Family of the Wa'a (2011)

This is the story of a journey, both of a canoe and the men and women who paddled it 1,750 miles across the Hawaiian archipelago. It began with the kuleana, or sacred promise, of a young man to his uncle. But it became a life-changing endeavor. In 1976, Captain Kavika Kapahulehua sailed from Hawaii to Tahiti in a double-hulled canoe. Before he passed away, Kavika asked his nephew, Kimokeo, to continue his voyage and reconnect the entire ancestral archipelago, from the Big Island to the Kure atoll, in a traditional paddling canoe, or wa'a. But before Kimokeo could fulfill his kuleana, he had to remake himself from the tough, beach bully he had become, into a leader of men and women. In the end, Kimokeo and his fellow wa'a paddlers realize they are each on their own path to Kure.