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Honolulu is truly the capital of the Pacific right now.

The objective of the Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture is to bring together and connect the peoples of the planet’s largest geographic entity.

For those of us with Pacific roots, this has been a profound time of connection.

I spent most of Kamehameha Day wandering the halls and rooms at the Hawaii Convention Center. FestPAC is a very Pacific gathering. Things run on wa’a (canoe) time and there’s a willingness to embrace organic connections.

The wa’a were the centerpiece of the ceremonies, most especially Mauloa, the koa carved by on Hawaii island under the guidance of the famed Micronesian wayfinder Mau Piailug who did the most in the 20th century to bring together Pacific Islanders.

Mauloa, and the other voyaging canoes, are reminders that our people voyaged the Pacific unafraid. Maps in the galleries showed different ways to see the world beyond the Mercator projections hanging in classrooms. The ocean connected instead of separated.

I found my cousins in the darkened hall and we watched a vibrant performance from dancers and singers from Wallis and Futuna, and then Tokelau. We mused that we knew more about European countries and their cultures than we did about our Pacific brethren.

There were so many different variations of Pacific peoples. A person with a sci-fi eye could easily conjure up a version of a Pacific Wakanda. It wasn’t hard to conjure “what-ifs” and alternative histories.

Tuesday was a celebration of Kamehameha, the first monarch of the Hawaiian kingdom. I couldn’t help but wonder what if there had more importantly been a Kalakaua Day to honor a monarch who united Polynesia. 

In 1887, Hawaii’s King Kalakaua sent the Kaimiloa to the last independent islands in Polynesia, Samoa and Tonga, with hopes of creating a Pacific confederation. His unifying efforts were thwarted in part by the presence of a German warship in Apia Harbor and a coup d’etat in Hawaii.

We clearly are supposed to be one Pacific people. You can see it and feel it when we are together.

I had seen relatives, friends, incredible art and performances, and was thinking great Pacific thoughts as I cruised down the long escalator at the convention center.

When I got to the bottom, I heard my name.  

Serena Matsunaga, a childhood friend from Kwajalein, was there. She stunned me by bringing over another Kwaj Kid, Masina McCollum. It was amazing that the three of us were at the bottom of the escalator.

Serena lives in Chicago and Massina in Florida. We hadn’t been this close to each other since we were running around on the playground of George Seitz Elementary School on Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. 

We grew up on Kwajalein, America’s piko in the Pacific, but our parents had roots in Hawaii before they went to work on the front lines of the Cold War.

We spoke of the delegate from the Republic of the Marshall Islands who gave a rousing speech at the opening ceremony, .

“They dropped 67 nuclear weapons,” he said. “They destroyed our way of life. They relocated our people, and yet we still have our culture. We still have our language. We are still here!”

Masina, who returned to Kwajalein on the Wednesday morning flight, expressed her contentedness in being in a thoroughly Pacific place. My back was to the escalator, but I knew the distracting scene she and Serena were watching as brightly dressed performers made their way through the convention center.

It’s a cheery sight to see a troupe from Papua New Guinea riding the escalator as they make their way to perform.

Later Tuesday evening, at the Shangri La Museum in Kahala, there was more evidence of the deep connections of Pacific peoples. Josh Tatofi, the multiple Na Hoku Hanohano winner who is Tongan and Samoan and raised in Hawaii, performed for the Maori Royal Family and a delegation from Aotearoa (New Zealand).

Tatofi joked that while his songs didn’t top the music charts in the United States, he reached the tops of the New Zealand charts. He turned over the chorus of his songs to the mostly Maori audience. It was heartwarming to see Polynesian performers connect. 

Conversations that night between Maori and Maoli were a joyful reminder that we are the same Polynesian people, and also a tragic reminder of the situations that have kept us apart.

At the start of FestPAC, Nainoa Thompson spoke not just of the traditions of exploration that connect Pacific peoples, but also of the unity required in this time of urgency around the unfolding climate crises: “I’m not trying to scare anyone, but wildfires, hurricanes, sea level rising, who knows it better than those in the Pacific who had nothing to do with climate changes but are suffering the first and the most? All of us.”   

FestPAC was a vision of unity for Pacific people. It was a reminder that we are not a collection of disparate people on distant patches in a vast sea, but people with a shared ancestry and way of seeing the world. FestPAC shows that the reminders of our shared heritage remain powerful and more relevant for the entire world than ever before.