OFFSHORE

In 1881 — less than a week after King David Kalakaua left Hawaii for a yearlong tour around the world — a ship arrived in Honolulu carrying laborers sick with smallpox.

The decisions that Hawaii’s future queen made to keep people safe – and the pushback she received from angry citizens and frustrated business owners who didn’t want to quarantine or halt business activity – should sound familiar to people today. Which is why some teachers are using the story of Lili‘uokalani to help students face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.

How do you practice Hawaiian culture when you’re thousands of miles from Hawaii? And what happens when Hawaiians abroad finally get a chance to go home?

Nearly half of all Native Hawaiians now live outside of Hawaii. And while many have cited Hawaii’s high cost of living as the main reason for leaving, it’s really just a piece of a much larger story.

After the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893, hundreds of disenfranchised Hawaiian musicians would journey to the continental U.S. in search of fame, fortune, or just a chance to make a decent living. Some would die in poverty and obscurity. Others would change American music forever.

Two decades after Hawaiians helped build a fort for John Sutter in California, another group of Hawaiians would find themselves stranded in Massachusetts. And take up arms in America’s bloodiest war.

This is the story of a group of Hawaiians who ended up in California more than 160 years ago — back when Hawaii was an independent nation. And how their descendents are still connected to the islands in unexpected ways.

Nearly half of all Native Hawaiians now live outside of Hawaii. It’s a staggering number that raises questions about what Hawaii will be like in coming years, and how Native Hawaiians will carry their islands with them to far flung places.

This season, Offshore is taking a deep dive into the Hawaiian diaspora. Join journalist Kuʻu Kauanoe, as she digs into what is driving Hawaiians from the islands today. And tells some amazing stories about Hawaiians who left long ago.

Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument covers 583,000 square-miles of the Pacific — an area larger than all of America’s national parks combined.

But while millions of visitors flock to America’s national parks each year, access to Papahanaumokuakea is highly restricted. Many people — even in Hawaii — don’t know that this special place exists. Don’t know what it looks like. What it sounds like. What will be lost if rising seas continue to wash away its low-lying islands, or politicians chip away at the laws protecting its borders.

Experience this remote and wild place with Civil Beat’s environmental reporter, Nathan Eagle, and his wife, videographer Alana Eagle, on a trip that opened their eyes to the beauty — and fragility — of island life. And changed their outlook on the world in unexpected ways.

When we started reporting this season, we expected it to be a story about troubling adoptions that happened in the 1990s. But it quickly became clear that issues with Marshallese adoptions were never fully resolved, they simply moved. To new counties. States. Adoption agencies. So we’ve continued chasing leads while producing this season. In this final episode, we’re going to get some answers for London Lewis about his birth mother, and and share some pretty big developments about adoptions happening today.