03/10/2026
The man who gave Hawaii back the stars was afraid his own island would lose them.
His name was Mau Piailug. He was born in 1932 on Satawal, a Micronesian island about a mile long, home to roughly 500 people. His grandfather, a master navigator, chose him to follow. When the boy got seasick at seven, his grandfather tied his hands and dragged him behind the canoe.
Thousands of miles away, Hawaii had lost that knowledge. In 1956, a New Zealand historian named Andrew Sharp published a book arguing that Polynesia was settled by accident, by drifting canoes and exiles. To test him, someone had to sail a canoe to Tahiti with no instruments. Not ONE Hawaiian alive knew how.
Mau did. And he was the only traditional navigator willing to teach Hawaiians. The knowledge was secret. By sharing it, The Economist later wrote, he broke a rule that Micronesian knowledge should stay in those islands.
On May 1, 1976, Hōkūleʻa left Honolua Bay on Maui. No compass. No charts. Stars, swells and birds. On June 4, more than 17,000 people met the canoe in Papeete.
But on the way, it fell apart. The crew fought, and it turned physical. Mau flew home to Satawal right after landing. The canoe came back to Hawaii on modern instruments.
In 1978, Hōkūleʻa capsized in the Molokaʻi Channel. Eddie Aikau paddled off on a surfboard to get help. He was NEVER seen again.
A young Nainoa Thompson went to find Mau and asked him to teach. Mau came back in 1979, and he told Nainoa why.
"I will train you to find Tahiti because I don't want you to die."
In 1980, Nainoa found Tahiti. Back home, some elders from Mau's islands criticized him for giving away the secret knowledge of their navigators. He kept teaching.
But engines and GPS were reaching the islands, and Mau feared for his own. In 1994, he told Nainoa: "It's too late. I am too old, our children have too much to learn, and it's too late."
Then he said: "All navigators find a way out. When they put me in the ground, it's all right because I already planted a seed in Hawai'i."
Hawaii answered. Two of his students, Clay and Shorty Bertelmann, began building him a voyaging canoe in 2001. Clay died in 2004. Shorty and Chadd Paishon finished it. By late 2006, the canoe had cost $300,000. It was built to help Mau keep navigation alive on Satawal. It was Hawaii's mahalo.
They named it Alingano Maisu. Maisu is breadfruit knocked down by storm winds, free for anyone to take.
On March 15, 2007, Hōkūleʻa and Maisu reached Satawal to children singing and conch shells blowing. Days later, Mau initiated 16 new master navigators: five from Hawaii, eleven from Micronesia, including his son, Sesario. It was the first pwo ceremony on Satawal in decades.
He gave Hawaii back its way across the ocean. Hawaii sailed a canoe to his island to help keep it alive there.
On July 12, 2010, at 6:30 in the evening, Mau Piailug died on Satawal after a long struggle with diabetes. He was 78 years old. He was buried the next day.
He gave Hawaii the knowledge. He did not live to see Hawaii hold that ceremony on its own shores.
On July 30, 2026, the first pwo ceremony ever held in Hawaii took place in Niu Valley. Six new master navigators were initiated, honoring Mau's lineage. Four of them are women, the first in Hawaii to earn the title.
Today Hōkūleʻa is in Aotearoa, partway through a 43,000-nautical-mile voyage around the Pacific. After his death, the Voyaging Society named its navigation school for him, with learning sites around Maunalua Bay, where he taught Nainoa.
He gave the stars away so they would live. Hawaii still steers by them.
