yeah. that community is powerful. when i mention to people, locals in oahu and maui, other hawaiian residents, that i was going to molokai, 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 molokai dudes were mean, inward looking, unfriendly, tough as iron, and quick to get [bleep] 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 naki is a skilled fisherman, and today we re headed out for some octopus. you know molokai s nickname, right? it s called the friendly isle. yeah, but it s famously not the friendly island. it s supposed to be the most
sacred history. hano-hano is the caretaker of the fishpond. he s a local community leader here in molokai. also here is the famous walter ritte. everybody knows how valuable all of this stuff is, because we can see what happened to the rest of the islands. so essentially an old-school fish farm. 800 years old. 800 years old. modernizing one old idea, 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 molokai, aina, which means land, and translates to 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 are still struggling to figure out. because you heard what people
that you re going to see in well, everywhere. everywhere, in terms of indigenous people. my father s mother, nearly pure hawaiian, chooses not to teach her children language or culture or genealogy. where do you come from? who is your family? what is your link? and that could have been a hundred generations. what the voyage did was a reconnection back to feeling wholesome about who you are, knowing where you come from, and who are your ancestors. so the hokule a, when it got to tahiti, it was their canoe. it wasn t our canoe, it was theirs. right, right. and so it started to ignite this flame, again, symbolic a bumper sticker, a t-shirt starts to emerge, i m proud to be hawaiian. 1987, it becomes the first language, it s mandatory in schools, hawaiian culture has to be taught in public schools. private schools will not have attendance if you don t teach hawaiian. right. now it s hawaiian identity is into everything. it has to be recognized in everything. you re going
beyond, the u.s. navy had been using the beautiful neighboring island of kaho olawe as a bombing range. you could feel the shock waves as far away as maui and molokai. i m proud of my hawaiian blood, and nobody can tell me any 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 successful than walter ritte s. he and a fellow activist named richard sawyer set up on the island and refused to leave. one day i will put my dream back over there. managing to evade pursuers for just over a month, before finally being arrested and jailed. and the first order is burn down this building and put up one that belongs here. they emerged, of course, heroes, and these protests went on to inspire many others to join the movement. i hope i m still alive when
unfriendly island. i mean, that s what everybody says, right? depends on which way you look at it. traditionally we re very, very friendly. now, unfriendly is when you go try and come and fix it. right. make it better. right. or try to take something. right. that s when we become unfriendly. the molokai people have been protective of their resources, so we have a lot of our natural resources still intact. still? yes, but then there s always other people that want to come. unsurprisingly, fishing rights is an issue around here. don t come over here sport fishing the wrong place if you know what s good for you. so, tony, this is basically where we go diving, this area. a nice sandy spot. okay ready, go ahead, let it go. okay, we are here, man.