During the late 1970s, '80s and '90s, Hawaiians found an unlikely and unassuming cultural hero in navigator Nainoa Thompson.
Thompson became the first modern-day Hawaiian to learn a form of celestial navigation that had been lost for centuries, and he used it to guide the double-hulled voyaging canoe Hokule'a throughout the Pacific.
Thompson grew up on his grandfather's dairy and chicken farm in Niu Valley, the son of the late Kamehameha Schools trustee Myron "Pinky" Thompson. He graduated from Punahou School in 1972 and the University of Hawai'i in 1986.
In between, Thompson learned how to navigate by using the stars, the sun, ocean swells and other signs of nature in a system he calls wayfinding. It is now taught in schools and practiced throughout Hawai'i and the Pacific.
Much of Thompson's early training came from one of the last surviving traditional navigators — Mau Piailug of the island of Satawal in Micronesia.
Piailug sailed the Hokule'a to Tahiti, with Thompson aboard, on its maiden voyage in 1976, but it would be four years until Thompson himself guided the double-hulled canoe across the open ocean. He successfully navigated Hokule'a on a roundtrip Tahiti voyage.
Thompson has guided Hokule'a over many of its 110,000 miles, criss-crossing the Pacific and sparking a renaissance of Hawaiian culture.
Thompson is now head of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, which operates the canoe. But he is becoming just as widely known as a navigator for his culture.
Thompson was a member of the University of Hawai'i Board of Regents from 1998 to 2001, when he resigned to focus more on his duties as a Kamehameha Schools trustee.
As a UH regent, Thompson found himself weighing decisions that pitted his head against his heart. After he helped broker a master plan to manage telescopes atop Mauna Kea on the Big Island, he abstained from voting on the issue because the scientists wanted to use land sacred to Hawaiians.
He was named a trustee of Kamehameha Schools in November 2000. During that time, the wealthy trust embarked on a $197 million outreach program to help Hawaiian children statewide.
"Yes, we are rebuilding our culture and redefining and re-understanding who we are as a native people, and in the process, we're rebuilding pride and we're rebuilding dignity," Thompson said. "But I say no, it ain't enough."
Thompson said the reason is clear to him: "Eighty-five percent of our kids are outside of our campuses, so we've got to be there."
