The Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage

Hawaiʻi’s state treasure, Hōkūleʻa, is on a voyage for a sustainable future

Our Polynesian voyaging canoes, Hōkūleʻa and Hikianalia, are traveling over 50,000 nautical miles around the earth, bringing people around the world together to set a course for a sustainable future.

We are sailing like our ancestors have for a thousand years—using wayfinding. On board, there is no compass, sextant, or cellphone, watch, or GPS for direction. In wayfinding, the sun, moon, and stars are a map that surrounds the navigators. When clouds and storms make it impossible to see that map, wave patterns, currents, and animal behavior give a navigator directional clues to find tiny islands in the vast ocean.

Hōkūleʻa has sailed using wayfinding for 40 years, and her navigators find their destinations  using nature as a guide. Now Hōkūleʻa, her sister canoe Hikianalia, and their navigators are taking that knowledge to find a new destination—a healthy ocean and island earth. The planet that sustains all is facing huge challenges, and every step in the right direction will make a positive difference.

Everyone can be a navigator for Earth’s needs. Every person on earth can help navigate us to a healthy future where our Island Earth is safe and thriving again. Stories of hope and local solutions that blend indigenous wisdom with other best practices can be found all over the world.  If we find and share those stories with each other, we can help chart a positive course for our planet.

We are asking kids, families, governments, communities, and businesses to share how they mālama honua—take care of our Island Earth.  Please visit our Mālama Honua map, and help us grow the movement by adding stories of hope that can inspire and educate us all.  Add yourself and the people and organizations you most admire to the map, and help Hōkūleʻa thread this lei of hope around the world as she navigates earth’s oceans.

To learn more, you can watch a 3-minute introductory video below, and follow our voyage by signing up for Mālama Honua stories and updates on the bar to the right.

Help us make history

As the mainstay of support to PVS, our members are allowing us to voyage beyond the boundaries of Polynesia to inspire a global movement to care for our earth.

Make your contribution to this historic voyage