Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 28, Number 10, 1 October 2011 — Herb Kane to receive posthumous award [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Herb Kane to receive posthumous award

By Kathy Muneno As a child gazing out to the horizon from the beach at Waipi'o Valley on the island of Hawai'i, Herb Kawainui Kane listened to his father's stories of Mo'ikeha, who voyaged on large double-hulled canoes to Tahiti and back. Kane, who passed away in March, said those stories captured his imagination and he held them close, through his anthropology studies at the University of Chicago and as an artist who, with research, brought them to life in the brush strokes of his many paintings. One of those paintings heeame the basis for Kane's design of Hawai'i's first voyaging eanoe in centuries, Hōkūle'a. Kane co-founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society with waterman Tommy Holmes and anthropologist Ben Finney in 1973. They endeavored to build the eanoe and have it sail to Tahiti using traditional noninstrument navigation. "Our aim was to use this eanoe as a vehicle for research . . . as well as for cultural retrieval," Kane said in an as-yet unpublished interview with the Polynesian Voyaging Society as part of a book and documentary on Hōkūle'a funded by OHA. Kane explained that when a society loses an important artifact, there is "a partial decay of that particular society, and my aim, culturally, was to rebuild the central artifact and see if that would then motivate a renaissance of interest." They, and hundreds of others, launched Hōkūle'a at Kualoa, O'ahu, on March 8, 1975. Kane was Hōkūle'a's first captain, sailing around the state to train and recruit crewmembers for her maiden voyage to Tahiti in 1976 and to see if the people of Hawai'i would accept the eanoe. "When we first brought it here to Hōnaunau Bay," he recalled, "people just eame and sat all around the bay and just looked at the eanoe. They didn't ask to eome aboard, they didn't make a great noise, they didn't make a great celebration. They just eame and sat and looked at the eanoe all day long, well into the night, some brought pienie suppers and they just looked at the eanoe. They were communicating with the eanoe. The eanoe was saying something to them." And with that, Kane had his answer. The people indeed embraced the eanoe, and the quiet dream of this quiet man went on to stir a nation. "I had no idea that Hōkūle'a would have had the effect that it did on other Polynesian cultures," Kane said. "I would have been thrilled and gratified if the Hawaiians had

accepted it. To me that was the most important thing. So everything else was frosting on the eake as far as I was concerned." Indeed, the impact of Hōkūle'a and Kane has reached mueh deeper than the revival of a cultural artifact and tradition. "He helped us (Native Hawaiians) find our dignity and restored our honor," says Peter Apo, Trustee of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. And so Kane, the historian, renowned artist and visionary will be honored for his life's work as the 2011 Kama'āina of the Year at the Historic Hawai'i Foundation's annual benefit Oct. 22 at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. The benefit, for whieh OHA is a lead sponsor, highlights a weekend of events at the hotel celebrating Polynesian voyaging. Kane had been working on a large painting commissioned by the Royal Hawaiian called Kamehameha Landing, whieh depicts King Kamehameha "landing at Waikīkī in his quest to unite the Hawaiian Islands," says Historic Hawai'i Foundation President Rob Iopa. However, Kane fell ill early this year and passed away on March 8, Hōkūle'a's birthday. The painting is 90 percent complete, but Iopa says, "Though unfinished and unsigned, Kamehameha 's Landing will be hung and dedicated the night before the Kama'āina of the Year dinner." The foundation didn't have the opportunity to ask Kane to be its honoree prior to his falling ill, but it received the support of Kane's wife and "it seemed still the right thing to do," Iopa says. He says this will be the first time in the decadeslong history of the award that it will be given posthumously. For all that Kane has done, he never sailed on any of Hōkūle'a's long-distance voyages. He said he had to tend to his personal life and finances and it already fulfilled what he wanted, besides, "A new wave, generation, was coming over and enthusiastic about it and the best thing I could do was to keep my mouth shut and stay away, and so in retrospect that's the wisest thing that I could have done." And in the end it fulfilled what his father wanted as well. His father never saw Hōkūle'a, having passed in 1970, but Kane said he "would've been very happy" because he had onee told the younger Kane, who was then living in Chicago, " 'I think if you went back to Hawai'i you could make some kind of contribution.' " And that he did. ■ Kathy Muneno is a weekenā weather anchor and reporter for KHON2.

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