Hōkūleʻa

Yep, our navigation system was taught to us by a man named Mau Piailug, who came from the island of Satawal in Micronesia.

He was Hōkūleʻa's first navigator, and he taught us the art of traditional non-instrument navigation.

Nothing electronic at all.

Can you give us an example of what non-instrument navigation actually looks like?

But talking about Polynesian navigation, someone who I have the utmost respect for and, um, and definitely is someone who inspires me is a gentleman called Nainoa Thompson.

And Nainoa Thompson is famed for having actually sailed across the Pacific in a canoe called the Hokule'a, and this took place back in, uh, 1980.

It was from Hawaii to Tahiti, and this hadn't been done for over 600 years.

And this Nainoa Thompson was, was, um, captain of this canoe and was the navigator on this canoe called Hokule'a, but it was the product of a movement in the '70s that was founded by the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

And the Polynesian Voyaging Society set out to identify how did these islands become populated, and they did believe that they came from, you know, the, the west of here, and they set out to prove this hypothesis.

There were others that said the islands were settled from the east, from the east, from South America, for example.

He held the secrets or held, had the knowledge of this celestial navigation, and he may have been the last one to carry this knowledge.

So Nainoa Thompson studied with him for years, for decades to, to learn what was needed to be able to do this.

in January 1976.

Uh, a movement, uh, that came amid the Hawaiian Renaissance and the swell of that, what was happening with Hokule'a as well, and the occupying of Kaho'olawe when the US military was bombing the island following, uh, World War II-

Wow

... and commencing the training exercises there for decades.

I, I don't know what the hell I was watching.

It, it felt like there was some sort of missive into the, to Son of Hokulea's ear to say, "Make this one close.

Let's let the Vikings back into this." Now, that's not to let your team off the hook, because if I was you, I'd be saying, "Fire LaFleur today." Uh, that, that guy's a moron.

Taking points off the board to let the Vikings back into the game and give them momentum.

Somebody was saying like, it's so interesting to hear her point of view.

And because I think even if you know about Hokule'a, you don't know all the

details of it.

You know what I mean? And certainly like hearing about it from someone who was on the boat is like something I had never heard.

But in indigenous traditions, so many of the traditions stayed together in this form of cosmology.

Now, back to the Hokulea, the ship.

Nobody had the wisdom anymore of how to navigate by the stars.

But there was somebody in the islands of Micronesia who heard what these Hawaiians were doing.

Seriously, I hear your values of reciprocity coming through.

And the antidote to extraction is reciprocity, right? It's like, how can I hype others? How can I share my power? How can I build power between folks? And to me when we're not only like reclaiming leadership we're redefining leadership in this new world and to redefine leadership means that we're creating things that are like where we're all equals where there's equity meaning that there's not just somebody at the top who's just sucking up from everybody else right that's the extraction part and so how do we become more reciprocal and And I hope that, you know, like I've loved this conversation so far.

And I hope if you've been listening that you've learned something new that your worldview has widened, that maybe you'd never heard about the Hokulea before or that you haven't heard about like the plights of like the Hawaiian monarchy and the Native Hawaiian people.

And how by reading authors that don't look like you, that don't come from your own culture, you broaden your horizons, you learn new perspectives, you learn new facts.

Yes.

And we did Hokulea.

This, um, this Sunday we, we celebrate the Queen.

Um, and we just have all kinds of hula and mele that are going on, and groups.