As a child,
I was raised by native Hawaiian elders --
three old women
who took care of me while my parents worked.
The year is 1963.
We're at the ocean.
It's twilight.
We're watching the rising of the stars
and the shifting of the tides.
It's a stretch of beach we know so well.
The smooth stones on the sand
are familiar to us.
If you saw these women on the street
in their faded clothes,
you might dismiss them
as poor and simple.
That would be a mistake.
These women are descendants
of Polynesian navigators,
trained in the old ways
by their elders,
and now they're passing it on to me.
They teach me the names of the winds and the rains,
of astronomy according to a genealogy of stars.
There's a new moon on the horizon.
Hawaiians say it's a good night for fishing.
They begin to chant.
[Hawaiian chant]
When they finish,
they sit in a circle
and ask me to come to join them.
They want to teach me about my destiny.
I thought every seven-year-old went through this.
(Laughter)
"Baby girl,
someday the world will be in trouble.
People will forget their wisdom.
It will take elders' voices
from the far corners of the world
to call the world into balance.
You will go far away.
It will sometimes be a lonely road.
We will not be there.
But you will look into the eyes
of seeming strangers,
and you will recognize your ohana,
your family.
And it will take all of you.
It will take all of you."
These words, I hold onto
all my life.
Because the idea of doing it alone
terrifies me.
The year is 2007.
I'm on a remote island in Micronesia.
Satawal is one half-mile long
by one mile wide.
It's the home of my mentor.
His name is Pius Mau Piailug.
Mau is a palu,
a navigator priest.
He's also considered
the greatest wave finder in the world.
There are fewer than a handful
of palu left on this island.
Their tradition is so extraordinary
that these mariners sailed
three million square miles across the Pacific
without the use of instruments.
They could synthesize patterns in nature
using the rising and setting of stars,
the sequence and direction of waves,
the flight patterns of certain birds.
Even the slightest hint of color
on the underbelly of a cloud
would inform them
and help them navigate with the keenest accuracy.
When Western scientists would join Mau on the canoe
and watch him go into the hull,
it appeared that an old man
was going to rest.
In fact, the hull of the canoe
is the womb of the vessel.
It is the most accurate place
to feel the rhythm and sequence
and direction of waves.
Mau was, in fact,
gathering explicit data
using his entire body.
It's what he had been trained to do
since he was five years old.
Now science may dismiss this methodology,
but Polynesian navigators use it today
because it provides them
an accurate determination
of the angle and direction
of their vessel.
The palu also had
an uncanny ability
to forecast weather conditions
days in advance.
Sometimes I'd be with Mau on a cloud-covered night
and we'd sit at the easternmost coast of the island,
and he would look out,
and then he would say,
"Okay, we go."
He saw that first glint of light --
he knew what the weather was going to be three days from now.
Their achievements, intellectually and scientifically,
are extraordinary,
and they are so relevant
for these times that we are in
when we are riding out storms.
We are in such a critical moment
of our collective history.
They have been compared
to astronauts --
these elder navigators
who sail vast open oceans
in double-hulled canoes
thousands of miles
from a small island.
Their canoes, our rockets;
their sea, our space.
The wisdom of these elders
is not a mere collection
of stories about old people
in some remote spot.
This is part of our collective narrative.
It's humanity's DNA.
We cannot afford to lose it.
The year is 2010.
Just as the women in Hawaii
that raised me predicted,
the world is in trouble.
We live in a society
bloated with data,
yet starved for wisdom.
We're connected 24/7,
yet anxiety,
fear, depression and loneliness
is at an all-time high.
We must course-correct.
An African shaman said,
"Your society worships the jester
while the king stands
in plain clothes."
The link between the past and the future
is fragile.
This I know intimately,
because even as I travel
throughout the world
to listen to these stories and record them,
I struggle.
I am haunted
by the fact that I no longer remember
the names of the winds and the rains.
Mau passed away
five months ago,
but his legacy and lessons live on.
And I am reminded
that throughout the world
there are cultures
with vast sums of knowledge in them,
as potent as the Micronesian navigators,
that are going dismissed,
that this is a testament
to brilliant, brilliant
technology and science and wisdom
that is vanishing rapidly.
Because when an elder dies a library is burned,
and throughout the world, libraries are ablaze.
I am grateful for the fact
that I had a mentor like Mau
who taught me how to navigate.
And I realize
through a lesson that he shared
that we continue to find our way.
And this is what he said:
"The island is the canoe;
the canoe, the island."
And what he meant was,
if you are voyaging
and far from home,
your very survival depends
on everyone aboard.
You cannot make the voyage alone,
you were never meant to.
This whole notion of every man for himself
is completely unsustainable.
It always was.
So in closing I would offer you this:
The planet is our canoe,
and we are the voyagers.
True navigation
begins in the human heart.
It's the most important map of all.
Together, may we journey well.
(Applause)