 Aloha, I'm Kirsten Baumgart Turner and this is Sustainable Hawai'i. We air live every Tuesday at noon until 12.30 and thinktechhawaii.com and also on Oceanic Channel 16. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature's World Conservation Congress culminated at the Honolulu Convention Center on Saturday with the presentation of the Hawai'i commitments. This document, which sets the global conservation agenda for the next four years, is titled Navigating Island Earth. This title and many other references to canoe sailing and navigation throughout the proceedings of the Congress reflect the impact our Native Hawaiian community and culture had on the Congress participants and perhaps none more so than Ninoa Thompson and the Polynesian Voyaging Society. My guest today is the director of the PBS Learning Center, which is the Education Resource Center for the Polynesian Voyaging Society and the Malama Honua Worldwide Voyage. Mickey Tomita was born and raised on Maui, graduated from Baldwin High School, then completed a BSE in Biosystems Engineering at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa and went on to get a PhD in education at Stanford University. Mickey is also a Voyaging Crew Member of Hokulea and Hikianalia. Thank you for joining us, Mickey. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much. We're so delighted and we're so absolutely thrilled with the impression that Hawai'i was able to give at the World Conservation Congress, particularly through the works of the PBS Polynesian Voyaging Society. Tell us about it. You know, it was such an amazing opportunity, this being the first World Conservation Congress hosted ever by the United States, and of course, Hawai'i being the natural fit for it, and Nainoa's role along with the other voyaging leadership and really helping people to understand that through a perspective that's grounded in traditional knowledge and traditional wisdom, wayfinding and navigation, can we see beyond the current horizon and begin to pull a more sustainable future out of the sea that we see in front of us? It was just a really wonderful opportunity to show people that perspective. And I understand that Nainoa got to speak there, and there were some pretty cool opportunities to showcase all that Hawai'i represents through PBS. Yeah, definitely. So Nainoa himself spoke on a number of panels and was included in a number of very high-level conversations. He also engaged with students from Malama Hono Public Charter School and other schools that were there presenting as part of the public presentations and displays. We had many voyaging crew members and education support team members that gave presentations and demonstrations of all the things that the voyage has inspired. And many of Nainoa's friends that are also ocean elders, part of the organization that he's in with Sylvia Earle and with John Makoto, they were in large presence throughout many of the proceedings along with Pacific leadership. Well, I think we ought to inform our viewers all about PBS and we have a wonderful video that you folks have on your website. Let's look at that. Sure, yeah. What is the worldwide voyage? Thank you. 7,000 years ago, the first really oceanic people came out of China and came out of Taiwan. Then you get to Polynesia, this oceanic country bounded by Hawai'i in the north and New Zealand in the southwest and Rapa Nui in the east. 10-minute square miles bigger than Russia. It was discovered by these extraordinary people. They were really the astronauts of our ancestors. They were the greatest explorers on the face of the earth. Unated by modern instruments, these extraordinary explorers discovered and settled every livable landmass in the Pacific, relying solely on a complex understanding of the stars, the winds, the waves, and other cues from nature. Guided by this traditional wisdom and perspective, Hawaiians mastered the science of living sustainably on islands. Western expansion, however, brought not only new ways of seafaring but a shift in perspective on how to interact with the natural environment. Eventually, traditional practices and world views were nearly forgotten. But a group of determined individuals got together in the 1970s to resurrect indigenous wisdom by building a traditional canoe and sailing it in the way of the ancestors. Hokulea's first voyage to Tahiti reawakened a cultural pride, identity, and an intimate connection to place. In a generation, Hokulea has sailed over 140,000 nautical miles to reunite the world's largest oceanic nation. Today, Hokulea voyages around the planet with a message of Malama Honua, or caring for island earth, with a firm belief that blending traditional and modern technologies will help us find our way to a healthier future. Hokulea, to us to go around the world, has this enormous potential to go to 40, 50 countries on the planet to be with the great navigators on earth. I'm not talking about those on canoes. I'm talking about those who are doing things to give kindness and compassion to the earth and those on the dead water. Those navigators. We're not going to change the world, but we're going to go and build a network of people around the earth who are going to change it. And our job is to help them be successful. So the Malama Honua is really about building a network. Tell me how you're doing that. So the intention of this worldwide voyage is to really build on the legacy of the first 40 years of Polynesian voyaging, starting with Hokulea's birthplace in Kualoa, taking Hokulea and that story of hope around the world as a source of inspiration, but also as a way to gather up stories from around the rest of the world of people doing work to steward their land, their ocean, and their people. And so we have with us some images that represent our voyage map and things like that that we can really talk about. So this is Kualoa, Hokulea's birthplace, where we really think about our origins and how we anchor to our home and take that story with us of Hokulea's story of hope around the world to all of these different countries. And we have learned so many lessons from all the Earth's ocean and the ocean people that we have met. Many of them actually resonate so deeply with us. As Nainoa says, the further we sail away from home, the more we realize that we are all alike. And we have had such amazing opportunities to meet with people. Like when we train as apprentice navigators, as crew members, that is just part of the story of what's happening. Hokulea sailing around the world is to help us to ensure that the art and the science of wayfinding is never lost again. But it is also to share that traditional knowledge and ancient knowledge can be made new again in contemporary settings. For example, we voyaged to Aotearoa to New Zealand and visited with the Manai Kalani schools, which actually their school cluster is named for the Fishook of Maui, which is said to have dragged all of our, to pull all of our islands out of the ocean. It's absolutely chilling to hear about the different myths around the Pacific Islands and how they come together really as one and they're rooted in the same traditions. Yes, what was so amazing Nainoa stats, you know, he stood in the sands at Point England, Tomaki Beach and talked to 2,500 students, 95% of them Pacifica and Māori youth that had never touched sands of the other Pacific Islands and we brought to them those stories of their ancestors and of the voyage in canoe that their curriculum is built around. And so that was just such an amazing experience for us. So that's one of the legs of the journey that you were on? Yeah, so I was so privileged to be able to do one of the very few deep sea crossings. It was the last leg of the Pacific. We started in Samoa and voyage through Tonga and then from Tonga to Aotearoa. And it's important for our viewers to know you started in Samoa but Hokulea and Hikianalia started here and continue and crew members join at different legs so that everybody gets an opportunity to finesse the skills that they've learned in the Hawaiian Islands. Yeah, our leadership approximates that it takes, you know, it will take over 300 of us to complete the voyage because we sail as volunteers, we sail on different legs for about a month at a time and so far there's been about 186 crew members that have completed the voyage and voyaging training. And I understand Hikianalia has more high-tech ecosystem environmentally oriented technology that's able to gather data as well as to be used for education. Tell me how the educational outreach happens for Hawai'i kids to experience this but also for the host communities. Yeah, so for both of the voyaging canoes, we actually really try to envision what traditional voyaging and navigation looks like in contemporary society to think about studying the Earth's ocean and to help raise awareness that cutting-edge technology can happen on this very ancient platform. Hikianalia, as you mentioned, is a different canoe. She's built differently. She does have motors as opposed to Hokulea, which is all sail-powered, but Hikianalia's footprint, her footprint is zero because she's solar-powered and she has electric motors that run off of the solar panels. And she also has slightly more technology in terms of some of the water quality instruments that we have on board. Both canoes support fish DNA research and also support marine debris and plankton trawls. And so as kids in Hawai'i tune in, they can do that live through the web as well as the website is absolutely replete with opportunities for teachers to use materials around the navigating voyage. Yeah, so we have on Hokulea.com. We have regular postings. We do have Google Hangouts and other video calls that we create classroom, canoe to classroom connections is what we call the program. And we have crew members that answer questions that come directly from students. Some of them are live. Some of them are staggered through email, and then they do a video recording and stream that back to us. And a lot of this is also recorded on OEV because not Alehu Anthony, the founder of OEV, is also a captain of the PBS and also... Now which canoe did he start on? Not Alehu has been sailing Hokulea since he was in college. And so it's been about 20 years that he's been her storyteller. So how do you arrange the live classroom events? So what our team does is we work with the technicians that are sailing on the canoes. We have satellites that we've installed on both canoes so that they can actually stream live to the classrooms. And then they work with our education team to connect via Google Hangout. We moderate for the class or they might do a direct call via Skype or FaceTime. So teachers can connect with you to set this up? Yes, definitely. And it's for all ages, right? K through 12? Yeah, we match them. We ask them usually if they have specific questions and then we try to identify one of the 14 to 16 crew members currently on the leg that's best able to answer those questions. Well, when we come back from the break, I want to hear about some of the stops in Africa and I think Australia and you have a few other visuals. So we'll be right back with Sustainable Hawaii and the Polynesian Voyaging Society. Aloha, I'm Carl Kampania, host of Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers and Reformers. I hope you'll join us over the next several weeks as we take a deep dive into biofuels in Hawaii and explore the alternative fuels supply chain necessary for the local and global transition towards transportation fuel sustainability. Join us as we have good conversations with our farmers, our producers, our conversion technologies, our investors and our legislators as we try to achieve our transportation sustainability goals. See you soon. Hi, I'm Crystal. Welcome to Think Tech, my show, Clock Talk. Normally airs at 10 o'clock on Tuesdays, but it's going to change to 11 o'clock. So don't miss it. It's an hour later. You can sleep in a little longer. Come with me and engage in some sensitive, provocative discussions on everything. It's all good, all right? Women's issues, things that people don't dare talk about. We want it on the table. So join me. Looking to energize your Friday afternoon? Tune in to Stand the Energyman at 12 noon. Aloha Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. Hi, we're back with Sustainable Hawaii and Miki Tomita from the Polynesian Voyaging Society. She's telling us all about the learning legs as well as the host communities that the voyage has visited so far, and you were one of the crew members. Yeah, I was really, I was blessed to be a part of the visit to Point England, Manekulani and Aotearoa we were talking about earlier. And also, you know, many of our crew members were able to engage in Australia through the Reef Guardian school system. Just an amazing network of schools, almost 300 of them, that have all dedicated themselves in some way to protect the Great Barrier Reef, one of our greatest natural resources. That's phenomenal. Have you heard of this anywhere else in the world? Actually, it was really interesting. After we met with them, Jenna Ishii and I, we both run the education program for PBS. We traveled and met with NOAA representatives on the West Coast, and they have an ocean guardian program that was adopted by the Carmel School District that is inspired by the Reef Guardian schools. And so we're going to try and connect with that school and see how they've worked through the U.S. content standards so that Hawaii schools can also be a part of that. That's terrific. Who might be some of your partners, and that would be the Department of Education or Charter Schools? Yeah, so we've actually had some interest that was expressed from Charter Schools, from Independent Schools, from some of the Department of Education schools. All of them, you know, we've worked with a network of schools here, 900 educators around the world and 200 schools here that are all following the voyage and really want to be involved in some way, and this is one opportunity that they might have. And some of the other places that we've been to, you know, it wasn't just about learning from students, it was also about being able to visit with people like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the kinds of work that he's done in South Africa around the Tutu Legacy Foundation and the Tutu Desk. So in South Africa, one of the challenges that they face is that the schools don't have writing surfaces for kids, and so they actually, their development of their writing skills and their academic achievement becomes much lower. And what Archbishop Tutu has founded is a program to bring desks, portable desks to schools. So we had a very wonderful, yeah, we had a very wonderful presentation and an exchange of music and culture with some of the township schools in South Africa, and we presented to them Malamo Honua-inspired Tutu Desks with the Tutu Foundation there. That's just amazing. Another chilly. I think I'm going to have chicken skin on this whole show. That's delightful. And so what is the follow-up after you leave? Great. So one of the really interesting things that we are hoping to do is when we come home in June 2017 is to invite all of these amazing partners to tell us their story of what they've been inspired to do or how we've inspired them and for us to tell them how they've inspired us and also hopefully to invite some of them to join us here when Hokulea and Hikianalia return to Hawaii in June 2017. Well, we shouldn't leave out the United States port where you had a phenomenal impact and that is, I'm sure, a school district that's going to stay in close touch. Tell us about the New York visit. New York was incredible and our host there was the New York Harbor School in the Billion Oyster Project. We spent a lot of time with the United Nations and World Oceans Day but this school is so amazing. They are, they have a goal of restoring the Hudson River watershed to growing technology, which is ancient technology, oysters, which no longer can grow in the Hudson River because it's one of the most polluted waterways but they seed them at this school, this charter school, learns how to grow oysters, seed them and plant them and people adopt these oyster beds to clean up the Hudson River. Wow. It's amazing. Well, that's certainly a global impact that you're having. We've seen it, you know, in Africa, in Aotearoa, in New York. Tell us a little more about how your global impact was demonstrated at the World Conservation Congress and the different declarations of different nationalities. So one of the things that we've been able to do, and I know as such a compelling speaker and such an activist and a voice for the oceans, but he really stands on the shoulders and the work that have been done by other Pacific leaders. And so at World Oceans Day and at the Conservation Congress, we were joined by people that represented ocean voices like Tommy Romingo Sal and other representatives from across the Pacific that have really taken a stand to talk about the health of our waters and our people. So this actually preceded the World Conservation Congress to us at the UN. Yeah, and many of these people were there. So that was at the United Nations. Right. So what we did was we had a really wonderful engagement with Secretary General Ban Ki-moon who actually came aboard Hokulea in Samoa and gave us a message in the bottle to protect the oceans and asked us to bring back to him messages from other ocean people so that he could share that. And so we delivered onto the United Nations a series of declarations that came from other countries, other oceans, from children around the world, from our own State Department, from our own communities here, promises to Pai Aina, promises to children that are originating here in Hawaii and really are the driving force behind the voyage locally. That must have been one of the most exciting high points of the entire voyage. What's ahead that could top that? Oh, goodness. Well, we just, riding in the wake of World Oceans Day, we come here to the World Conservation Congress where all of a sudden, World Oceans Day was an amazing stage for the United Nations, but to have all of those people convening here in Hawaii and to really have them be a part of Nainoa, welcoming them on the beach, to our waters, to our sand where his ancestors have stood and talked about what it means to steward to Malama, our Honua, or our Earth, was just an incredible experience. And I think that the momentum keeps growing. He's going to be speaking at our Oceans Conference with Secretary Kerry in a couple of days. What conference can you give us a little more detail so people might watch for that? Yeah, so we're going to be at the Our Oceans Conference, which is in Washington, D.C., but there is a live stream that of part of the speeches, and I think we're going to be posting that on Hokulea.com, so we can find the information there. And it's just going to be a really exciting experience for all of those that are so blessed to speak there. And at the World Conservation Congress, not only did they, did you folks, the PBS, receive so many of the delegations, but you saw them out at the end with the Hawaii commitments and the 30 by 30 commitments. Tell us about what that was like and particularly the details. Yeah, we had some really exciting moments around IECN World Conservation Congress with the expansion of Papahana Mokoakea, that President Obama, you know, that he announced with Governor Ige and his Hawaii commitments. These were all sort of part of the building momentum that has happened in the wake of our promise to Pahaina, which is a group of local and global organizations that are dedicated to protecting our oceans and ocean commitments. We hosted many events through the promise to Pahaina, which was through the Pacific Pavilion, and we also hosted some in partnership with our promise to children, which is our education network. And so these were really an opportunity for both local and global partners to showcase their work and their promises to steward the ocean and to protect it. And this is the Hawaii's 30 by 30 oceans target. So Governor Ige made his announcement and he really, you know, everything was inspired by the voyage for Island Earth and protecting our resources. And the promise to Pahaina target is next, I believe. So our promise to Pahaina Group, which is made up of CUA and NOAA and all of these different organizations that work here and work globally, we're really thinking about how the voyage and canoe helps to set a new mindset for what we need in terms of a more sustainable future for managing our resources for treating each other like family and for stewarding our planet and our canoes into a better future. And tell me a little bit about the very student focused centered design challenge and I think some of the design charrettes. Yeah, so one of the things what we were so blessed to host was a couple of activities that Polynesian Voyaging Society was able to support and that was we had a star compass activity teaching students about learning from the natural world and how you can never be lost if you can find yourself and find your directions and know which direction you're pointing in. There's so many wonderful analogies to use from this. It was so great. There was nothing more inspiring to see everyone at the Congress pick this up and start to use it in their own declarations and debates even. The mindset, this photograph, I love this photograph so much coming up, this is NaNoah doing one of his opportunities of 6,000 data points he says he gathers in a day. He says a navigator actually has to study the natural world so intensely that they take 6,000 observations a day. Imagine if we all took 6,000 observations a day to tell us if we were sailing our communities, our world, our lives in the right direction. Our entire world would change and that's kind of what the mindset of the navigator and voyaging is and it's meant to be metaphoric for our lives. Are we paying attention? Do we know what course we're staring on? Are we engaging those around us in a team effort? Are we all pointing our canoe in the same direction? And so that's really what we see is echoing through things like World Oceans Day at the UN and the Conservation Congress here. So what happens when the voyage is over? Everybody's come home. The thrill and the chilling moments end or what's going to be the chicken skin event? That's a really great question and one of the things that we hope for is and I know in our leadership it's their vision, their dream that we have taken Hokulea out across the world's oceans to meet the world's people to bring back a thousand stories of what people are doing to steward our culture and our communities to celebrate ancient wisdom and new technologies and the hope is that that launches 10,000 individual voyages and so when we see Hokulea returning home to Kualoa what we'll find we hope is a new mindset and that people have embraced what is actually an old mindset, a traditional subsistence very much in tune with nature and a love for Aina and a desire to Malamo Honua when we return. We see how you're already sowing the seeds for this to happen within the schools but how do you get people like me and the in-between ages between us old folks and the young folks to grab on to this legacy and start implementing it in our daily practices? That's an excellent question and that's one that we actually pose to our communities and to people like here to ask what does it take to reach down into someone and to turn a light on in them and to ask them what is it that is worth protecting in your life in your culture, in your community and how can you tell that story so that the rest of us understand how precious it is and then we can all learn about the precious places that we need to protect and that way the whole world will in turn be protected and I think that's part of what we ask is people share with us their story that's the first ask come to Hokulea.com share your Malamo Honua story with us tell us what's special and sacred and we'll share for our island earth and we'll also share opportunities like this weekend international coastal cleanup the largest cleanup in the world to take trash out of our beaches and our oceans and there are many opportunities that we're posting on our website with partners to talk about those kinds of things that you can do every weekend so everyone should go to Hokulea.com and I really appreciate you being on the show today we'll be back next Tuesday at noon with Sustainable Hawaii at Hokulea.com Mahalo for tuning in