Oahu’s September Aloha Festivals are for Visitors, Too

From September 12 to the 28th, visitors to Oahu can soak up more than sun and mai tais as, along with native Hawaiians, they join in the Aloha Festivals. “Moana Nui Ākea” means “celebrate ocean voyaging,” according to the site — that’s the theme of this year’s two-week span of festivities that begins with the Royal Court Investiture at Hilton Hawaiian Village on the 12th, and concludes with a floral parade down Kalākaua Avenue from Ala Moana Park to Kapi‘olani Park.

(If you can’t make it out to the islands, there’s still the Live Aloha Hawaiian Cultural Festival at Seattle Center, on September 8. There’s a Hawaiian Getaway raffle, in addition to music, dancing, and food.)

There’s much more at the Aloha Festivals Facebook page — a central event is the annual Waikīkī Ho‘olaule‘a (“Hawai‘i’s largest block party”) on September 21, which combines entertainment on several stages with food and craft vendors. (Speaking of food tourism, it’s worth noting that Ka’anapali Fresh 2013 is approaching, too. Here’s what last year was like.)

For Northwesterners familiar with the canoes of coastal tribes, this year’s tribute to Polynesian sailors should be fascinating. Just as Northwest tribes are re-instructing their youth in the “Canoe Journey,” and the knowledge carried by cultural tradition, young Hawaiians learn about the double-hulled Hawaiian voyaging canoe, and practice wayfinding among the islands in the archipelago.

William Clark (of “Lewis & Clark”) called the Chinookan people he encountered, “Certainly the best Canoe navigaters I ever Saw,” awed by the size of the waves they rode nonchalantly in canoes. Polynesian history, too, is filled with the exploits and mastery of canoe builders, voyagers, and navigators, beginning with the arrivals who settled there perhaps as early as, or earlier than, the fall of Rome.

This year’s festivals also mark the 40th anniversary of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, founded at a time when the canoe-building and navigational skills of the old-timers had almost faded away, who have charged themselves with carrying on voyaging as a lived practice. There’s a mindfulness required by wayfinding — to feel, lying in the bottom of a canoe, the different wavelets at sea and know which island sent them — that astonishes. It’s combined with a naturalist’s encyclopedic recall of sea birds and their behavior. Clearly, it still works.