Hawai’iki Rising

Growing up in Hawaii - a world of two competing cultures, ancient and modern -

a young man finds his way by voyaging in the paths of his ancestors.

He discovers:

a mission worthy of dying for

values to empower him
vision to guide him
humility to seek true knowledge
courage to prepare and endure
aloha to bind him to others
spiritual strength to sustain him
a renewal of pride for all his people
the revival of his ancestral culture

Straddling two worlds - he learns to choose the best of both.

 

*********

 
The stars circled Earth before there were eyes to see them. When the planet cooled, human beings followed them across unblemished desert, tundra and ocean. As the walls of Troy were falling to the Greeks, Polynesian explorers sailed star paths across the world’s greatest ocean to settle one third of Earths’ surface. They voyaged aboard powerful double canoes, some more than a hundred feet long, against prevailing winds and currents. And they did this when Greek mariners still hugged the coast of an inland sea and Europe was populated by stone age farmers. Yet by the turn of the twentieth century, this story had been lost and Polynesians had become a destitute minority in their own land. Ask mainland people today about this ancient sea people and you will be told of Kon Tiki, a false tale of raft-bourn drifters at the mercy of wind and wave.
 
Yet the ancient story lived among Hawaiian families who guarded their ancestral lore – the language, hula, curing practices and the traditional rituals. It was the gospel of their culture and it did not die, it went underground – a guttering flame waiting to be reborn. Then, in 1973, three men – a scientist, an artist and a famous waterman – joined to recreate a Hawaiian voyaging canoe, Hokule’a, and sail her on the epic voyages celebrated in oli and mele.  
 
Hawai’iki Rising tells this story in the words of the men and women who voyaged aboard Hokule’a. They speak of growing up at a time when their Hawaiian culture was in danger of extinction and their future in their own land was uncertain. We join Ben Finney, Tommy Holmes and Herb Kane as their vision of a sleek voyaging canoe takes shape in a Honolulu shipyard. We meet Nainoa Thompson, a young man of twenty-two when Hokule’a is launched. We follow him as he looks skyward with eyes unfettered by preconceptions to see ancient and holistic patterns ignored by Western astronomers and navigators. With Mau Piailug, a pwo navigator from Satawal, we embark on a voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti and learn how he finds his way by subtle signs in nature. We experience the heartbreaking loss of Eddie Aikau – Hawaii’s most famous waterman – when Hokule’a capsized after an ill conceived voyage in 1978. And we are present as new leaders vow to continue voyaging to both honor Eddie’ life and to seek a renewal of their traditional values. Overcoming fear by trusting in the vision of islands rising from the sea, Nainoa and his crew make landfall in the Tuamotus in 1980 – the first Hawaiians to navigate the Pacific without charts or instruments in a thousand years.
 
The book’s title - Hawai’iki Rising – contains the kaona, the hidden meaning, that animates this story. It refers to the Hawaiian homeland; to an ancient image of newly discovered islands rising from the sea; to the mythic story of Maui who fished up land with his magic hook; and to the resurgent pride of all Hawaiians as Eddie Aikau’s dream  of seeing Tahitian mountains rise over the horizon is finally realized.
 
When Hokule’a crew member Sam Ka’ai carved the ki’i that adorn the canoe’s twin sterns, a dream came to him of a blind man reaching to the heavens. “This is an effigy of how we are after so many years of oppression,” Sam tells us. “Blind to our past, we reach up to grasp heaven one more time. The same stars are rising as they did for our fathers for many, many generations. So if you lose your way - remember that you once sailed on your mother’s lap and you were never lost. The stars turned minute by minute, hour by hour, dawn and dusk and you always came home or your kind wouldn't be here. This is an effigy of the Hokule’a experience – the ohana wa’a, the family of the canoe. He is reaching above himself, beyond himself, to the story that has not changed, the forever and ever story. He is showing that we are taking hold of the old story once again.”
 
The Author
 
Sam Low has sailed aboard Hokule’a on three voyages – from Mangareva to Rapa Nui in 1999, Tahiti to Hawaii in 2000 and from Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia to Satawal in 2007. He also accompanied the canoe aboard an escort vessel from Tahiti to the Marquesas and on to Hawaii in 1995. The story of Polynesian voyaging has fascinated him most of his life. In 1983, after traveling throughout Polynesia, Sam produced his award winning film, The Navigators – Pathfinders of the Pacific, shown nationally on PBS and internationally on television venues throughout the world. Sam is the author of many articles on Hokule’a and her meaning to Polynesians. He served in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific from 1964 to 1966 and earned a Ph.D. degree from Harvard (in anthropology) in 1975. He is one-quarter Hawaiian. Nainoa Thompson is his cousin, a relationship which has provided unparalleled access to the main protagonist of this story. (www.samlow.com)

 

Want to be notified of publishing date?

and receive the book at a great price, 40% off retail?

click here - to send a note to Sam - no obligation