Episode 19: She sails the seas without maps or compasses

For nearly 50 years, a group of Hawaiians have been sailing on traditional voyaging canoes using the methods that early Polynesian explorers relied on to navigate the Pacific Ocean—without maps and modern instruments, and relying on the stars, ocean waves, birds, and other natural elements to guide them. We meet National Geographic Explorer Lehua Kamalu, the first woman to captain a long-distance voyage on Hōkūleʻa, the first Polynesian canoe built in modern times. She describes what it’s like to navigate in incredibly rough waters, what it means to keep Polynesian navigation alive in the 21st century, and about her next big adventure: a four-year circumnavigation of the Pacific Ocean.

Listen on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, and Amazon Music.

TRANSCRIPT

[Sounds of the ocean from the Hōkūleʻa]

LEHUA KAMALU (NAVIGATOR): I like to think of the voyaging canoes as taking us back in time on the ocean. 

ELI CHEN (HOST): Lehua Kamalu is a navigator with the Polynesian Voyaging Society. 

KAMALU: I’ll often ask my crew, like, what do you think it would have been like to show up in Hawaii as the very first navigator, the first canoe, and imagine sort of the stunning nature that we would have seen? Because, of course, Hawaii has changed since we found it and and since we’ve been here. But yes, I think we think of the early navigators more often than people probably realize.

CHEN: Lehua and her fellow navigators don’t use maps or modern instruments to navigate across the ocean. They use the stars, ocean waves, and other natural signs to guide them—a method that Pacific voyagers have used for thousands of years known as wayfinding. 

KAMALU: I’d say broadly wayfinding for us really is that idea that with the naked eye, with all of your senses, with your complete abilities, to immerse yourself into the signs of the natural world around you. Leaning on the learnings and the knowledge of our ancestors and all the people who have come before us, we have so much knowledge and ability to use that information to find our way on canoes and as we travel across the ocean where there are no street signs. 

CHEN: Lehua navigates aboard a Polynesian voyaging canoe called Hōkūleʻa. Hōkūleʻa translates to “the star of gladness.” And it’s a large double-hulled canoe, 62 feet long, with triangular, crab claw sails. This is the style of the sailing vessels that the Hawaiians’ voyaging ancestors used to travel between islands in the Pacific. 

KAMALU: We have all of these, like, modern comforts that help us out these days, you know. And yet still, I always say, Gosh, our ancestors were either way more rugged and tough than us, or way smarter, or all of the above to be able to do these voyages in those times. 

CHEN: I’m Eli Chen, senior editor of audio at National Geographic, and this is Overheard, a show where we eavesdrop on the wild conversations we have here at Nat Geo and follow them to the edges of our big, weird, beautiful world.

This week: we’re setting sail with National Geographic Explorer Lehua Kamalu. She’ll tell us what it’s like to spend weeks out on the open ocean retracing the routes of her ancestors, as well as the harrowing and sleepless journey she took on her first voyage as captain. 

And we’ll talk about her next big adventure: a four-year voyage that will take her crew to dozens of communities around the Pacific. 

KAMALU: Out at sea, the ground is moving. Everything’s moving, so before you leave, you really need to get familiar with all the things that might be out there and then be ready to totally not have any idea what you’re going to find. 

CHEN: More after this.

But first, adventure is never far away with a free, one-month trial to National Geographic Premium. For starters, there’s full access to our stories online with new ones published every day; plus, every Nat Geo issue ever published is in our digital archives! 

There’s a whole lot more for subscribers, and you can check it all out—for free—at natgeo.com/exploremore.

Centuries ago, early Polynesians used wayfinding to discover New Zealand, Hawaii, Rapa Nui—also known as Easter Island—and to navigate between islands in the Pacific.  

But following Captain Cook’s arrival in Hawaii during the 16th century, and later, the U.S. annexation of the islands, colonization suppressed Hawaiian cultural practices, and native people eventually lost wayfinding knowledge. 

In the 20th century, Western thinkers circulated and published their ideas for how they believed people settled in Polynesia. That included Andrew Sharp and his accidental drift theory, claiming that early Polynesians accidentally drifted to Rapa Nui and other islands. 

There was also Thor Heyerdahl and the Voyage of the Kon-Tiki, which tried to prove that ancient humans sailed west from South America to colonize the islands. Hawaiian culture scholars say theories like these discredited the navigational skill and achievements of early Polynesians. 

Then, in the 1970s, there was this cultural renaissance among the Hawaiian community that was focused on reviving the native language, performing music and hula, and teaching Hawaiian culture to younger generations. 

You can actually hear the voices of this movement in the 1977 National Geographic TV Special: “Voyage of the Hōkūleʻa.” 

WOMAN (Archival audio): We Hawaiians are coming back together again. And unity is what we need, unity! Come on, you Hawaiians, to our great, great ancestors that we have never known.

CHEN: The revival of Polynesian voyaging was very much a part of this renaissance. The idea to build Hōkūleʻa came from artist Herb Kāne, who also appears in the Nat Geo TV Special. 

NARRATOR (archival tape): In his studio, a Hawaiian artist paints the images of a past that now seems as insubstantial as dream. But one-time expatriate illustrator in Chicago, Herb Kāne has returned the islands with a dream of his own: to recreate a Polynesian voyaging canoe and following the supposed path of ancestral mariners sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti and back.

CHEN: Along with anthropologist Ben Finney and sailor Tommy Holmes, Kāne founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society with the mission of demonstrating that early Polynesians were intentional voyagers and purposely settled in Hawaii and other parts of the Polynesian Triangle. But in the 1970s, there were no living Hawaiians with wayfinding knowledge, so Finney enlisted the help of Mau Piailug, a master navigator from the island of Satawal in Micronesia.

NARRATOR (archival tape): Schooled in ancient methods of navigation by star and ocean swell, it is Pius Mau Piailug who must try without instruments to guide Hōkūleʻa to Tahiti across 3,000 miles of open sea. Mau has voyaged alone across hundreds of miles of empty ocean, guided only by the computer in his mind.

CHEN: On May 1st, 1976, the crew embarked from Honolua Bay in Maui and made it to Pape’ete Harbor in Tahiti four weeks later, on June 4th. Thousands of people cheered for their arrival. 

[Archival audio of cheering from Papeʻete Harbor]

KAMALU: I think the meaning of the canoe is very deep and powerful here in Hawaii and across Polynesia and beyond. I think it heralded a time that I think marked a space where everyone was able to remember how amazing and how incredible the history of this place was. And that was a marked difference from, you know, I think the decades prior where there was this continuous removal of culture and practice and traditions.  

CHEN: Lehua Kamalu was born in New York to parents who are both part native Hawaiian. When she was little, they moved to Honolulu and enrolled Lehua and her sisters in a Hawaiian immersion program, where the curriculum was taught in the native Hawaiian language. 

KAMALU: And I think Hōkūleʻa is sort of not just the visual physical symbol of that, that we like to talk about here, but really just this living manifestation of a reminder that you come from great people and a wonderful history. 

CHEN: Lehua says she thought of the voyaging canoes as the space shuttle of her Pacific ancestors, and she remembers what it was like when she and her classmates got to visit the Hōkūleʻa, after it returned from a voyage in 1992. 

KAMALU: Our whole school went to go greet it at the beach when it returned from a very long voyage down to the Cook Islands and back through Tahiti. And so not only did we learn about it by watching videos in class and reading about it; we actually got to go down and touch the canoes and see them in action. 

So it was, it was really inspiring. And it has always, really been something that I think a lot of us grew up admiring. Admiring from a distance mostly, but the reality was it was right there in our backyard and how amazing that we get to be so close to this thing. 

CHEN: When Lehua grew up and went to college, she studied mechanical engineering. And she also started getting involved with the Polynesian Voyaging Society. 

KAMALU: I was like, you know, I have some nerdy skills maybe that can maybe that can help you guys. And that progressed rapidly into the training, getting out on the water. I had never really gone sailing much at all before, before that—

CHEN: Really? 

KAMALU: —learning all the ins and outs of how a sailing vessel worked. The engineering of it. And then, I think I started to see sort of engineering in everything that I was doing. I was like, you know, this is exactly all the things that I’m passionate about in my studies and my academia. And it’s really not that far away from where I thought I was headed and layer on to that, what I knew was a huge impact on Hawaii and its community and its children. So it slowly, slowly washed over in waves over the course of years, I would say. 

CHEN: So help us imagine what it’s like to be, you know, on one of these canoes. 

KAMALU: Sure, as I mentioned, so Hōkūleʻa is sort of the example I’ll use. She’s a very special canoe and special to everyone because she really was the first built in modern times. This is a double-hulled vessel. So each hull is 62 feet long and they're identical, and they’re lashed together with eight cross beams—we call them ‘lako—that tie together both hulls. We call it the precursor to the modern Catamaran. And so some people will say, Hey, that’s that Catamaran you guys sail. I’m like, Well, it’s kind of, it's kind of a big sister to a Catamaran, you know, we like to think.

And we don’t have what people would say probably is more traditional in terms of sleeping in a hale or a house that sits at the center of the deck. We’ve sort of adapted it so that you actually sleep on the hulls themselves—

CHEN: Oh wow. 

KAMALU: —with a little bit of like a canvas that hopefully keeps out some of the sun and some of the waves and the rain, but not super effectively sometimes.

CHEN: So you’re really exposed to the elements, it sounds like.  

KAMALU: You are absolutely, pretty exposed and something I always tell new people is if you want to sort of experience what it’s like, you can just kind of maybe go stand outside and just stay out there for like a day and then a night and then a day and then a night and just kind of stay outside in your yard for like three weeks straight. 

And my very first voyage, I did not have a good respect for how much sun that actually was and you know, I was almost unrecognizably dark when I came back. I think I was almost matching with my mom, who is very lovely and dark but—and it is, it’s very exposed. And a lot of times just being on board and sort of doing your day to day things is very uncomfortable, right? Every single task involves being in an uncomfortable position or holding on so you don't get, you know, knocked down as the waves hit the canoe going to the bathroom, using, you know, taking a shower, you just sort of—

CHEN: You do that in front of everybody? 

KAMALU: In the early days, you did. We’ve developed sort of a more—-and now that we have have much more diversity on board, particularly me, we have a little private area that you can take care of all of your business and—

CHEN: Oh good. 

KAMALU: —that’s towards the rear of the canoe. We have a little, like, cute little curtain that you can use, but everyone is respectful of it. You just let us know where you are and I will talk to you if you’re using the restroom area because just making sure you’re still connected to the canoe. It’s a very dangerous place to be where people can’t see you. And we’re going very fast on the ocean. 

CHEN: So I’m curious how wayfinding works out on the sea. How do you know where to go when you don’t have a GPS or even a compass?

KAMALU: The most popular example that will be brought up in wayfinding is understanding really strongly the heavens above—the celestial sphere, if you will, the layout of all of the constellations and stars in the sky. And you don’t have to know all the astronomical information about all of them, but you need to know how to find them, where they are, where they are in relation to one another, what sort of paths they take as they rise and set across the sky, which changes by your by your latitude. Easiest example is always Mintaka, which is sort of the first star that’ll rise in the belt of Orion. And we have different names for them, Ka-Heihei-o-Nā-Keiki in Hawaiian. 

I’d say if you wanted to give yourself the minimum amount of time to be ready to see the stars in the right way, start one year before your voyage is going to happen and understand how the sky is moving as you look out every night. 

CHEN: So when you don't have the stars though, like when it’s like during the day and the sun is out, like what do you look for?

KAMALU: You have the sun. You have the sun from before sunup to sundown. You have the dawn sky. You have probably the most reliable thing which is the ocean itself. If you’re sailing, hopefully you’re on the ocean, hopefully you’re in an ocean that also has wind. I know that sounds super obvious, some days we just have no wind and no waves and we just sit there. And that’s just something that just happens when you’re sailing—-anyone who sails will appreciate that. 

But waves are governed by wind, and waves create regular, readable patterns in the ocean that are long range and very consistent, particularly in the tropics, particularly here in Polynesia, and are very reliable to find your way. It means you’re constantly needing to pay attention to them each hour and through the night. And so the navigator’s job is to spend as little time sleeping as possible. And as much time watching for consistency, watching for patterns in the sky and in the ocean, and also for changes and comparing what’s going on between the two. 

CHEN: Yeah. Do looking at birds help at all, looking at wildlife?

KAMALU: Yes. Birds are very special. And in fact, when we start to get closer to land, it’s really the land-based birds that guide us to their islands. And so it’s another thing that you are looking carefully for when you approach them. 

Also know what not to follow. It’s important to know what birds are followable and not followable. Yeah, because, you know, you have pelagic birds. You have birds that sleep at sea. So you might follow them, but they might not get to land for like two to four years. So if you’ve got enough provisions, by all means, enjoy the journey, but you want to stick to the ones—and the specific ones I’m thinking about are terns. They live on land. They either live in the trees or in the rocks or on the beaches. And they go home every day. You want to find the birds that are reliably like back home for supper, if you will. 

CHEN: Legend has it that long ago Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire, sailed on a canoe from Tahiti to Hawaii, opening up a route between the islands. But even though folklore depicts a woman navigating by canoe to Hawaii, Polynesian voyaging has traditionally been passed down from grandfather to grandson. And since the first voyage to Tahiti in 1976, the Hōkūleʻa’s journeys have been captained and largely navigated by men. 

That was until 2018, when the Polynesian Voyaging Society planned to sail Hōkūleʻa’s sister canoe, the Hikianalia, 2,800 miles from Hawaii to California. Lehua had gone with the organization to meet with members of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe in San Francisco to ask for permission to arrive before the voyage.

KAMALU: And on the flight home, I literally remember looking out the window of the Hawaiian Airlines flight at the ocean right off the coast of California, and you could still see the ocean from the window. And it was wild. Like the waves were super crazy. There was whitewater and whitewash. You could tell it was very windy and very rough down there and I think I said—I turned to my coworker and said, Wow, I’m so glad I’m not having to do this voyage because that looks so rough down there. I wouldn’t want to be in that. Which of course, is going to haunt me later on because then we go home and my teacher Nainoa Thompson, he says, You know, Lehua, I’m going to ask you to captain this voyage—which is a huge, huge honor and responsibility. And I instantly thought of that picture I took in my mind of a raging ocean off of San Francisco. I was like, Oh, that way? And I remember without, like, almost skipping a beat, I was like, I’ll take it all the way up there if you take it the rest of the way through that, you know, I’ll take it through the calm waters. 

That, of course, was not part of the deal. And I had to, I think, sit with it for a little while before accepting that because a little bit of it, I think, is convincing yourself that you’re ready to do this. It seems always sometimes in this world people can see that possibility and that potential before maybe I have. But the journey itself was both spectacular and terrible all at once, because those exact ocean conditions that I had joked about on the airplane were what we got when we arrived. 

CHEN: Yeah, so what was it like when you were out in the water and dealing with all that? 

KAMALU: So this is actually the first voyage the Polynesian Voyaging Society had ever sent a canoe into the North Pacific to the West Coast. And we leave out of Honolulu. We’re in a little place called Keʻehi. We circle around the east side of the island, around Diamond Head, around Makapuʻu, and we head up and our plan is to go straight north as long as we need to, until we can get some wind behind us in what’s sort of the North Pacific High, the high pressure system. So the route and the plan and the navigation is to take us up north and then tack east and then find our way to California. 

The first about nine days, I would say were perfect wind, perfect weather, clear skies, no rain, we caught fish every single day. I was almost—it was blissful, very surreal. Dolphins playing on the bough day in and day out, just on schedule. They were there. It was like the Breakfast Club of dolphins. 

And then we have to sort of cut our way over this high pressure system, which is very hard to do. In the middle of these wind systems you get lulls, sort of like giant eyes of hurricanes, but obviously not the intensity of hurricanes. So we have very, very low wind and we’re moving at like one and a half to two knots. Like we could walk that fast. You could probably just get out and crawl that fast. And so it’s very slow going, but still with good weather, and the whole way we are practicing and we are training young navigators as we go.

This is now nine days, ten days, 12 days, 15 days, 19 days into the voyage and we’re getting closer and closer to California, partly because, like I said, we’ve been keeping track of where we came from—how fast we’ve been going, how far, how long, in what direction. And we’re honing in on what we think is San Francisco Bay. And in a matter of about 12 hours we go from full sails, sailing really fast, having a great time to—OK, it’s now a much heavier wind condition. It’s very strong and the waves are starting to build. We have to reef down the sails. So just close them up a little bit more so that you’re not catching as much wind and it’s not pushing you as fast. You do it little by little. And so I’m like, OK, close the back sail, close the front sail. OK, let’s just go on this little tiny storm sail that we have. 

We are going as slow as possible. And I said we average five knots. As slow as possible in these wind conditions where the oceans, the sea, was about, I’d say, 20, 25 feet reasonably, and the wind was at about 20, 25 knots. And for us, that was very not fun.

CHEN: Yeah, it sounds like a roller coaster.

KAMALU: It is. It’s a roller coaster if someone took the roller coaster and smushed it closer together so that the downs are much more down and the ups are much more up. 

CHEN: Oh man. 

KAMALU: And these were the harshest conditions I had ever been on that canoe with, that I’d ever sailed with. And there is a little bit of maybe the internal you know, you are the captain of this ship and you need to have a plan for whatever happens. And there’s this realization at some point of, you know, your role and also to some degree, the futility you have in certain situations. There’s only so much you can do to react to what’s going on. And you just have to make your best course. 

There was a lot going on. And so it was a couple of days of severe, you know, storm level winds and waves. We took a lot of waves over the deck, over the canoe. One of my crew, just trying to get up and out to get on his watch to be able to steer into all of that was badly injured, a few broken bones. And the whole time I know we are very close to California. It’s like, where is this thing? Like, where is the end?

And just like that—it’s almost like the movies where, you know, the clouds part and the sun comes out and we’re in the pristinely calm, flat, Half Moon Bay. So it’s like, how did that happen, you know? And it’s morning time and we emerge from this weather. It was incredible. And we had been up, a lot of folks, for a couple of days by that point, we were exhausted. There were greeting canoes and boats that were coming out to see us, that were expecting us. And we have a little tracker thing. So they were watching us come along and it’s sort of this exhausted joy when you arrive and you immediately transition out of this voyage that was you, that was your team, that was this canoe to—all right, now what are we doing for this community? And so even though you're exhausted, we will do any number of things to make sure that we allow them to welcome us properly and that we have these ceremonies that are very special and important and cultural exchanges. 

And it wasn’t till we arrived in San Francisco that, you know, a little girl came up to me and said, “I want to take my picture with you—the first woman captain navigator.” And I’m looking at my crew like, What? Like who—who’s running this narrative here? The first woman? I’m just—I’m just the captain navigator. And they’re like, No, no, you’re the first woman. She was so sweet. I gave her my hat, and it was this really cute moment that I remember of you know, maybe accepting where you are in life and remembering those that are looking at the example that you’re setting and what it means to do this. And I usually take a long time to get to that point, probably the few months after getting home from that voyage to reflect on the meaning of it in that way. 

[Sounds of the sailing on the Pacific Ocean]

KAMALU: Aloha ahiahi! It is Saturday, April 30th, 2022. This is day 12 of our voyage of Kealaikahiki from Hawaii to Tahiti. It has been a good day getting back easting that we—

CHEN: In 2022, Lehua and her crew sailed the two sister canoes to Tahiti, retracing the route that the Hōkūleʻa traveled during its maiden voyage nearly 50 years earlier. It took them about three weeks to travel roughly 3,000 miles to Tahiti. 

[Sound of horn playing at arrival upon Tahiti]

I asked Lehua about the kinds of conversations she had with the Tahitians when they arrived. 

KAMALU: The first were very special. They were honoring our relationship, the longstanding relationship that Hōkūleʻa has had to connect these two island spaces and honoring the leaders, honoring that they are that we are trying to carry forward the tradition to a new generation. It’s important that if this voyaging is going to continue, that the next generation is connecting to these people and places because you know, this is an organization and a canoe that goes from island to island. These are people connecting to people. And those relationships carry on well past the voyage itself. So there’s a lot of recognition of that heritage. There are groups that come with us from Hawaii to celebrate that. And so there’s a lot of work that goes on to ensure that everyone understands that we are one and the same people. That usually takes a couple of days, actually, and usually involves ceremonies and things of that nature. 

And then we get into the why we’re sailing today. Beyond just the perpetuation of our practice and beyond reconnecting with family and a realization that as one family, sharing this house of the Pacific, there are things that are affecting us equally across the ocean. And so one event that was actually coinciding with our arrival there was the Blue Climate Summit, and that allowed us to get into conversations about what was going on in the oceans and all of the different ways that our communities are reacting to or trying to proactively address these situations. You know, we sail, we go out on the ocean. We’re the ones actually living on these sea roads. What is our responsibility to that? As people who live on these islands, what are we doing with our economies and our tourism and our agriculture, our fisheries to think about whether or not these oceans are going to be healthy for our children to be sailing in? 

And so these discussions happen alongside these recognitions of unity and family, and they’re very powerful because most of it will invoke stories of, memories of what life was like, what the abundance of the sea was like and growing in our understanding of what it means to be a leader on the ocean and back in the community again. 

CHEN: Speaking of, I guess, finding that unity among Pacific communities, when this interview comes out, you’ll be about to embark on a circumnavigation of the Pacific. So tell us about that journey. How far and how long is this voyage expected to be?

KAMALU: Yep, we are headed out again. I’ll find no shortage of reasons to to voyage across the ocean. So we’re going to be starting our next voyage. It’s called Moananuiākea. It’s a long Hawaiian word, but it really is meant to honor this one ocean and people—that doesn’t have to be specifically in the Pacific Ocean, but that is where this journey is going to take us. So we’re going to be starting in Alaska in June of this year and make our way around and across the ocean, port by port. 

CHEN: Yeah, so you’re starting in Alaska. So you’re starting pretty cold, actually.

KAMALU: Yeah, we’re starting in Alaska in the only time we could reasonably go to Alaska. And so the last time we had a bunch of Hawaiians up there on a canoe was 1995, which was reminiscent of how our relationship to Alaska began. It’s very special. And what ultimately happened was when we talk about the traditional materials that allow us to build these vessels of discovery and exploration and these canoes, Hawaii back in the late eighties, tried to build a second canoe to Hōkūleʻa with all of the traditional materials and trees and plants and with all the artisans that would have been needed in the ancient past. And there was a realization that they were gone. And a lot of work has happened since then to revitalize the actual land and realizing that canoes are really the healthy products of healthy communities and islands. 

And Alaska stepped in to help and say, We will gift you two trees from our children from the forests of southeast Alaska. And those were sent down to Hawaii to build a canoe that is now Hawaiʻiloa and that celebrates this beautiful relationship that started with Alaska. And so we are actually starting off in the birthplace of three of the elders who made that happen. 

And yes, it is going to be cold. I’m a little worried about the cold. We’re going to bring some of our Alaskan crew as well to join us on that journey. But that will be sort of the launch that takes us for the next three years around the Pacific, through central South America, through our South Pacific islands, back to the island of our teacher navigator Mao Piailug, and all the way back up and around and to Asia, to Japan.

CHEN: Yeah, that’s so exciting. I’ve read that one of the goals for this voyage is to educate 10 million navigators. I’m wondering what that means exactly and how that will be accomplished. 

KAMALU: Yeah, the word educated, education always seems to do one of two things: get people really inspired or, like, they turn around and say, Oh gosh, education.

So yeah, I think navigators come in all different types. And we might be traditional wayfinding navigators of canoes. But a lot of the, I think, the value sets and the priorities and the ways that we are able to conduct these voyages and these canoes and lead these crews on these voyages are relevant to someone who might just be trying to navigate some part of their life or a project or community. And this is both a celebration of those navigators and finding those 10 million navigators, but also allowing a pathway for people to find their way into navigation. 

I always feel like there’s almost this direct synergy and overlap with what we appreciate and joy about explorers. And layered into that, the ability to dive into your own culture, your own history, your own practice, and have a unique way of navigating onto yourself.

CHEN: If you want to learn more about the Polynesian Voyaging Society, head to their website, which is hokulea, H-O-K-U-L-E-A dot com. 

And you can also read more about the Hōkūleʻa’s 2022 journey to Tahiti in a piece that writer Jordan Salama reported for Nat Geo. 

That’s all in the show notes, right there in your podcast app. 

CREDITS

This week’s Overheard episode is produced by Khari Douglas and me, Eli Chen. 

Our senior producers are Brian Gutierrez and Jacob Pinter.

Our manager of audio is Carla Wills who edited this episode.

Our executive producer of audio is Davar Ardalan.

Our photo editor is Julie Hau.

Hansdale Hsu sound designed this episode and composed our theme music.

The voyaging tape you heard was shared with us by the Polynesian Voyaging Society. 

This podcast is a production of National Geographic Partners.

The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, funds the work of National Geographic Explorer Lehua Kamalu. 

Michael Tribble is the vice president of integrated storytelling.

Nathan Lump is National Geographic’s editor in chief.

And I’m your host and senior editor, Eli Chen. Thanks for listening, and see you next time.

SHOW NOTES

Want more?

Learn about the Polynesian Voyaging Society and their upcoming voyage, Moananuiākea, a 47-month circumnavigation of the Pacific. 

Read about Hōkūleʻa’s 2022 journey to Tahiti, which involved traveling 3,000 miles over three weeks. 

Also explore: 

A small number of people speak ‘ōlelo, Hawaii’s native language, which teetered on extinction  during the mid-20th century. Learn about how some young Hawaiians are using TikTok and Instagram to make the language more accessible. 

Hear Nat Geo Explorer Keolu Fox on a previous Overheard episode share how he’s working with Polynesian and Indigenous communities to study how their genomes have been shaped by history and colonialism, and how that data can help them reclaim land and improve health outcomes for their communities. 

Visit National Geographic for more stories throughout Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month.