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 […]

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.

In the mid-1800s, hundreds of Hawaiians lived in what is now Canada and California. In 1847, Hawaiians made up 10 percent of San Francisco’s tiny but growing population.

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 […]

There’s an entire generation of Marshallese adoptees like London Lewis asking questions about who they are and where they come from. And there are plenty of parents searching for the children they gave up, too. These reunions aren’t always easy. Many families have been separated for years by not only distance, but also language and culture. Finding their way back to each other is a complicated journey that can lead to places no one expects. But right now, our biggest challenge with London’s family is helping a reunion happen at all.

London Lewis had to get back to work in Florida, so we’re continuing the search on his behalf — journeying to the Marshall Islands to where his story began, to try and find his birth father and his siblings. And get a sense of why women are still being recruited to leave the Marshall Islands […]

We started reporting for this season of Offshore last June, but we’re still chasing down leads and new developments. It’s been a busy few weeks for us. Which means we’re going to be publishing Episode 6 on Monday, May 18. In the meantime, we wanted to share a poem with you by Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner. She’s […]

It didn’t take long for London Lewis to form instant connections with people who want him to know that he not only belongs in the Marshallese community but he is needed in the Marshallese community. But acceptance and belonging are not the same thing. London is just at the beginning of a long and complicated journey to figure out where he fits into the Marshallese diaspora. And Springdale is about to get him a lot closer to solving one of the biggest questions about his past.

In Springdale, London Lewis begins to experience Marshallese culture for the first time. But we’re not just in Springdale for London. We’re also here to try and find out exactly what’s happening with Marshallese adoptions today. To speak with private adoption lawyers, adoptive families, and Marshallese birth mothers about the adoption process. Adoptions are big business. As international adoptions have dropped off, there are still hundreds of thousands of adoptive parents vying for an increasingly small pool of healthy babies. Many of them are turning to this small community in Arkansas where private adoption lawyers and their Marshallese liaisons - or fixers - are household names for quickly matching them with Marshallese birth mothers.