Huliau - The Return Voyage

Return Voyage spent the last week visiting, at the edge of the Everglades, in southernmost Florida. We were privileged to hike throughout this remarkable and exotic landscape, for the first time in our longish lives.

In these past days, we saw all manner of bird life: Cormorant, Grey Heron, Peacock in the wild, Anhinga (a species I’d neither sighted, nor pronounced before then). I was pecked by a Pelican–nothing personal–he was after the fish in my bucket. For the nature-absorbed and absorbing Hawaiian by my side: There were all manner of mangrove, fern, and unusual growing trees and plants to commune with.

But the high point of our Everglades exploit was most certainly the prolific Alligators and their offspring. We spent hours–no, days–with them, in their habitat. I’m a city girl. I asked the obvious: What’s the difference between…? And I was answered well. I will no longer confuse an Alligator with a the more sharp-nosed, toothful, aggressive Crocodile. I will not.

‘Iokepa–and Return Voyage–are asking no more of us.

“The Hawaiian culture has been so misrepresented: It’s been commercialized. The language has been anglicized. My people are numb.”

Return Voyage reclaims the truth of these people, their land, and their culture.

‘Iokepa says: “Our nation was never called Hawai’i. It was Lahui for 13,000 years. Lahui means: Nation, gathering, tribe. “

Hawai’i was, and is still, the name of a single Island (the largest one). These Islands needed no military, “Uniting” in Honolulu in the 19th century, for European and American economic interests. These were a single people, and they knew it.

It follows naturally that these people were never (and are not yet) Hawaiians. “My people are kanaka maoli,” ‘Iokepa says in these Return Voyage gatherings. That means: “The original people.”

So often, it has been said: The victors write the history. That was no less true in Lahui, where the Calvinist missionaries, and the sugar cane barons, wrote (and continue to write) their version of the history of these people. But “Victory” is a funny, perhaps an elusive, thing.

As ‘Iokepa has said: “Do you think the men who killed Martin Luther King won?” The victory was Reverend King’s: His ideas and his ideals were magnified by his death–and they endure.

The missionaries and the land exploiters–the people who have cheapened and sold the kanaka maoli culture and the land of Lahui–have had their shot. They’ve done their best to kill a 13,000 year old culture, that never knew war for 12,000 of those years; a people who defined and lived their (and our) responsibility for one another and for all of Creation–the land, the ocean, the air.

These were a people who breathed in that responsibility, as the very definition of their culture. Aloha– it actually means: In the presence of God in every breath.

Lahui is not Hawai’i. Kanaka Maoli are not Hawaiians. And an alligator is not a crocodile.

Last Spring, when the inspiration for this journey came: The words, “Huliau–The Return Voyage,” were given by the Grandmothers–and there was no doubt that they were the right words.

They spoke literally to the kanaka maoli who had travelled the world’s oceans, for thousands of years, in their still-state-of-the-art, sailing canoes. As they travelled the seas, they plotted the return trip by the skies, and weaved that celestial navigation into chants that were handed down for generations. Often, the Return Voyage home was generations after those original voyagers had set out armed with only their “Aloha.”

‘Iokepa chokes up, still, when he describes that quite literal feeling of the Return Voyage. He will “Remember,” in vivid detail, that first sight of “Home”: The volcanic mountain at it’s center, the pristine beaches, the familiar smell of sandalwood…the Islands.

And in describing that return–he will evoke the powerful feeling of that, which is familiar to each of us, that, which is our true home. Huliau-The Return Voyage, in this most recent incarnation, is pure metaphor.

Each of these grass-roots gatherings, in living rooms across the United States, have been the summons to return to what we (every one of us) are born knowing–to our unique, and to our universal inheritance. These, our abundant gifts, are too often lost to the distractions of the noisy world we have created; abandoned to the demand of our technological toys; or dismissed as insignificant by our book-only education.

Huliau–The Return Voyage continues to be that empowering bellow into the wind: All that we need lies within ourselves. We are–every one of us–supported on our human journey by universal “ancestors,” who recognize the individual gifts we carry, the specific purpose we signed on for, and work in force, to foster the fulfilment of our purpose.

As ‘Iokepa repeats: “Ask…and then listen. Your answers are in the wind, and the rain…in every element of creation.”

So Huliau-The Return Voyage has been, unequivocally, the right name of this now, almost six-month-long, 14,000-car-mile-trek, back and forth across the continental United States. But, far less certain was the subtitle across the top of this website. Until yesterday it read: “A Native Hawaiian Spiritual Retreat.”

For these past, almost six months, Return Voyage gatherings and conversations were called, “Retreats.”

We never loved that word. We struggled with alternatives. From the inception we were warned that “Retreat” carried a too-heavy, religious connotation. Later, we were told, by puzzled participants, that it implied a withdrawal from the world–as opposed to the lively exchanges and conversations that take place in the circle of Return Voyage gatherings.

Finally, the Grandmothers spoke. These gatherings (as of yesterday) are now called–remarkably–”Gatherings.” Sometimes, simple is simply better.

Under “Huliau–The Return Voyage” now sits: “A Native Hawaiian Spiritual Circle.” The circle is both literally descriptive of the configuration of participants at each Return Voyage, and a reflection of the powerful aboriginal community relations. We fully share, as community, responsibility of one another, and for every other part of this good Earth.

In response to that question posed at that the top of this page: “What’s In A Name?” I guess we’d have to acknowledge: “More than we imagined.”

Several months ago, ‘Iokepa and Tiokasin Ghosthorse, shared a conversation across the radio waves in New York City, on Tiokasin’s First Voices: Indigenous Radio.

Today–on a warm, sun-filled, February day in Sarasota, Florida–the morning after a particularly intimate and probing Return Voyage retreat–I remember Tiokasin’s words. The Lakota said: “It is not our right to life, but our responsibility for life.”

And that is where I begin. I have often said of my commitment to ‘Iokepa, his people, and the fulfillment of this 1,000 year old Hawaiian prophecy: “I did not choose this life, as I have chosen so many things in my life (my jobs, vacation spots, presidential candidates). This life chose me.”

To the Native Hawaiian people, a people who understand destiny–this is abundantly clear. To claim destiny among these people, is not to relinquish responsibility; it is, on the contrary, to claim full responsibility for the life we signed on for. Those destined to be fishermen (or women) fished. Those destined to work in the kalo fields grew food. Those born to cut timber off the mountain did. Those born to sit under the coconut tree each day and meditate, sat without judgement. Though a child’s name (a gift of the ancestors) implied, in metaphor, his destiny–it was his or her life’s work to imagine it, and fulfill it.

We moderns should only be so lucky–a name to instruct us.

Nevertheless, our task remains exactly the same. Each of us, ‘Iokepa insists “Made promises” when we took on human life. And each of us, are armed with particular gifts to support the fulfillment of these “Promises.” Like the Hawaiian child, who for thousands of years carried the key to his life’s purpose locked in a set of words that were his name–a set of words that could have dozens of possible, very different meanings–it remains our life’s work to imagine, and then fulfill our destiny. No one can do it for us.

That question surfaced a few nights ago, at a Return Voyage gathering here in Sarasota. And then again, in a different form, around a dinner table last night.

“F…k spiritual teachers!” A bright, attractive, middle-aged artist, who’d spent years at the knee of one–blurted out, over beet soup.

“Have you outgrown your need for a teacher?” I asked, as tactfully as I could manage.

“She outgrew her need for them the day she was born!” a psychologist, spoon in hand, leaped in to make the point.

From the moment I met ‘Iokepa, ten plus years ago, I have never heard him say other than: “I am not a teacher.”

I have heard him repeat, more regularly than we now accumulate miles on the odometer of our Return Voyage Camry: “I do not have your answers. They come in many ways. Ask…get quiet…and listen. You’ll get used to feeling the answer.”

There are 160 words for the wind in Hawaiian, 138 words for the rain: Each one is the answer to a prayer. The indigenous peoples had to recognize those subtle differences, their survival depended on it. Ours does too.

Not only are the answers in the wind in our face, and within every element of nature, but they are also in the book that fell off the shelf, the words we heard in a random conversation, a moment in a movie. You will get used to feeling the answer.

‘Iokepa is adamant. No one can dictate our direction; no one can speak for our unique destiny; no one can, as ‘Iokepa says, “Respond to that responsibility” for us. We are born with the answers. Our noisy, demanding modern world can quash or silence our ike hanau–our birth knowledge. But it remains inscribed in our cellular structure. It is who we were born to be. All manner of loving, universal “Ancestors” are present to remind and support us in our task.

Afterwards. When, from the quiet chambers of our deep knowing, we’ve recognized (heard, saw, smelled, tasted, or felt) what has always been ours for the picking, we are compelled–as the fulfillment of that unique “Destiny”–to say an unequivocal, “Yes!” to it. That, too, is our responsibility.

And finally: ‘Iokepa’s people, these indigenous Hawaiians, remind us like the gentlest of mothers, to say, “Thank you.” From their gratitude was born ritual.

I will not belabor this. I will simply try to explain. This promised, “Ever Changing Page” has been unchanging for more than two full weeks.

And like a kid who has missed the deadline for her term paper–”The dog ate it.” “It was lost in the mail.”–I feel more than a bit chagrined to be offering excuses. There really are none.

I’ll offer an anecdote instead. Somewhere in Minnesota ‘Iokepa was bitten by a spider. It itched. It went away. It itched again.

Somewhere in Baltimore, the leg began to grow a red welt. In a matter of days, that leg began to resemble a tree trunk in size. (Yes, Native Hawaiians have extremely sturdy calves, but…) In a matter of hours, the red welt was the size of a baseball with a gaping hole in the middle. In a few more hours the poison began streaking up his leg.

We had a son in Baltimore who works in a hospital. This son insisted we go to his hospital’s emergency room. (”They are not-for-profit; they must, by law, take everyone.”) Within a half an hour, ‘Iokepa’s arm was hooked to an IV antibiotic, his leg was sliced open to drain, and he was admitted to Union Memorial Hospital.

I need say this (Perhaps, as an addendum to our, “On American Medicine” post): No one at Union Memorial blinked when ‘Iokepa said that he had no health insurance. They didn’t ask a single question when he told them that he no longer had a social security number. (His sole and primary identity is as a citizen of the Hawaiian nation).

The doctors, the nurses, the techs at this hospital were exemplary. They sent Return Voyage on the road after some days, with a shopping bag full of free antibiotic pills, and every manner of tool, instrument, medication and wrapping to pack and repack the wound on the road. There was absolutely no bureaucracy involved in any step of this. After we’d signed in at the emergency room, we never saw another piece of paper again.

These were simply human beings taking care of other humans beings. This was a genuine community–with common purpose and intention. This was intensely personal, vividly competent, and loving. It reminded us, most of all, of the indigenous culture we work to represent.

‘Iokepa is well. The Ever Changing page is no longer frozen.