Kahuna is a Hawaiian word that refers to an expert in any field. Historically, it has been used to refer to doctors, surgeons and dentists, as well as priests, ministers, and sorcerers.
The Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS) is a non-profit research and educational corporation based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. PVS was established to research and perpetuate traditional Polynesian voyaging methods. Using replicas of traditional double-hulled canoes, PVS undertakes voyages throughout Polynesia navigating without modern instruments.
The aliʻi were the traditional nobility of the Hawaiian islands. They were part of a hereditary line of rulers, the noho aliʻi.
Hōkūleʻa is a performance-accurate waʻa kaulua, a Polynesian double-hulled voyaging canoe. Launched on 8 March 1975 by the Polynesian Voyaging Society, it is best known for its 1976 Hawaiʻi to Tahiti voyage completed with exclusively traditional navigation techniques. The primary goal of the voyage was to explore the anthropological theory of the Asiatic origin of native Oceanic people as the result of purposeful trips through the Pacific, as opposed to passive drifting on currents or sailing from the Americas. DNA analysis supports this theory. A secondary project goal was to have the canoe and voyage "serve as vehicles for the cultural revitalization of Hawaiians and other Polynesians."
Hawaiʻiloa is a mythical Hawaiian fisherman and navigator who is said to have discovered the island of Hawaiʻi.
Herbert Kawainui Kāne was an American Hawaiian historian and artist. He is considered one of the principal figures in the renaissance of Hawaiian culture in the 1970s. His work focused on the seafaring traditions of the ancestral peoples of Hawaiʻi.
Paʻao is a figure from Hawaii. He is most likely a Hawaiian historical character retold through Hawaiian legend. According to Hawaiian tradition and folklore, he is said to have been a high priest from Kahiki, specifically "Wewaʻu" and "ʻUpolu." In Hawaiian prose and chant, the term "Kahiki" is applied in reference to any land outside of Hawaii: the linguistic root is conclusively derived from Tahiti. "Upolu" point to actual places in Samoa; and, Hawaiian scholars and royal commentators consistently claim Paʻao came from Samoa.
The Hawaiian Renaissance was the Hawaiian resurgence of a distinct cultural identity that draws upon traditional Kānaka Maoli culture, with a significant divergence from the tourism-based culture which Hawaiʻi was previously known for worldwide. The Hawaiian Renaissance has been pointed to as a global model for biocultural restoration and sustainability.
Pius "Mau" Piailug was a Micronesian navigator from the Carolinian island of Satawal, best known as a teacher of traditional, non-instrument wayfinding methods for open-ocean voyaging. Mau's Carolinian navigation system, which relies on navigational clues using the Sun and stars, winds and clouds, seas and swells, and birds and fish, was acquired through rote learning passed down through teachings in the oral tradition. He earned the title of master navigator (palu) by the age of eighteen, around the time the first American missionaries arrived in Satawal. As he neared middle age, Mau grew concerned that the practice of navigation in Satawal would disappear as his people became acculturated to Western values. In the hope that the navigational tradition would be preserved for future generations, Mau shared his knowledge with the Polynesian Voyaging Society (PVS). With Mau's help, PVS used experimental archaeology to recreate and test lost Hawaiian navigational techniques on the Hōkūleʻa, a modern reconstruction of a double-hulled Hawaiian voyaging canoe.
Myron Bennett "Pinky" Thompson was a social worker and community leader in Hawaiʻi and a cultural leader among the Native Hawaiians. He is best known for his work as a member of the Board of Trustees of Bishop Estate.
David Henry Lewis was a sailor, adventurer, doctor, and scholar of Polynesian culture. He is best known for his studies on the traditional systems of navigation used by the Pacific Islanders. His studies, published in the book We, the Navigators, made these navigational methods known to a wide audience and helped to inspire a revival of traditional voyaging methods in the South Pacific.
Alingano Maisu, also known as Maisu, is a double-hulled voyaging canoe built in Kawaihae, Hawaii, by members of Na Kalai Waʻa Moku o Hawaiʻi and ʻOhana Wa'a members from throughout the Pacific and abroad as a gift and tribute to Satawalese navigator Mau Piailug, who navigated the voyaging canoe Hōkūleʻa on her maiden voyage to Tahiti in 1976 and has since trained numerous native Hawaiians in the ancient art of wayfinding. The word maisu comes from the Satawalese word for breadfruit that has been knocked down by storm winds and is therefore available for anyone to take. The name is said to symbolize the knowledge of navigation that is made freely available.
Polynesian navigation or Polynesian wayfinding was used for thousands of years to enable long voyages across thousands of kilometres of the open Pacific Ocean. Polynesians made contact with nearly every island within the vast Polynesian Triangle, using outrigger canoes or double-hulled canoes. The double-hulled canoes were two large hulls, equal in length, and lashed side by side. The space between the paralleled canoes allowed for storage of food, hunting materials, and nets when embarking on long voyages. Polynesian navigators used wayfinding techniques such as the navigation by the stars, and observations of birds, ocean swells, and wind patterns, and relied on a large body of knowledge from oral tradition. This island hopping was a solution to the scarcity of useful resources, such as food, wood, water, and available land, on the small islands in the Pacific Ocean. When an island’s required resources for human survival began to run low, the island's inhabitants used their maritime navigation skills and set sail for new islands. However, as an increasing number of islands in the South Pacific became occupied, and citizenship and national borders became of international importance, this was no longer possible. People thus became trapped on islands with the inability to support them.
Ben Rudolph Finney was an American anthropologist known for his expertise in the history and the social and cultural anthropology of surfing, Polynesian navigation, and canoe sailing, as well as in the cultural and social anthropology of human space colonization. As "surfing's premier historian and leading expert on Hawaiian surfing going back to the 17th century" and "the intellectual mentor, driving force, and international public face" of the Hokulea project, he played a key role in the Hawaiian Renaissance following his construction of the Hokulea precursor Nalehia in the 1960s and his co-founding of the Polynesian Voyaging Society in the 1970s.
Robert Eugene Worthington was the U.S. former honorary consul of the Cook Islands to the United States. Worthington also served as the director of financial and scholarship services at his alma mater, the Kamehameha Schools, from 1974 until 2003.
Sir James Clendon Tau Hēnare, was a New Zealand tribal leader, military officer, farmer and community leader. He fought for four years with the Māori Battalion during the Second World War, was wounded at El Alamein, and with the rank of lieutenant colonel was the battalion's commanding officer when the war ended. He stood for Parliament for the National Party in the Northern Maori electorate on several occasions: 1946, 1949, 1951, 1963, and the 1963 by-election.
Te Tai Tokerau Māori are a group of Māori iwi (tribes) based on the Northland Peninsula of New Zealand's North Island. It includes the far northern Muriwhenua iwi (tribes) of Te Aupōuri, Ngāti Kahu, Ngāti Kurī, Te Pātū, Te Rarawa and Ngāi Takoto. It also includes Ngāpuhi and the affiliated iwi of Ngāti Hine. Elsewhere in the region, it includes Whaingaroa, Ngāti Wai and Ngāti Whātua.
Keani Reiner (1952–1994) was a Hawaiian surfer and sailor. Keani Reiner and her crewmate Penny Rawlins were the first women to sail on a long-open ocean voyage aboard Hōkūleʻa on the return trip from Tahiti to Hawai'i in 1976. She was also a part of the first all-girl crew to complete the Na Holo Kai Sailing Canoe Race from Oahu to Kauai in 1990.
Micronesian navigation techniques are those navigation skills used for thousands of years by the navigators who voyaged between the thousands of small islands in the western Pacific Ocean in the subregion of Oceania, that is commonly known as Micronesia. These voyagers used wayfinding techniques such as the navigation by the stars, and observations of birds, ocean swells, and wind patterns, and relied on a large body of knowledge from oral tradition. These navigation techniques continued to be held by Polynesian navigators and navigators from the Santa Cruz Islands. The re-creations of Polynesian voyaging in the late 20th century used traditional stellar navigational methods that had remained in everyday use in the Caroline Islands.
Michel Toofa Pouira Krainer, known as Chief Miko is a French Polynesian speaker, sculptor, traditional navigator, musician, singer, customary chief and activist. He played a major role in the Polynesian cultural revival, particularly in the revival of Polynesian tattoos.
