Latest / The One Oʻahu Podcast with Mayor Rick Blangiardi / 2025 Inauguration Ceremony: Remarks by Nainoa Thompson

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2025 Inauguration Ceremony: Remarks by Nainoa Thompson · The One Oʻahu Podcast with Mayor Rick Blangiardi

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Welcome to the One Oahu podcast and happy 2025 were.
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Just a few days are moved for Mayor Rick Blangiardi second inauguration ceremony
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before Mayor Blangiardi took his oath of office
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and delivered his inaugural address.
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Master Navigator and president of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, Nainoa
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Thompson delivered a few remarks and are replaying that for you now.
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A lot of my cargo.
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Oh, thank you for,
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Mr. Mayor, for having me part of the day.
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I'm honored and I'm terrified.
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You asked me to speak about leadership.
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I don't know anything about it.
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And, and in a room.
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With leaders,
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real navigators in this room right now.
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But enormous amounts of responsibility for the future of this island.
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I'm intimidated, but I'm honored.
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Thank you.
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And I want to have a personal thing.
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It's,
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kind of emotional for me.
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Last night, my two children asked him my permission.
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Know if I could just speak about
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sending deepest condolences to
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to all the souls of the lost
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and New Year's night,
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and to all those who have suffered
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because of an accident.
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They asked me to make sure that they're honored
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and the present
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and the.
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Asked me.
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To make sure that.
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We hope for healing, and they want.
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To hope for change.
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And I think that there's no better
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leader to do that than you.
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So on behalf of my family, thank you.
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You know, I don't know that much about.
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Leadership, but, but I was asked to speak about it.
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But I am a privileged witness
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to those who change the world.
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Change the world
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because they believe they could.
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And so, as a witness, permit me to.
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Just bring names.
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Into this room so we don't forget who they are.
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And I
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don't know much of anything, but I do know
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that I spent.
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Half a century on a canoe
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and sailed far because of them.
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The first two of three individuals.
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Or the founders of the English voyagers, say they,
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There are dreamers to have mentors like you.
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They're courageous.
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And they had vision.
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They had dreams, and they pushed it and exercised it.
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And, why was it important?
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Because maybe we could go back in time,
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maybe 2000 years ago.
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We don't know
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because we've forgotten.
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A voyaging canoe would come to Hawaii,
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and the first footprints of human beings would be on the sand here 2000 years ago.
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In the same place.
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It's called the land of the Golden Haze.
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Keiki know
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that.
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And they would be.
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Arguably the greatest voyagers and navigators, explorers
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on the earth at that time.
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But we forgot.
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And there's reasons for that.
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Forgetting 200 years ago, there were other voyagers that came here.
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That drove in enormous change
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in a society that.
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Was not prepared for it.
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And everything started to shift.
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101 years ago, my father was born.
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And he'd be the first generation of maybe.
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100 that would not be taught language or culture,
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because his loving parents felt that.
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If he was going to be who he was.
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Then he's going to get hurt.
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99 years ago,
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the public school systems would outlaw
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language and culture in our schools throughout the whole Hawaiian Islands
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because it had no value.
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To a changing world.
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It was a dead language.
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And, to make a long story short.
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The black.
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Road, the shiny black road of extinctions, well paved.
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Well paved.
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It's in the forgetting that we lose who we are.
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And there's a cliff at that black road that we can't see.
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But when you go over the cliff, there's no way back.
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It's extinction.
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And there were two dreamers.
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I want to bring them.
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In the room.
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One was a surfer from.
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From Santa Barbara.
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Who in the mid 50s
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would enter graduate.
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School in anthropology.
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Studying fascination about the ocean and the biggest continent in the world.
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Pacific Islands.
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Pacific islands.
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22 times larger than cotton.
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No, not two states.
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The biggest continent in the world.
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Spread across the huge landmass.
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The oceans.
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And trying to figure out how did they do that?
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And that same time, in the mid 50s, there was a Hawaiian
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born and raised in White Field.
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Grandfather told them of old stories.
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Of the voyaging canoes, the great navigators, one of the few
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that still remembered glimpses
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while the rest of us forgot.
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And he was in Chicago.
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Where he was opening up his,
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art studio and his business.
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His name is herb.
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I knew it, Connie
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Dreamer,
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1958.
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Doctor Ben Finney,
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the surfer anthropologist, came to Hawaii to do his post doctorate.
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And a lady, a professor, you know, women professor.
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You can count them in one hand. Back then,
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in a world that was an equal,
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came up to him angry.
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Two books handed to him and said, these books are wrong.
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Change them.
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All of a
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sudden, the dream became about justice.
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It was Kon-Tiki.
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Thor Heyerdahl that place the story across from a book
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and a film would educate the world about a history
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that wasn't ours.
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And there was.
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An anthropologist from UCLA was world renowned.
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Andrew Sharp wrote a book about voyaging Pacific people said, oh no, no, no,
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they want to read rafts.
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They had canoes, they could sail,
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but they did not have the intelligence to navigate over 100 miles.
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How do you account for Hawaii?
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24 times that?
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Her name was Katherine Lew, a mullah
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handed in the books.
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You take these books, read it, change it.
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Voyaging became an issue of justice.
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At that moment, and it took ten years for someone,
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the director from the Bishop museum to tell Herb and Ben
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Finney, Herb Carney and Ben Finney, you need to talk to each other.
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You have the same dream,
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one in San Diego and one in Chicago.
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You needed to talk to each other 1950 50.
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It was 1968
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that there would be a single phone call.
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They combined the dream science
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with culture and traditions and genealogy.
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They researched, they held it in private.
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It kept it quiet because they thought that nobody would understand
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why a canoe would be important to the modern world.
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The black road is well paved.
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But they would come to Hawaii
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and basically.
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Make a long story short.
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They would launch.
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They will launch the vehicle,
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the spaceship of our ancestors.
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They would launch ideas and.
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Beliefs and values.
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They launch courage.
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They launched something that possibly
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could change the world.
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And they launched it.
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But herb, I knew Connie would say my wife
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did an interview with him.
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Two months before he died.
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And he spoke about launching that canoe and saying,
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we must take this canoe around the Hawaiian Islands.
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We must go to our communities.
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If our communities don't accept the dream, if our communities
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don't accept the ideals and the beliefs that we are great,
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we are descendants of great navigators.
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Then he said, the voyages of Hokule'a
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would only be a stunt.
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The acceptance of community is key
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to everything we do in the future,
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and this launch
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shifted everything but one thing it did.
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It invited pilot.
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Nicknamed Mao, Mao means to be fierce.
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As a navigator,
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pilot, and for one of six
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of the last masters on it, you know, sorry, I'm not a mass.
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I'm just a student. Thank you. On the introduction.
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Okay, but the.
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He's the.
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Master.
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And he did two miracles.
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In. Hawaii, 1976.
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He sailed hokule'a.
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If you stand on the beach of Waikiki and go look at.
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Draw an imaginary angle to the east side of the area, another one to the west.
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Less than half a degree.
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Go find it with the stars.
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And he did 31 days.
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And I will say that began the seed of change in Pacific Islands.
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People.
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The thing about it that was so important was it was pride.
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And dignity in something that was common to who we were.
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The voyaging canoe.
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The single most important single central.
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Artifact of our people,
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Herb Carney, said that.
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The voyaging canoe makes us common,
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finding that common denominator, that we can come together.
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But everything else aside and make change.
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The pillar would come back.
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On the other miracle and train us for
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28 years,
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28 years.
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And do know that
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sometimes leaders
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need to break the rules.
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Micronesia school schools, a school he's from is called
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Orient is 4000 years old.
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They do not teach outside the culture.
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They do not teach outside the island.
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They do not teach outside the family because.
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Because it's so powerful.
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But Mao watched the changing world and said,
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if we don't teach, it's going to go extinct.
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So we asked two things of us come learn and teach.
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28 years he would come.
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I want to show you with you a couple of stories about not just to our mayor.
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But to our city council and to all the leaders in this room.
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Governor, it's very good to see you.
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Thank you for being here.
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Their personal stories
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for me, the stories about fear
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and how crush you.
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1978 we would lose Eddie.
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But it is
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dream was to pull Tahiti out of the sea.
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Sail hokule'a pulled Tahiti
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out of the sea to bring pride and dignity.
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Give it to our elders.
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So they could give it to our children. Bam!
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That's the equation.
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We needed a model.
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Teacher came back
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and we were in immersion training for 28 months
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in the ocean. Every day.
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If we didn't touch saltwater, he make us swim nighttime in the black
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to make sure you can't see underneath you to come calm
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when you have to confront fear.
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And everything was there so extraordinarily.
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It was the greatest time of my life.
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Just being every day, being with him, every day, learning
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until for about 20, almost two years
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of training, until bam, captain, pioneer
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of what called I
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chose the date to leave.
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Hawaii to Tahiti.
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And I crashed.
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If it was just learning then it was really exciting.
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But now it was like, I'm going to have to be tested,
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I'm going to have to take risk.
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And I'm not afraid of the ocean.
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But I'm afraid of failing.
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And I started to crash
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because I then I started to think, I can't do this.
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And then I stopped believing in my teacher,
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and he was angry.
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He was so angry that that,
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Because he saw me.
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Failing at the final exam.
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The final exam is simple.
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You choose
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between courage
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or fear.
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And you saw me going down the wrong road.
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I wanted him to give me the magic, his magic, the master's magic,
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so that I guarantee I would.
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I wouldn't miss Tahiti because I was too afraid to fail.
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And you know why? Because I was. Hawaiian.
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Because failure was an expectation of us.
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Because we're not good enough.
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And it crippled us.
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It may not be the same for the young.
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In this room is a different time.
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And so my
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finances get in the car,
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take me to old, and I look out.
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I want to look at sunset sunrises
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and sunsets, the most important time to train and pay attention.
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That's when you start to look at the weather and we get there.
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We've been there hundreds of times.
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I'm looking for the magic and,
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give me the Magic Mile.
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And he goes, okay.
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We just we stood there for an hour,
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waited for dusk to get dark enough for the big.
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Bright stars to come out.
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He said,
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show me the start. Compass.
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Not the magic.
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That's what we learned.
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Day one the star compass.
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Show me the 32 houses of the stars.
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He knows.
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I know that.
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And you asked me to show it to him, and I did.
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He goes okay,
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you go show me
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the star house to Tahiti.
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That's day number two.
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It's not the magic.
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But he asked me.
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To show it and I pointed to it.
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And then mom asked me,
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can you see the island?
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And he knows I know it.
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On his way over.
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The curve of the earth, very far away.
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He knows you can't see it with your eyes.
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But I know that no, wasn't the answer, so I didn't say anything.
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He goes, can you see the island?
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And I hesitated.
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He yelled again,
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and I said,
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mom, I can see the island in my mind.
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He goes, okay, good.
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You ever lose it in the mind,
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you will be lost.
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But my.
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I was talking about something larger than courage.
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He's talking about something about faith.
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Faith?
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Ancestors,
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genealogy, the legacy.
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All your teachers trust them.
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And so we.
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But I still wasn't,
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I still wasn't solid inside. And,
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Faith wasn't in me.
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Because for Kurt, because fear was too strong.
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We got the Hilo going to depart in March of 1984.
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Tahiti.
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And, it rained for five days.
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I hope that rain.
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Forever.
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Because if it rains and we can't go, we can blame it on the weather. But.
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So you can't blame it on my fear.
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And mom
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was angry, and we were walking on the sidewalk by the only a little down 1980,
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and he stopped me and it was pouring rain and he was just drenched,
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coming down his face in his eyes, and his eyes were red
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because he was angry.
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He goes.
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Now I know we're going.
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He said.
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When the storm comes.
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You get up, you put on your jacket,
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you face the wind and you stay there.
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You become humble.
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You become respectful of the storm.
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Then he said.
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You pay attention.
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Your job.
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Is to get your crew
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and the canoe out of the storm.
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That's your job.
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You stay there the whole time.
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Well, one thing you never do is ever show them that you're afraid.
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Face the storm.
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And to me.
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This is a room of navigators
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collective.
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This is the elected body
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of our leadership of these precious Hawaiian islands.
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Who decides
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the future of Hawaii?
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Who is going to create the sail plan
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for tomorrow?
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Who makes those decisions?
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Whose responsibility is that?
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And I would argue
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that why it's intimidating to me
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because to a large degree, it's you,
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all of you, collectively.
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Remember that
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herb said that we had to have acceptance?
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You know, it's interesting to me that that,
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the reason why I say that is that
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the reason why I'm here,
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because I've never done an inauguration before.
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Because I never thought I had anything to say.
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But it's different today.
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The times are different.
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You feel it in the communities.
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I how many times have you any of you in the room?
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Or maybe you haven't ever thought about someone coming up to you?
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A friend or family member to say, man, I'm not so sure I can live in Hawaii
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anymore.
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Times have changed.
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Then, in November of 2022, compare schools,
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which did arguably the best kind of demographics on our people
20:33
and saying for the first time
20:35
in surely
20:37
more Native.
20:38
Hawaiians on any more.
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It's one of the storms.
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And I hate to bring it up, but it's constantly in me because there are those.
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There are those in the community that are anxious.
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There are those in the community that are afraid, and they come to me
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and say,
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do something.
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That's why I'm here.
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And that
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in many ways.
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I'm honored to be here.
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Mayor.
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Because I know you.
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When the storm comes,
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every single time of your life, you put your jacket on
21:24
and you stand and you faced it.
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It's the kind of courage that we need that inspires people
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to be better than they are, or inspires them to be larger than they are.
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That kind of courage that sets the course.
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One thing we must do is come together
21:44
unified because Hawaii,
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as you know, is a really special place.
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The world is not going to change the way Hawaii is going to change the world.
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If our leadership can come together,
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stand up together, it's the only way.
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There's no other option.
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And I do know in this issue of community and fear is another factor.
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They are courageous.
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I've been
22:14
sailing on not maybe 200 different indigenous communities around the world,
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have gone around the planet with that canoe and we went to learn.
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I've come home to recognize
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that there's no place like Hawaii,
22:29
that our movement towards
22:32
restoration, towards a sustainable future, towards
22:36
protecting the things that matter our, our, our,
22:40
effort of people in our schools, in the halls of our universities,
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in the poorest of our communities, in the watersheds, on the coral reefs.
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There's nothing like it that Hawaii is a place of courage
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in the communities
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that will take us to.
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A place
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that Hawaii will be seeing the light.
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It's a light of hope.
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And the light of courage.
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And that's precisely what leadership is.
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I want to say.
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Thank you
23:17
for having me.
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I'm here.
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Because.
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It's a really challenging times.
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I've never.
23:27
Seen the intensity.
23:28
Of the storms like the way they are now.
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But at the same time, I've never seen a time
23:32
when we're more courageous in a way and it needs leadership.
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And I look at this room and go, this is the room of navigators.
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This is the room for change.
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And you're Paul,
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you're Paul, both of you.
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Thank you.
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Ladies and gentlemen, Naim Noa Thompson.