TRUE HAWAII ｜ By Sam Potter and Nainoa Langer ｜ Beautiful Destinations

My name's Sam Potter. I guess I'm a traveler, a storyteller, photographer, filmmaker maybe. I really don't know. But I do know this journey started with a kid who grew up on a tiny island. And as beautiful as it was, I felt trapped. And like so many of us, I love to travel for the answer. But I wanted to do things a little differently. My whole life, I watched as visitors shuffled on and off my little rock, very rarely experiencing how special my home was. So if I ever found my opportunity to travel, I wanted to really meet people, to find myself on adventures as wild as the ones I found in books, and indulge in cultures other than my own. So when the time finally came, I did. I fell deeply in love with the friends I was making, with humanity, and its many different ways of life. I want to share with you my adventures. But more than that, the people I meet and the stories they tell. Because when you get to know someone else, you start to see the world through their eyes. And with that perspective, we become a little more understanding, respectful, and loving towards one another. And what a better place to kick off these adventures around the world than right here at home, Hawaii. Micah Kamualii is a direct descendant of King Kamehameha. And his family is made up of hula dancers. But this is not the kind of hula that you find down at the luau shows with mai tais and fake flower leis. This is the kind of hula that chants to the wind and the rain, that has been used to reach the gods and tell stories from thousands of years ago. This is the type of hula that fights to preserve Hawaiian traditions. Hula's been in my family for a very long time. Hula is the language of the heart, therefore the heartbeat of the Hawaiian people. And it's true, you know, when we start drumming, you can't help but feel the energy. The Hawaiian people have suffered a dark and painful history. Their lands were stolen, their culture ripped from them. And for a long time, Hawaiians were not allowed to be Hawaiian. So to him, and to many others, hula is much more than just a dance. Hula was a means of keeping our history alive. We don't have any other choice, but we have to continue on. We have to continue chanting, we have to continue drumming. It's just innate, it's just in us. Growing up in Hawaii, or even visiting here, you can still feel the tension of injustice. But when I'm with Micah, I never feel this tension at all. I asked him why, and he said, aloha. The word aloha, you hear all over the world. It's the word that they attach to hello and goodbye. If you break down the word, alo means face, ha means breath. When we greet each other, traditionally, we would press our face on the other person's face, and we would breathe, we would exchange this breath. And it's the action of giving one's life force to the other. We aloha our land that's around us. We aloha our kupuna who have passed away. We aloha the mountains and the stars. And the more we do that, the more our people are like that with everybody around them. The beauty of Hawaii is obvious. All it takes is a photo and that Hawaiian dream starts to play in your head. And like it is, it's beautiful, it's gorgeous. I feel so blessed to be able to go out and go in the ocean and go on waterfalls. That's great. But when I leave home and I come back, what I truly miss, it's the community. It's the people. There's this culture and this way that we live here that I find so special. And that's what we want to share with you. And I think to really do that, you need to understand that there's kind of two sides to Hawaii's story. There's the traditional side of Hawaiian culture and the modern day culture of Hawaii. So the modern day culture of Hawaii started in the hurricane era, when people from all over the world came over here to work the plantations. During this time, the Hawaiian kingdom was coming to an end. It was being overthrown by the United States of America. So this was a really challenging time for the Hawaiians. In this collaboration of cultures that happened, the Hawaiian ways lived on. Growing up here, this concept's pounded in your head, right? And it's Malama Aina and Malama Ike Kai. One means to respect the land and the other to respect the ocean. And in doing so, we sustain our lives and the lives of generations to come. So right now, we're on our way to meet up with my really good friend, who I think is the perfect person to talk about this way of life. Kimi Warner has a respect for nature that few people possess. Growing up undeterred by the lack of money, she and her family spent much of their time hunting and gathering to put food on the table. But now, a well-known spearfisher woman, cook and world traveler, times have changed. But Kimi still keeps these childhood lessons close to her heart, always striving to live a life of sustainability in this modern world. I love you, first of all. So I briefly mentioned Malama Aina and Malama Ike Kai. You encompass that really well. And I guess my question for you is like, where did this appreciation for our planet come from? Where did this respect for the ocean that you have come from? You know, the ocean and the land, they really provided us with everything that we needed. My mom and my sister and I would have to go pick lilikoi and oranges and guavas, and we'd sell it to the local juice company for money. And my dad would take me diving so we could eat fish for dinner. You know, when people talk about mother nature, I mean, that's exactly what it was for our family. Nature was this always nurturing mother. From you, I'd like to hear, what do you do to practice sustainability? And what can other people do? For me, it does have a lot to do with trying to get my food in the most sustainable way that I can find. It also has to do with trying to reduce some of the things that I do, trying to reduce my use of single-use plastics. Maybe it's just getting to know, you know, where your groceries come from. Maybe it's just reading the back of packages a little more. Maybe it's looking for food that's not in packages a little more. Change for the better good is gonna be made as a collective whole. I love our planet, and that's come from hiking and surfing and like everything that my life has been. But what really, really did it for me was spearfishing. And I feel like people almost can't understand that because you're killing fish and they don't get that. But it's like, you understand that your existence comes at a cost. And you start to kind of question, okay, where does my food come from? Where does my waste go? You understand that you're part of this bigger picture. To me, if I'm gonna sum up Hawaii, what feels like home to me, which makes me think of being a kid, is getting a three-prong, going diving, and cooking a meal with your family. I love that you'd like to do that. Okay, that's the plan. All right, Kimmy, one more question. If Hawaii could teach the world one thing, what would it be? I think Hawaii could teach the world a lot about everything, about respecting nature, about sustainability, and about community. I think if we all just take that same island mentality that Hawaii has and look at things globally, like that was some global aloha, and think, yeah, I should be treating people better. It doesn't matter if your skin color is different, your mindset's different, your culture is different. I have to learn to open up to that. I have to learn to respect that. The last thing I asked Micah before flying home was what being Hawaiian means to him. And how can those of us who live here and those who visit follow in those footsteps? If you decide to call Hawaii your home, then you're obligated to its history, and you're obligated to the practices of the people. And our strong practice is to be an aloha with everyone. And if you find yourself here in Hawaii, and you find yourselves on our shores, you too should be obligated to its traditions and its people. Leave a little bit of yourself back and take a little bit of Hawaii in. Throughout our lives, home has taught us to aloha all that's around us. To embrace other cultures and ways of life. To care for our environment. On an island, you can feel isolated from the world. And maybe it's in that isolation that we find togetherness. But Earth is an island in itself. One people. One planet. Aren't we all in this together? We have a lot to learn from each other. So as we make our way around the world, we hope that our travels change us. That they push us to a place of greater understanding, respect, and appreciation for the world that we live in.