Malama Honua Worldwide Voyage S PA R K I N G A R E V I VA L O F H A W A I I A N L A N G U A G E A N D C U LT U R E BY RAMSAY HORN
ōkūle‘a and Hikianalia, two prestigious Hawaiian voyaging canoes, sail across Earth’s oceans to join and grow the global movement toward a more sustainable world. Covering forty-seven thousand nautical miles, eighty-five ports, and twenty-six countries, the Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage highlights diverse cultural and natural treasures and the importance of working together to protect them. The Hawaiian name for this voyage, “Mālama Honua,” means “to care for our Earth.” Living on an island chain has made Polynesians acutely aware that our natural world is a gift with limits and that we must carefully steward this gift if we are to survive together. The worldwide voyage means to engage all of Island Earth—practicing how to live sustainably while sharing, learning, creating global relationships, and discovering the wonders of this precious place we all call home. Eternally inspired by the strong tradition of giving an offering or tribute in the Polynesian culture, luxury lifestyle brand OluKai has partnered with the Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage. Crew members aboard both the Hōkūle‘a and Hikianalia are exclusively wear-testing
HOKULEA.COM 36 ORIGINMAGAZINE.COM
It is more than a voyaging canoe; it represents the common desire shared by the people of Hawai‘i, the Pacific, and the world to protect our most cherished values and places from disappearing.” footwear from OluKai’s spring 2015 collection. OluKai konohiki (caretaker) and one of Hawaiʻi’s greatest ocean-sports pioneers, Archie Kalepa, will join the Hōkūle‘a for several legs of the journey. To guide the voyaging canoe Hōkūle‘a, navigators use traditional wayfinding, with stars, waves, wind, and birds as mapping points for direction. Pacific Islander people mastered wayfinding and used it to find and inhabit islands in an ocean area of over ten million square miles. Thousands of years ago, this remarkable achievement of humanity involved finding and fixing in the mind the position of islands that were sometimes less than a mile in diameter. The voyages were all the more remarkable in that the canoes were navigated without instruments by expert seafarers who depended on traditional