Speaker A
my great fear as a kid was a fear of failing and that's a lion because i was born that way because that's expectation you're hawaiian you're gonna be less you're hawaiian you're gonna fail more and so it's old
Anthony Bourdain explores Hawaii's layered identity, from Native Hawaiian heritage and colonial history to its multicultural food scene and debates over who counts as Hawaiian.
Key Takeaways
- Hawaii's identity is layered and contested, shaped by Native Hawaiian heritage, colonization, and successive waves of immigration.
- Paradise is a constructed perception; the reality involves economic, cultural, and political complexity.
- Food serves as a lens into Hawaii's multicultural history and the creation of local cuisine.
- Native Hawaiian cultural revival and sovereignty movements are ongoing and deeply felt.
- The definition of 'Hawaiian' varies between ethnic, geographic, and native-lineage understandings.
What the video covers
- Bourdain frames Hawaii as quintessentially American yet shaped by layers of Polynesian, colonial, and immigrant history, calling it a 'tricky conflicted mutant hell broth.'
- Novelist Paul Theroux, a 25-year resident, describes Hawaii as having the nicest elements of the Third World alongside Main Street USA.
- The episode contrasts the 'aloha' myth with a more guarded, suspicious attitude among islanders toward outsiders, rooted in colonial history.
- The history of the Native Hawaiian population is traced from pre-contact Polynesian voyaging through Captain Cook's arrival in 1778, disease-driven population collapse, missionaries, and plantation economies.
- The 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani, US annexation, and statehood are presented as key turning points in Hawaii's loss of sovereignty.
- Local food scenes in Honolulu, including Ethel's and Mission restaurant, illustrate the blending of Japanese, Okinawan, Filipino, Portuguese, Korean, and Hawaiian cuisines, such as taco rice.
- Debate over identity is central: chefs and residents discuss whether being Hawaiian is ethnic, geographic, or a matter of native lineage and blood.
- The 1987 Hawaiian language revival, including its mandatory teaching in schools, is highlighted as part of a cultural renaissance.
- Sovereignty movements and tensions between native Hawaiians and the broader population are discussed frankly.
- The episode closes with visits to the Keawanui fishpond, a sacred community space, and to Maui, where Shep Gordon and a local family gather for a traditional pig roast.
Chapters
- 00:00Opening: Fear, Identity, and Hawaiian Voyaging
- 01:00Paradise, Statehood, and Main Street USA
- 03:03Honolulu Food Scene and Island Attitudes
- 05:17Pre-Contact History to Colonization and Statehood
- 07:00Local Cuisine and Multicultural Identity
- 08:00Who Is Hawaiian? Lineage, Language, and Sovereignty
- 19:30Keawanui Fishpond and Community Life
- 30:20Maui: Shep Gordon and Traditional Pig Roast
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
it's in you it's part of your identity [Music] but when i navigate a voyage i know when the storm comes and it's going to take you to the bone and if the storm keeps coming you got to stand up it's just what you got to do
Speaker A
and it's this zone where you learn to make fear your best friend you hold it really close to you and you open up that door to believing that you can make world i felt the cool rain on my shoulders
Speaker A
[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hawaii is america as american as anything could possibly be yet it also never shed what was there before and the layers and layers that have come since it's a wonderful tricky conflicted mutant hell broth and
Speaker A
what for lack of a better word you'd have to call paradise nowhere is paradise paradises don't exist the paradise is kind of in your head wait a minute you look at your window here you look at those hills those mountains
Speaker A
all that green that blue sky and gin clear sea it sure looks like paradise this guy knows he's been everywhere he's paul theroux novelist essayist and legendary traveler and travel writer of all the places he's been all the places he's seen he chose hawaii
Speaker A
to live and he's lived here for 25 years does it matter that it's america no that's a big thing that it is america it has elements of the third world the nicest elements of the third world which is funky
Speaker A
uh this is the self-respect this pride there's things that don't work at all and then it's main street usa where we are now i mean this pta meeting is here they get together and watch the super bowl and it's the most
Speaker A
main street usa or as much as you will find town is a neighborhood spot in honolulu's kamuke district and as hawaii is the only state in the union that allows day boat fishermen to sell directly to restaurants the pan roasted mahi mahi is pretty damn
Speaker A
good it's not a particularly welcoming or friendly part of the world contrary to the sort of the aloha myth no that's right that's right but no island is nantucketism the isle of wight name an island they want foreigners across the country
Speaker A
sicily they want foreigners there no way no way did anyone ever come to an island uh with a good intention people people no never in the history of the world best best case scenario brings syphilis yeah pretty much yeah yeah i mean at the
Speaker A
very least captain cook put his sailors ashore in nitial which is just a little bit northwest of here he was the first howling and like magellan hawaii killed its first tourist and right the philippines killed therefore stars but people who live on honest who are
Speaker A
born on islands view anyone who comes ashore with suspicion [Music] well to go back to what defines a hawaiian maybe we should go back in our imaginations too could have been 2 000 years ago the tahitians had this voyaging way
Speaker A
before any other culture on the planet exploring the deep seas somehow gets here some place in the south pacific single most isolated archipelago and a planet fast forward to captain cook and his identification native wine you get a
Speaker A
glimpse of these are very productive people they're industrious they were healthy strong they had time for the arts that was a large population more than half of what we have in hawaii today fully sustainable because there was no
Speaker A
other choice so over time the native wine population goes to 22 000. it's the same story introduced disease inability to to deal with it people die 1926 the public school system would outlaw language and the practice of culture in public
Speaker A
schools so the road to extinctions being well paid between captain cook's arrival in 1778 and today disease wiped out most of the population missionaries came a booming sugar and pineapple plantation industry an influx of immigrants from japan okinawa china
Speaker A
and the philippines there was the overthrow of queen lilio kalani and the us takeover of the hawaiian government world war ii and finally statehood the geographical realities of being thousands of miles from well anywhere else has given hawaii to some
Speaker A
degree protection from the forces that eradicated so many other south pacific cultures entirely in fact they've arguably been holding back the inevitable creep better than just about anyone what hawaii looks like today depends on which island you're standing on and to some extent the
Speaker A
reputation of the locals the hawaiian islands are not a monolith islands that's plural and we are talking eight very different islands with very different identities it's been over a century since the waves of immigrants began and things got all mixed up in the best
Speaker A
possible way there's layers and a simple question like who is hawaiian gets you all kinds of answers the neighborhood of kalihi is a far cry from the hawaii that most people know and ethel's has been a go-to of a very
Speaker A
specific kind for the last 40 years it's a blue-collar town they all come here breakfast lunch every day i'm joined by two local chefs mark noguchi of mission known by some as the gooch he's second generation japanese and andrew lay of the pig and the lady
Speaker A
he's first generation vietnamese american or would that be vietnamese hawaiian as you'll see it gets complicated i actually cooked on the east coast for three years and people would always be like oh you're from hawaii you're hawaiian and i
Speaker A
was like no no no i'm a second generation japanese no no but you're from hawaii it makes you hawaiian and it was like no and then what i realized is like here in hawaii we identify ourselves ethnically versus geographically
Speaker A
like there's no way that he and i would call ourselves hawaiian look at her asking by ahoy how many generations does it take i mean who qualifies as hawaiian in your view to me a hawaiian is the kanakamali is a native of the
Speaker A
land it's in your blood you're coco you come from a lineage of native wine people what what's your feeling here i do feel like i'm hawaiian in a sense you know that's like my place uh but culturally that's a
Speaker A
different story well let me ask you this you say you're not hawaii no what's your feeling about spam i love i love so you're hawaii i'm from hawaii i am i'm born and raised gonna die 808.
Speaker A
the owners of ethel's are a sort of typical hawaiian mix okinawan ryoko ishii aka mom mainland japanese husband yoichi daughter minaka who i guess would be japanese okinawan american slash hawaiian and son-in-law robert who is of course mexican that's the big feet
Speaker A
oh nice that's pretty good oh wow look at that that's the price that's right that looks good spamming bitter melon now we are talking wow that's awesome i just call it local food no but local food just like covers
Speaker A
like a white nettle when i look at this table again i just wait you guys got portuguese japanese you got okinawan world war ii i don't know sometimes korean korean japanese hawaiian love child awesomeness the food is some bone deep hawaiian
Speaker A
stuff my friends which is to say a delicious mashup of well look take taco rice it's a dish created in okinawa to approximate tex-mex for homesick american gis that was then appropriated in a post-ironic way by younger generations of okinawans and
Speaker A
japanese and has now found its way back to hawaii got that going right in there wow identifying and seeing my best friends were native hawaiian helped me to realize the pride of being from hawaii understanding the hawaiian culture
Speaker A
leaving it but also being very proud of being japanese there's still a movement to a sovereign there's a very strong movement so if fighting broke out in the streets which side are you on i'm getting tear gas you're getting here you don't even
Speaker A
have to think about that you but you know it's funny what was that i was joke about it like it's like the nation of hawaii took it back right and ousted uncle sam my whole and there was like no no hawaii
Speaker A
for native wine is only enough i'm like hey everybody needs to cook like i'm a cook i have worth [Music] this is nainoa thompson and in 1976 along with a number of similarly heroic hawaiians he did a very difficult
Speaker A
very important thing before 1972 it was generally assumed even insisted upon that hawaii had been settled originally by some random savages who'd maybe drifted over accidentally from south america it certainly couldn't have been ancient polynesians they couldn't possibly have been the
Speaker A
kind of sophisticated navigators who could guide a sailboat willfully across the pacific across thousands of miles of open water nobody could see the canoe here too beaten knocked out of you no dreams no hope can't see the polynesian
Speaker A
voyaging society with the help of crew members like nainoa thompson set out to prove that that was exactly what did happen there were those in the community that loved this canoe prayed for it and there was those that feel this good
Speaker A
because he sensed change you have a 62-foot 12-ton voyaging canoe i mean it was powerful it changed everything the hokulea a double-hulled sailing canoe a replica of the kind of craft believed to have been used in those times and using only
Speaker A
primitive contemporaneous navigational tools sailed 5 500 miles to tahiti and back a trip that helped spark a hawaiian renaissance a rebirth of pride and interest in traditional hawaiian culture and identity the success was monumental it changed world view
Speaker A
that our ancestors were powerful they were extraordinarily intelligent they were courageous and it was skilled and so we come from them thompson is a legendary waterman and he's continued to sail on hokulea's missions native hawaiian his roots in this valley
Speaker A
go back 200 years my grandfather was born here so i grew up knocking cows with my grandfather he spent many years learning traditional polynesian navigation techniques from a master mao of this small micronesian island of sadawa this is a man that was chosen by his
Speaker A
grandfather at one year old he was put into typos to be trained in learning the wind and the water and at five years old he was sailing with his grandfather and then he would never say that some sense of abuse but only lobby says yeah
Speaker A
when the wave make the canoe move the canoe make me sick my grandfather threw me in the ocean so i can go inside the wave and when i go inside the wave i become the wave and when i become the wave now i'm
Speaker A
navigating at five so when i approached him he just said to me you're too old you want someone to know everything send your son to my island but he said i'll teach you enough to [Music] find the island you seek but i can't
Speaker A
teach you the magic why do you think it was important to do such a difficult thing i mean it's the same story that you're going to see in well everywhere everywhere in terms of indigenous people my father's mother nearly pure hawaiian
Speaker A
chooses not to teach her children language or culture or genealogy where do you come from who's your family what's your link which and that could have been 100 generations what the voyage did was a reconnection back to feeling
Speaker A
wholesome about who you are knowing where you come from and who are your ancestors so hokulea when it got to tahiti it was their canoe this wasn't arcane it was theirs right and so that it started to ignite
Speaker A
this flame against symbolic a bumper sticker where t-shirts have to emerge i'm proud to be hawaiian 1987 it becomes the first language it's mandatory in the schools hawaiian culture has to be taught in public schools private schools will not have attendance if you don't
Speaker A
teach hawaiian right now its hawaiian identity is into everything it has to be recognized in everything you're gonna go to molokai yeah that community is powerful when i mentioned to people locals in oahu in maui other hawaiian residents that i was
Speaker A
going to malachi the response was almost always surprise molokai did not have a reputation for being welcoming that it was dangerous to go over there that those malachi dudes were mean inward looking unfriendly tough as iron and quick
Speaker A
to get pissed off as it turned out that was not my experience so we like to brag about what we don't have we don't have traffic lights we don't have a building over three stories we don't have traffic nice walter nockey
Speaker A
is a skilled fisherman and today we're headed out for some octopus you know molokai's nickname right it's called a friendly island yeah but it's famously not the friendly island it's it's it's supposed to be the most unfriendly island i mean that's what everybody says
Speaker A
right which one you look at traditionally we're very very friendly now unfriendly is when you're gonna try to come and fix it right make it better right go try to take something right that's what we come unfriendly the molokai people have been protective
Speaker A
of what their resources so we have a lot of our actually used sauces to eat that still yes but then there's always a lot of people that want to come unsurprisingly fishing rights is an issue around here don't come over here sport fishing the
Speaker A
wrong place if you know what's good for you so tony this is basically where we're gonna dive this area nice center spot okay ready go ahead let's go okay we are here man [Music] when we get into the octopus
Speaker A
we're gonna coach him out of his hole so when you stick the spear in there you're going to make her feel he's not safe no more when he comes running out there you want to stick him with a spur
Speaker A
final step stun the struggling creature with a sharp blow from a mallet or if you want to go old school bite them right in the brain [Music] in my case it took repeated crunching to locate the apparently chiclet-sized
Speaker A
organ it's this one died eventually as likely by exhaustion as anything else i suspect euro today while the sailing canoe the hokulea was a powerful spark for the hawaiian renaissance this was what really set things off beginning in 1941 and continuing into
Speaker A
the 70s and beyond the u.s navy had been using the beautiful neighboring island of caholave as a bombing range you could feel the shock waves as far away as maui and molokai i'm proud of my hawaiian plot and nobody can tell me any
Speaker A
different people had never been happy about it but emboldened by the times and by recent events a group of young activists decided to take a stand in 1976 there were a number of attempted occupations of the island in protest of the bombing none more
Speaker A
successful than walter riddies he and a fellow activist named richard sawyer set up on the island and refused to leave one day we're gonna put one queen back over there managing to evade pursuers for just over a month
Speaker A
before finally being arrested in jail and her first order is burn down this building and put up on halal what belongs over here they emerged of course heroes and these protests went on to inspire many others to join the movement i hope
Speaker A
i'm still alive when that day happens because i want to see our queen back in office and embody the independent spirit the desire for hawaiian empowerment and sovereignty that today resonates across generations [Music] welcome to what is supposedly the most
Speaker A
unwelcoming place in hawaii [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you so much nice to meet you please come inside hello hi aloha this is keavanui fishpond a shared community space with a sacred history hanohano is the caretaker of the fishpond he's a local community leader
Speaker A
here on molokai also here is the famous walter riddy everybody knows how valuable all of this stuff is because we can see what happened to the restaurant so essentially an old-school fish farm 800 years old 800 years old modernizing one old idea
Speaker A
and an ancient idea is as simple as feeding your community and this the island you're on this place could feed over a million people back in the day you hear the word again and again on malachi aina which means land and translates to
Speaker A
that which feeds you springs mountains rivers these lands these fish ponds were managed by their ancestors as a sacred trust here where fresh water from the mountains and fast-moving ocean waters met early sustainable clean fish farms something in modern times we're still
Speaker A
struggling to figure out because you heard what people think about us but the true story is that we have a place of abundance and we try to protect it we're trying to protect all of these things that we've been able to protect
Speaker A
for the last 30 years and it's getting hotter and hotter every single one of these hawaiians over here get enough evidence that the state of hawaii the department of atlanta natural resources have done a terrible job we're not even looking for blame we're
Speaker A
actually looking for an agreement that from today right we are going to be pono we're all going to be righteous we're all going to be good our planet is in such uh bad shape that being environmental being green is trending
Speaker A
and that's where the hawaiians have always been so who gets to be hawaiian this is the question who is hawaii hawaiian is a nationality brah you could be hawaiian really come on they made us don't ship me now yeah
Speaker A
i have to be born here this is it come on this is a different story i can give you the best explanation because you cannot be our blood our blood is kanaka you cannot be kanaka hawaiian is our nationality and you can
Speaker A
pledge for be that you see this what we're standing on are aina it matters so much that if you love this place and you don't want to develop it destroy it abuse it then we're on the same team
Speaker A
yeah if you eyeing this place and its resources as a money-making vehicle for yourself we enemies right and it doesn't matter what race religion what sex you if you love this place and you can malama our aina the
Speaker A
way we love it and our ancestors loved it oh we can be more than friends but we can be family abundant aloha you know beautifully wow that's it it's a pretty impressive spread of food for such a supposedly surly group
Speaker A
slow roasted pig grilled collar fish mullet cooked lavaloo style and of course octopus known as squid luau fresh poi you gotta have it fresh believe me makes all the difference in the world freshwater snails called i believe kihivai
Speaker A
harvested from streams way up in the mountains it's a bounty the bounty of i recognize you [Music] hey anthony when when somebody steals this it's easy for us to say you're stealing our stuff right but all of this stuff is dependent on
Speaker A
one healthy environment and ecosystem all right but then let me ask you just cause i'm a bit of a dick i have to ask this question okay i have to figure it out i have to ask all right so
Speaker A
we have like 12 more beers and i pull out some nice bama soupy that's what i'm going to feed my children our culture made everything we did the best of it hawaiians are the only ones that turn tarot into point you know yes
Speaker A
we did everything to the best of the best so if you want to introduce spam to us we're going to do them the best you introduce christianity to us we're doing the [Laughter] our best is better than yours i love it
Speaker A
so you really disappointed me with no way lived up to your reputation as mean unwelcoming inward looking hostile come on admit it it's a calculated strategy it is and i'll leave with a message if you're watching this show
Speaker A
i hope your heart is swelling with admiration but bottom line don't come [Laughter] here [Music] hey [Music] the ocean is all around for thousands of miles a humbling feeling knowing at all times that the ground upon which you live
Speaker A
and walk and breathe is but a tiny speck in the middle of all this so in hawaii the water man is an important distinction it expresses the shared consensus that you were able to handle yourself in the ocean no matter what it
Speaker A
throws at you it implies that you are capable of almost mythical things the ability to live in the water handle its many moods above or below the surface [Music] meet uncle ross waterman a canoe surfing legend and generally accepted ambassador
Speaker A
of the aloha spirit he's offered to share with me a truly ancient hawaiian space found only on the face of a crashing wave [Music] surfing a life connected to the ocean and spending time with family and friends on the beach
Speaker A
are some of the cornerstones of hawaiian life so this is our chef this is jason how are you hey tony that's uh keola lee how are you all right you good yes yeah kalani how do you do how are
Speaker A
you okay avi what's going on hi megan hello those are my two daughters and this is my wife alicia why hello hi brandon come say hi hey brendan how are you and uh milton this is milton milton good
Speaker A
to meet you so how old is everybody know each other here you live on an island everybody knows everybody okay why did i even ask just the way you roll i think i met uncle ross through the water i mean
Speaker A
just surfing atlania poco and then we became like family yeah he's like and he's like my dad my ohana each and every weekend uncle ross can be found here with his ohana a hawaiian word that describes an extended circle of family
Speaker A
and close friends man nice that we got lucky today it's a beautiful day beautiful day yeah even when it's storming it's nice on the beach yeah yeah and we'll stay here until that thing goes down hits the horizon
Speaker A
when that sun hits the horizon it's that's time to go home maui is an island as beautiful as it gets and sure it's got its share of portion-controlled cruise line entertainments doled out indigestible bites and complimentary my ties
Speaker A
but you'll also find the sort of beloved indigenous institution like tasty crust as local a place as you're likely to find daniel ikika ito will explain this is a menu situation or i can order for you if you trust me i think we're gonna hook
Speaker A
you up with uh the local flavor so okay i'm trying raised on the big island he's a journalist the first native hawaiian editor of a major surf publication and founder of the local contrast magazine local culture is very much so trying to
Speaker A
point a finger at anybody come in and go hey you're holly you don't belong and they're in kind of lies a little conflict you have being a modern-day hawaiian and i still think that's something that we forget about these days
Speaker A
is how educated and how accepting our kupuna our ancestors were it was always built on inclusivity aloha is giving without expecting anything in return you got this hawaiian culture that was a product of the polynesians that populated the islands
Speaker A
then you got this local culture that's a product of the plantation lifestyle so the japanese the chinese the koreans the filipinos the portuguese if indeed all history can be explained by what's on your plate this is a prime example behold [ __ ]
Speaker A
the plate lunch the most identifiable and essential feature of the plate lunch is this a big scoop or two of white rice and potato max salad there is nothing more hawaiian served alongside a protein like chicken katsu or this
Speaker A
hamburger steak a burger-like patty drowned in dark sinister sticky shiny gravy or furukaki ahi seared ahi with nori and sesame seed oh my gosh that looks beautiful oh yeah that's gonna work all right let's just sit this right on
Speaker A
top of the rice yeah yeah you want to get some mac salad too on there too we're gonna get that sinister gravy on oh dude look what we're eating okay they may not be hawaiian but they are now they are fundamentally
Speaker A
local i mean this food this most delicious let's be honest delicious this is not healthy eating and we're kind of paying the price for it right now in the health of the state which is terrible as i take a bite of hamburger yeah like
Speaker A
i said it's just so good if you really want to do hawaii right you got to give back and that's the power that hawaii and the aina still has is if you show aloha and you give without asking the aina is
Speaker A
going to recognize it and it's going to shower its blessings upon you so you think traditional hawaiian culture and lifestyle has a chance against the modern world i think so the beautiful part about my ancestors is they realized there was a limited
Speaker A
number of resources where they lived so they observed nature to the best possible they could to figure out what were the cycles and how do we preserve this resource hawaiian culture can teach the whole world something that it needs to know is
Speaker A
we all live on our island and we are all part of the same community let's all show aloha to the ayna and let's show allah to everybody else as well [Music] an extraordinary man lives in this house shep gordon long time resident on maui
Speaker A
legendary talent manager maybe you know some of the people whose careers he's looked after alice cooper teddy pendergrass luther vandross blondie pink floyd he was years years ahead of the chef explosion shepherding emerald through his early career he's produced films worked alongside
Speaker A
great french chefs like roger vercher become close to his holiness the dalai lama basically done everything with everybody in every place i first got here 40 years ago i put one foot on the island i knew i was living here the rest of my
Speaker A
life do you ever look out there and it's just it's wallpaper never ever i say it out loud every day my first words in the morning uh thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you every day jeff is famously one
Speaker A
of the most generous and enthusiastic of hosts a more stand-up loyal guy you could barely imagine and it's no wonder they called the documentary based on his life supermensch that's how he's known around the world here he's known as
Speaker A
that guy who throws great parties prep starts early with chef's friend julio a maui born and bred rancher with help from local chef sheldon simeon [Music] middle of the night and a traditional emu is dug filled with lava rocks
Speaker A
the fire allowed to burn down to coals before the pig wrapped in a combination of banana leaves and tea leaves is dropped in okay you guys ready for the unveiling here we go all right 12 hours later you dig them up and will
Speaker A
it's party time so what you've been saying is you've been drinking steadily since five o'clock this morning i didn't it didn't come out of my mouth okay [Music] behold the magnificence it's a very important part of your childhood
Speaker A
wow look at that you just lift those bones out by hand yep all right chef you ready [Music] oh you just dump them into a bucket [Music] awesome [Applause] wow that's pretty much the way i want to end up
Speaker A
just be able to pour me right into a pie there's lots to do and everyone pitches in to help it's an extended all-day affair of prepping chopping dicing slicing mixing and of course there's some sampling along the way
Speaker A
like this wild pig sausage that someone was nice enough to stop by with sheldon works up a potato max salad one more time okay hit you one more time julio carves up some unicorn fish which he caught himself earlier in the day
Speaker A
chef mark tarbell stuffs a couple of fresh red snappers before throwing them in the oven there's poi pounded fresh out back and somewhere somewhere pig's foot soup is happily bubbling away there's chili pepper water used for dipping or taking as an auxiliary shot
Speaker A
for regularity or boner medicine or whatever oh yeah there's also spam noodles there is no party without spam [Music] by dinner time the beer wine and festive beverages have been flowing for hours also moods have been adjusted in a
Speaker A
completely natural way indigenous to the islands of course how about julio and the pigs i've cooked a lot of things i ain't never seen one poured into a pot neatly that's what i love this is what we do in the islands that's
Speaker A
what it's all about and always bring the ohana bring the family bring the kids you rarely ever see a party where there are in kids ohana means family extended family extended family yeah like you're now ohana to everybody here
Speaker A
yeah i mean if you're gonna be a family if you can borrow money from [Laughter] and as happens i've come to find out things end up in the most natural just kind of happens way song and some dancing
Speaker A
[Music] this is willy k and that's his daughter lisette and it's pretty damn captivating it's getting near the end for me and i look over at shep and i see a happy man surrounded by friends by family really
Speaker A
his ohana to be hawaiian to me it needs to be some kind of sense of connection to place in some sense a responsibility for it it should be about being honest to place and being honest with what you love and
Speaker A
be honest to what you value is a road that's constantly trying to be more and more informed i don't even know sometimes how to be fully honest because i don't know enough what i love about the oceans that's my
Speaker A
path that i go on the oceans to seek that sense of [Music] truth [Music] they said i could see whales like close up and i had reasons for optimism all week i've been staring out to see watching humpback whales leaping out of
Speaker A
the ocean spouting and frolicking so are things compared to other parts of the world are conservation efforts as far as uh marine mammals in general but whales are particularly going well is this so that's the one thing on the planet that
Speaker A
is they're talking about taking humpbacks off the endangered species list but it's good to hear that they've recovered but then it may make it easy to add to the whaling list again it's mating season in hawaii for the nearly
Speaker A
ten thousand humpback whales that migrate down from southeast alaska each year dr joe mobley of the university of hawaii has dedicated his career to studying these whales yeah i guess the song is supposed to be like the most complex
Speaker A
display in the animal kingdom when you're close to a singer you can actually feel it through your whole body it's like 185 db really loud wow they don't mind us at all do they [Music] so so [Music] [Music]
Speaker A
that was that was incredible [Music] [Music] you
Topics:Anthony BourdainHawaiiParts UnknownNative HawaiianalohaHawaiian sovereigntylocal foodmulticultural identityHonolulucolonial history
