with. Follow them. Okay? The next people build a bigger canoe. They go a little bit further, so on and so forth. They find the first island, and then they subsequently keep, like, building their track from there, which I think is incredible. It's just.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: So how do we get from that to the whole 1970s thing?
[00:14:06] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah. Okay. So fast forward, Peter. Enough talking. Here's why this is all important. So, 1973, three guys. You got a guy named Ben Finney, who was an anthropologist from California. Actually, Tommy Holmes, a sailor. And then there's a Hawaiian artist named Herb Kawainu Kane. And they decided to start something called the Polynesian Voyaging Society. And their idea was to build this canoe just like the ones they originally had, like back in the olden days to get to the other islands and try to sail it. Like, see if they could do it again a thousand years later with no instruments, just wayfinding. Like, they want to reconstruct wayfinding in Hawaii. You with me?
[00:14:38] Speaker B: Yes. So besides Herb, I'd assume he was Hawaiian or had Hawaiian ancestry.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: Roots. He had the roots.
[00:14:45] Speaker B: And then you have these other two guys I like. How do they come together? Like, I don't.
[00:14:50] Speaker A: Because he had a plan.
[00:14:51] Speaker B: A plan for what?
[00:14:52] Speaker A: They all cared. Like, the one guy was an anthropologist, so he cared. The guy, Tommy, was a sailor. He cared. Right. And then the other guy, Herb, was the native Hawaiian, but he was the Artist. So, like, they had a common interest.
They had known each other through whatever circles they ran in and said they want to do this. Funny thing about this whole thing is the Hawaiians were all kind of pissed off about it because it started as a shit show. They were like, really? Basically, one native Hawaiian and two white guys are going to come over here and try to redo this thing here. Here we go again.
White people trying to tell us, right,
[00:15:20] Speaker B: that's going to wear my.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: So their intention was pure because the whole idea was they wanted to figure out wayfinding again. But the Hawaiians were like, why are you figuring it out? Well, all I would say to that is at least somebody cared enough to try to do it right? They weren't being dicks about it. Like, that wasn't the plan. It was still a good idea. Okay, okay. So they build this canoe, and Herb, he decides to name it Hokolea, which is Hawaiian for the star Arcturus. Don't ask me. I don't know how to look that up. It's way too sophisticated. It means happy star. Fun fact, Arcturus. This star is known as the zenith star of the Hawaiian Islands, meaning it passes directly overhead when it's in the sky. So it was sort of a tribute to the whole wayfinding culture. That's why they named the canoe Hokulea, because when the sailors knew that Arcturus was straight above them, then they knew that they were in the same latitude as the Hawaiian Islands. And then they could just, like, sail home. So it's sort of amazing. It's like we're paying homage. That was the whole idea. So they build Hokulea, and it's like 62ft long. Like I said, double hulled canoe. Huge, huge triangular sails. Like, literally, just. Literally. Just like Moana. I mean, literally built the same damn canoe. And they launch it in March of 1975 off the coast of Oahu. And out of nowhere, all these Hawaiians show up and start to support them. Because they realize whether we like this or not, whether these are white dudes or whatever. The Howleys. What do they call them? The Howleys. Whatever. Kind of a big deal. So this kind of matters. But there was a problem because Tommy Holmes, although he was a sailor, he was not a wayfinder. Right.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: But you said somewhere that they had to find the one person to Bingo.
[00:16:45] Speaker A: Yes. Remember, no native Hawaiian knew how to do this shit. So what do they do? They go to Micronesia and they go find their navigator.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: How'd they know that he Was there.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: So apparently there was some dude named David Lewis. He was like a doctor, sailor guy from New Zealand who had years before been in the Pacific Ocean and going through those islands with some of these wayfinders. And he wrote a book about it in the 1960s, and he called it we the Navigators. Okay, so fast forward, California guy, Ben Finney found out about the book, tracked down David Lewis, and David Lewis said, hey, there's a guy on this island in Micronesia. Go find him. If he's still alive, he can help you. So Ben Phinney took off. They go find this guy on an island called Sadawal in Micronesia. This little tiny island. Tiny island, mile long, 400 people on this island. They find this guy named Pius Maupialug. His nickname was Mao. Like I said, only six people living. They found the one guy in one of these islands. Okay? So Ma was of course, super interested in going because he thought wayfinding was lost to the world, and he wanted to make sure that it wasn't. So he's like, let's go. I'm in. I've never been to Tahiti anyway. I have no idea how to get there, but why not? So they get in a boat and take them back to Hawaii, and they start their trip and let it rip. Okay, so they're in Oahu, they've got their navigator, everything's ready to go. And right before they leave, some Hawaiians were like, yeah, okay, dudes, how do you plan on finding Tahiti if you've never been there before and no one's been there in 600 years, obviously, like, this way, right?
And he said, this is what Mao said. And I quote, this is why I like doing all my research. That this is so cool. I trust the teachings of my ancestors. I am courageous because I have faith in the teaching of my ancestors. The concepts and my faith in my ancestors are what is going to take us there.
[00:18:29] Speaker B: It's amazing.
[00:18:30] Speaker A: Fuck, dude. Cold blooded steel a badass. Like, do exactly what he's doing. So apparently Mao had memorized 150 different stars and their patterns and their exact location in the sky every night. So as soon as they set sail at sunset, he'd pick a star on the horizon. They called it a star house. I don't know, that was new to me. And they would set course by it. And then when that star arced too high in the sky, so, like, it didn't work anymore for them, it was going, like the other way. Then he already had his next star picked on the horizon. And he would follow that one all night long as the earth was rotating. He was doing this thing over and
[00:19:07] Speaker B: over and over just to pause. Like, if you think about that, it should blow everybody's mind. Memorize a star map.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: Knew how to follow the stars. Knew what came next.
[00:19:17] Speaker A: Oh, there's so much more shit with
[00:19:19] Speaker B: the rot like there is.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: There is so much more shit than this. Check this out. So because daytime, you can't follow the stars, right? So what would he do in the daytime, you ask? Of course. Right. Amazing.
[00:19:28] Speaker B: The sun.
[00:19:29] Speaker A: So back to Moana. Remember how they dipped their hand in the water? Yeah. Okay, so by the feeling of the water, they would count time.
It's. This is incredible. Then he would literally use the sun's angle and the ocean swell. He would lay down in the hull of the canoe. He would lay down and feel the vibrations of the hull with his body. So he could tell by the way the waves were hitting the hull if he still stayed on the right latitude because of the angle that the waves were hitting the hull.
[00:19:57] Speaker B: That's insane.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: So he did that all day long. And then when the sunset came again, he picked right back up. And if they were off course a bit, they recorrected and then they followed the stars again. It's incredible. 2,500 miles, they did this.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: It's insane how in tune you must be with nature in order to be able to do that.
[00:20:13] Speaker A: That's incredible. Which is exactly opposite one with the ocean. Yes. And I'm not even. I'm not. I'm messing with you. 33 days he does this thing with his 15 other crew members that they brought with him. Right? Well, they had the three main guys, and then, of course, like, other native. Oh, that's a whole shit show. I gotta get into that in a second. Yes, park that. Remind me later, please. They're just figuring this shit out. And 33 days later, they made it. They made it. June 4, 1976. The whole reason for this fricking episode and why we're doing this. They sail right into Papeetee harbor in Tahiti, just like nothing happened.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: Did other, like, people know that they were coming? Were they being tracked? Like, what?
[00:20:48] Speaker A: Yeah, they're being checked. Yeah, they're being checked on cell phones. Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:20:51] Speaker B: No, 1970s, they didn't have cell phones.
[00:20:52] Speaker A: No, they had. But they had like.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: But they had, like, a satellite.
[00:20:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Tahiti and Hawaii knew each other. So I'm sure they were like, what I called the Voyaging Ocean Society. Like, they knew what was going on. So there were people that cared and were checking in. But when they showed up, it wasn't like they had a plan. There was no, like, big ceremony or anything planned. So they just sort of rolled in. But because of how meaningful it was in Hawaii, that translated over to Haiti. 17 people came out to watch them sail in. No ceremony planned, just 17,000. Over half of the entire island of Tahiti came to do it.
[00:21:24] Speaker B: Remember how quickly word spreads, man.
[00:21:27] Speaker A: Think about it like you're in Tahiti. You know, there are six wayfinders left in the world. Not in Tahiti. Remember you were saying how, like, it gets passed down generation to generation. Tahiti had all of the elders that were still telling the stories to the younger generations about the names of their old wayfinders in Tahiti, the canoe names of. They had such a, like, connection with this. And when they saw that somebody did it, I mean, imagine the emotion. I mean, they broke it must have been breaking down crying that like, even though this person wasn't from Tahiti, the fact that they just did it again and it, like, came back to life must have been incredible. It hadn't happened in 600 years. How many generations is that? That's a lot of generations. I just can't even imagine being there. Like, I would. I have chills right now just thinking about the fact that, like, that's how it all came rushing back to them. 17,000 people out there. That must have been incredible.
[00:22:18] Speaker B: If you think about it, it's so unreal. I think it's something that we miss in American culture. Right. Is having this history and this connection to ancestry and to anything. Yeah.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: This is why I love history. This, like. So all we have is the East Coast. That's why I like to go to the East Coast. I mean, it's only 250 years old, but I love that because that's all I got. These guys have thousands of years. I can't even fathom what that would be like. That's incredible. Okay. I'm not even done. Can I do this? Some shit went down.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: Okay. All right. So white guy science versus Hawaiian culture. So the white guys on the canoe, they were just trying to, quote, unquote, prove they could do it. The crew, like, the other whatever, 12 guys, they were Native Hawaiians.
They weren't trying to prove it as much as sort of get it back in their bones, like, living.
They were living this. This got so tense between them.
Physical violence broke out on this canoe multiple times during this trip. That the group that, like, the crew that made it there wasn't even the crew that made it back. Ma. Our leader, our. Our. Our wayfinder, the one wayfinder, he got on an airplane and said, screw you guys and. And went back to Micronesia. He didn't wanna go back. A whole different crew had to get on in Tahiti to go back to Hawaii because of the tension that built between the two Americans and the Hawaiians that were on the canoe. Isn't that wild?
[00:23:40] Speaker B: Doesn't surprise me, not saying so.
[00:23:43] Speaker A: If I'm the white guys, like, I don't know. I'm not in their position. I'd be like, okay. I would get it in my bones. Huh?
[00:23:49] Speaker B: Yeah, you take a seat.
[00:23:50] Speaker A: Yes. I'd get in my bone. I'd be like, I love that we started this. But you guys take it from here and just sort of enjoy the ride and the experience. I mean, I don't know. I think that's incredible. So anyway, then the next crew comes back. Like I said, they come back to Hawaii, and I didn't know any of this. That's what started the Hawaiian Renaissance. So the whole idea of the Hawaiian Renaissance in 1970s, I thought was just Hawaiian culture coming back to life.
It was because of this canoe, which. This was, like, the catalyst behind this whole thing. Everything started coming back. Everybody started learning the language again. The hula was allowed back.
Traditional music, crafts, the way of Hawaiian life. Yes, absolutely. Hawaiian immersion schools. They started the schools again where they were allowed to teach. And it's absolutely incredible. All because of Mao and all because this crew doing this whole thing. I think that one of the crew members. There was one crew member that went both ways. One guy. Yes.
[00:24:41] Speaker B: So the two Americans also.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: No. Yeah, they both died. So this. This one guy was interviewed afterwards, and he said right after Hokulea showed back up in Hawaii, he said, we left as sailors, we came back as Hawaiians. Which I think is incredible. Like, says it all. Like, we left as people trying to figure this out, and we came back and our culture is back.
Incredible. Just incredible.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: Has to be, like, one of the coolest episodes that we've ever done.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: I think so.
[00:25:06] Speaker B: Because if you think about it and what actually happened here. Right. So a culture got systemically stripped of everything, overtaken, for lack of a better term. And then this wooden canoe that they rebuilt to have a resemblance of what was used originally.
[00:25:23] Speaker A: Yes, made it exactly.
[00:25:24] Speaker B: No instruments, sails 2,500 miles across the ocean, and it, like, resurrects a whole culture.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I'm telling 2,000 movement.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: The movement. It starts 2,000.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: So now, like, so we talk about Moana. We talk about Disney. Like, we both love Disney. I get it. Do you understand? Like, if you explain this to your girls and then watch Moana, doesn't that make it incredible? Like, doesn't this make sense? Now here we are watching Moana, and we think it's cute. They were trying. It's a cultural story, but nobody's trying. Here's the problem with us in a guess, and it drives me. This is my whole impetus behind the podcast. I would have never have known this. I would have watched Moana. Moana 2 would have been, oh, my God, that's cute.
And here we are.
They were trying to tell a story, and we missed the story because I don't say we. I missed the story because I'm a white, entitled, privileged American, and I didn't care, and now I care, and I think it's totally cool. And that's why I love sitting in my stupid chair doing all my research every week, because I learned something new, and it's fascinating. So there we go.
[00:26:25] Speaker B: I love it, and I applaud you for always wanting to learn something new. And while we may not always get it right and there may be other facts that we miss, this is true. We try.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: That's.
We call it sorta.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: That is something that everyone should do just in life, because within cancel culture and everything that's happening. I do feel like sometimes people are too scared to learn or to step outside of their boundary or get out of their lane. But if we don't, then we miss out on history and other cultures, and sometimes we just fail to learn and, like, grow as people.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: So I'm gonna argue.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Get messy.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Yeah, get messy. I'm gonna argue. Not only scared. I would argue I am or was lazy. It's just easier to be like, oh, that's what they said. I'll follow that. And the more time I've had, I'm blessed to have time. The less lazy I'm becoming and want to actually care to learn something, which
[00:27:13] Speaker B: we need to stop being consumers, though we do.
Social media has ruined us for that, that's for sure.
[00:27:17] Speaker A: I'm with you. That's the reason why we have to do fun facts.
Because social media wants fun, because that's fun.
Here we are. Right? Good segue. Okay, are we ready for fun facts?
[00:27:27] Speaker B: Let's go.
[00:27:28] Speaker A: All right, I got. I got a few. I got. I couldn't believe that there's fun facts about this But I thought.
[00:27:32] Speaker B: Oh, I'm sure there are. Come on now.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: This is so random.
[00:27:34] Speaker B: All of it was a fun fact.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: Yeah. No, no, these are good, though. These are good. Number one. Okay. The navigator, Mao. Remember? Okay, yeah, yeah. He was nicknamed Mao because, remember, his real name was Pius. By his friends, it actually meant turtle in saddlewalles, which, if you think about it, was perfect for him because turtles swim all over the ocean and get back to their birth beach. Did you know they go back to their birth.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: I did not know that.
[00:27:54] Speaker A: Okay. I didn't know this either. So turtles are born on a beach. Sea turtles, yeah.
They crawl into the ocean. They spend, like, I don't know, 100 years swimming across the ocean, like, everywhere. And then when it's time to reproduce, they return to the exact beach they were born. All of them do this. Not the general area.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: Crazy.
[00:28:09] Speaker A: The exact beach. Scientists call it magnetoreception. Every beach on Earth has a slightly unique magnetic signature. I. Amanda, I don't even. This is insane. Based on its latitude and longitude and. And sea turtles essentially have that magnetic signature of their birth beach imprinted in their brain when they hatch. Like a GPS coordinate.
[00:28:28] Speaker B: I mean, there is something to be said. I've like, heard this more and more about just, like, the frequency of the Earth and if you were in tune with nature.
[00:28:34] Speaker A: I have to change my whole. I have to change my whole life.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Better perspective.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: I have to change my whole life.
[00:28:38] Speaker B: And understanding.
[00:28:39] Speaker A: That was, like, fun fact, super and blew your mind. Okay. All right. Number two. We just talked about the whole 1976 voyage. Fifth year anniversary. It's amazing. Thank you. Welcome back, Hawaiian Renaissance. But did you know there was a second voyage attempted in 1978, two years later? Yes. It went terrible.
Terrible. I don't know. I don't. Somebody wanted to do it. Right. So the Hokulea, the same boat, they used it. Right. Capsized five hours into the trip. The crew was hanging on upside down overnight. One of the guys in the crew was a legendary Hawaiian surfer. His name was Eddie Aikau. He volunteered to paddle his surfboard. Once they were capsized 12 miles to the nearest island. Okay.
He died. Never heard from again. Never saw him again. A merchant ship came by the next morning and found them all and radioed the Coast Guard. Got everybody saved. But Eddie had died. And that's why in Hawaii every winter. I didn't even know this. They have, like, when the surf at Waimea Bay is, like, super big, it has to be above, like, 25ft. They hold a surf competition in Honor of Eddie, and it's called the Eddie. That's the surf competition. It's like one of the most famous surf competitions in. In the world because of that failed attempt in 1978. I think that's crazy.
Number three, Ninoa Thompson. Okay. Nioa Thompson was one of the youngest crew members on the voyage back from Tahiti to Hawaii in 1976. Remember, I said they switched crews? So it was this young kid named N N Thompson, and he was so obsessed with Wayfinding because he didn't. He didn't get to travel with Mao, but he was so obsessed with it because he came back that he went to Sadawal, found Mao and started studying under him for, like, years. And then in 1980, he repeated the voyage, becoming the first native Hawaiian in modern history to navigate from Hawaii to Tahiti using traditional methods. So he was the first, what you would call Hawaiian wayfinder, like, that brought it back. Does that make sense? Because he studied under MAU.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: Okay. And today, still alive, he runs the Polynesian Voyaging Society now and has trained an entirely new generation of wayfinders from all across the Pacific Islands. Let's go, Nainoa. Nainoa Thompson. Okay. I love these fun facts. Okay. Finally, since 1976, Amanda Hokulea has sailed more than 250,000 nautical miles, including a full circumnavigation of the Earth from 2013 to 2017. Not even that long ago, 47,000 miles around the Earth stopped in 26 countries. The Dalai Lama blessed it when it was in India. Archbishop Desmond Tutu blessed it when it was in South Africa. A wooden canoe, Amanda, with no instruments, sailed around the entire planet. And right now, right now, while we are recording this episode, it is actually midway through another 43,000 mile journey around the entire Pacific Ocean, again connecting 400 different crew members from 36 different countries. Totally amazing. All I got fun facts out. I love this thing.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: So as you were talking about this, it triggered that the Ocean Institute in Dana Point had, like, that's where it landed back, like, in 2023.
[00:31:39] Speaker A: No shit.
[00:31:40] Speaker B: It was like a whole thing.
[00:31:41] Speaker A: See, had I known about, like. Like, we would.
[00:31:43] Speaker B: Right. I would have went.
Right. I mean, I read about it, but I was just like, huh?
[00:31:48] Speaker A: I think it's amazing.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: It's incredible. And I mean, we could follow it on Instagram, too. So if anybody's interested.
[00:31:53] Speaker A: Oh, you can right now? Yeah, absolutely. You can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was one of my. You know how we always do the little.
If we want to learn more.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:32:01] Speaker A: If you want to learn more, one of the one you learned more. You can actually track it right now on Instagram. You could go. It's on website. You could just go right now. You could. They update the position of the canoe. Like you literally know exactly where it is. Like when Santa. You know, when the Santa tracker. They have a Hokulea tracker. I know. That's incredible. I know.
[00:32:15] Speaker B: It's amazing.
[00:32:15] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, quick reminder. If you guys want the fun facts or this episode summary delivered to your inbox, DM us on Instagram, we'll send them out to you. Thank you for supporting the show. We appreciate it.
Two other things to go do Besides going to hokulea.com and checking the whole thing out. One is watch the documentary Papa the Wayfinder. It's about Mao's whole life and his training of Nanoa Thompson. It's on YouTube, I think. Yeah, it's one of the coolest things I ever watched. Yeah, check it out on YouTube. Second, there's a book called Hawaii Rising by Sam Low.
It's a full story of Hokulea and the founding of the Polynesian Voyaging Society. It reads like fiction. It's all totally true. Remember one of our last episodes, Born to Run? I was talking about and Christopher McDougal. Same, same energy, same thing. It's when people deciding to do something incredible like to save something they love. Like the. The one was about the Tarahumara and the run culture. Born to Run. And this one's all about Hokulea and like, oh, God. Anyway, gives me chills. Go read that book.
And if you don't want to do any of those things, just remember these details to seem sort of sophisticated. Number one, Hokulea was a 62 foot double hulled Hawaiian voyaging canoe built by the Polynesian Voyaging Society and launched in 1975. Finished its trip in 1976. Its name means Star of Gladness. Oh, I think I said Happy Star earlier. Star of Gladness, named for the star Arcturus, which passes directly overhead of the Hawaiian Islands. Number two. In May 1976, Hokulea sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti, roughly 2,500 miles without a single navigational instrument. The navigator was Mao Piailung from Satawal, Micronesia, one of the last six master wayfinders alive on Earth. He used the stars, ocean swells, wind patterns and seabirds to navigate across the open ocean for 33 days and arrived with perfect accuracy. Number three. When the canoe arrived in Tahiti, over 17,000 people, more than Half of the population of Tahiti came out to the shore to celebrate. The voyage proved that Polynesian ancestors were not just accidental drifters like historians had thought, but rather master navigators that had settled the largest ocean on the planet on purpose number four. The 1976 voyage triggered what historians now call the Hawaiian Renaissance, a full scale cultural revival of the Hawaiian language. Hula music, traditional crafts, its entire identity. It is widely considered one of the most significant acts of cultural reclamation in modern indigenous history.
Unbelievable. Can you feel my excitement? This is insane. And finally, this year in 2026, it's the 50th anniversary of that voyage and Hokulea is still sailing. Thank God that the knowledge never disappeared. After all, we are all better humans because of shit like this. That's all I got.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: All right, and there you have it. Dear listeners, we started today with a canoe and a man who could read the entire ocean like you and I would read text messages.
[00:34:55] Speaker A: Right? Just think about that. That's.
[00:34:57] Speaker B: And somehow we ended up with one of the most beautiful stories ever imagined about who human beings are when they refuse to forget where they came from. Here's what I keep thinking about. These ancient Polynesian navigators didn't just find islands, they kept going, generation after generation.
[00:35:11] Speaker A: Right?
[00:35:12] Speaker B: They looked at the biggest, most open, most terrifying body of water.
[00:35:15] Speaker A: I would shit a brick. Right?
[00:35:17] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:35:18] Speaker A: Seriously.
[00:35:19] Speaker B: And they basically said, we know how to cross that.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: Yeah. Would you sign up for that? No, not for a second.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: No.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: No. I'd be like, where do you want me to go?
[00:35:25] Speaker B: I'll pick up the rocks over my DNA. So here we are.
[00:35:27] Speaker A: Whatever.
[00:35:28] Speaker B: But it was because someone taught them how to read it, right?
[00:35:30] Speaker A: I know, I know, I know, I know.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: I can't believe that. That knowledge was almost lost forever. And here we are. That one little canoe that sailed into a harbor and reminded entire people who they were. I mean, it absolutely gives the chills to anyone if you think about it even for a second.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Totally.
[00:35:42] Speaker B: If this episode moved you like it moved me, hit subscribe, leave us a review and share it with someone who thinks they don't know how to find their way. Because apparently you don't need a map. You just need to know how to read the stars.
[00:35:53] Speaker A: Amen, sister preacher.
[00:35:54] Speaker B: So until next time, stay curious, stay on course, and remember, the ocean doesn't care where you came from. It only cares where you're going. And if you know how to read it, you'll always find your way home.
