La'ie launches icon of community pride
By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Staff Writer
Canoe builder Tupone Pulotu blew on his conch shell, 75 people hauled on the tow rope, 2,500 more cheered and Hawai'i's newest voyaging canoe slid down Hukilau Beach to float free in the ocean off La'ie.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
The canoe was named Iosepa — Hawaiian for Joseph — by Uncle Bill Wallace's grandfather, who conceived the name in a dream.
Papaya tree trunks are put in place to prepare for the launch of Iosepa, the double-hulled voyaging canoe that the La'ie community built. Iosepa will sail interisland as a seagoing classroom and make long-distance voyages.
Four big, double-hulled, voyaging canoes have been built in Hawai'i within the past 21 years. The launching of Iosepa closely resembled in some ways how it was done in old Hawai'i.
Canoe carvers Pulotu and Kawika Eskaran and their wives sat on a mat before the assembled multitude while La'ie's Polynesian communities brought gifts of gratitude for the great accomplishment, which brought honor to all.
Here's a partial list of gifts:
Fine mats, koa bowls, Hawaiian quilted pillows, two roasted pigs, baskets of taro and baskets of young green coconuts, breadfruit, bananas, watermelons and pineapples, plus fresh-baked French bread and cooked breadfruit.
The dream of Wallace, director of the Jonathan Mapela Center for Hawaiian Language and Cultural Studies at Brigham Young University-Hawai'i, goes beyond sailing the canoe as a seagoing classroom for Hawaiian culture.
"My dream is that Iosepa will be a symbol of peace," he said. "My hope is that the ahupua'a of La'ie will become self-sufficient. There will be no more poor, that we will take care of each other."
The naming and launching ceremony became an emotional outpouring of a close-knit community bound more closely by the canoe.
Pulotu and Eskaran cried on stage while making their speeches.
Master carver Pulotu, a big Tongan, singled out a volunteer named Walter for special thanks. Apparently, Walter had two left hands, and Pulotu had to fix up the mistakes Walter made after he went home. But nobody ever told Walter.
Pulotu said Walter, who came faithfully to help every day after finishing his homework, was one of many examples of the community effort that built the canoe, including fishermen who brought catches from the beach to feed the canoe builders and two Chinese students who brought McDonald's hamburgers.
The donated logs for the canoe hulls came from Fiji. Twenty voyagers from the Makali'i at Mahukona on the Big Island came to help launch the canoe and have also helped train a crew for Iosepa.
Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser
Links between the Makali'i and Iosepa go back to the days when Wallace and Shorty Bertelmann, Makali'i navigator, went to Church College, now BYUH.
Hukilau beach became a scene of celebration yesterday after the launch of Iosepa. Those involved in the canoe building say the experience has brought the La'ie community together.
Clay Bertelmann, executive director of the Makali'i organization, said Iosepa has not yet sailed but appears to be an excellent canoe. The workmanship is superb.
Makali'i crew member Bonnie Kahapea said, "If there is one word that describes this canoe, it's 'pure.' This has been a total community effort."
Nainoa Thompson, Hokule'a navigator and president of the Polynesian Voyaging Society, said: "Tione (Pulotu) has built more than a canoe; he's built a community. Look around you today, you see the whole Pacific."
Judi Roberts, wife of the academic vice president at BYUH, said, "What this canoe means to me is a melding of the community. It's given everybody focus. All the various ethnic groups have worked side by side."
A grant of almost $650,000 from the W.E. Kellogg Foundation put the Hawaiian studies program at BYUH in place and paid for the building of the canoe. The foundation is known for financing Native American projects.
Speaking for the foundation, Valerie Johnson said members at first couldn't understand why they were asked to finance a canoe instead of something with educational value, like technology.
"It took a while to educate them to see the canoe as the best teaching tool in this culture," she said. "It teaches science, celestial navigation, botany, oceanography and other subjects."
Wallace said the canoe is the third phase of a three-part program paid for by the grant. The first phase set up the Hawaiian studies program, and the second last year inaugurated a "care of the land" course involving taro and self-sufficiency.
The canoe phase began last March, when Wallace commissioned Pulotu to build the canoe. Wallace told the audience that Iosepa will sail interisland as a seagoing classroom and make long-distance voyages.
Hawai'i's double-hulled voyaging canoe fleet now consists of the Hokule'a and Hawai'iloa at Honolulu, Makali'i at Mahukona, and Iosepa at La'ie.
Thompson said other voyaging canoes under construction or on the drawing board include Mo'okiha on Maui, now being refurbished; a 72-foot canoe on Kaua'i, for which one hull is finished; and a canoe on Moloka'i for which financing is in place.
In the future, those who want to build voyaging canoes will find that those who have gone before have smoothed the way. Hokule'a navigator Chad Babayan has completed a hull mold for a 52-foot canoe.
