The Return Voyage
The Return Voyage
For 12,000 years, the indigenous people of our Hawaiian Islands embraced a matriarchal culture that refused the possibility of war.
Return Voyage awakens that ancient wisdom–ritual and practices that dissipate anger, prevent violence, foster harmony–and shares its profound implications for the 21st century.
The Purpose
The Purpose
For almost two centuries, every Native Hawaiian cultural practice was forbidden – at odds with missionary-imposed laws. The lyrical Hawaiian language was silenced; the masterful healing-arts were prohibited; 12,000 years of sacred ritual was banned – children were legally-mandated to be given Christian names, not Hawaiian. These laws were lifted in 1972, but the damage was done.
In their wake, the truth of this remarkable culture was distorted and shrouded from the indigenous people themselves – and, sadly, denied to the rest of the world as well.
For thousands of years, this had been a matrilineal culture that empowered and honored women leaders. Nightly, men chanted their celebration of all that was female, in accordance with each moon phase. They acknowledged that they were half their mothers.
Ho’oponopono, the sacred, community-centered, mediation ritual at the heart of the Native Hawaiian culture – was created by and fostered through women. In this way, the women diffused impulses that led to hostility. For thousands of years, there was no war.
It is the purpose of Huliau - The Return Voyage to awaken the Native Hawaiians to their rightful heritage, and to awaken the rest of the world to the empowering gifts of that culture.
Every Native Hawaiian ceremony and ritual began with a chant welcoming the ancestors.
‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Imaikalani follows tradition here:
‘Iokepa & Inette
‘Iokepa & Inette
‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Īmaikalani
“We’ve all come from tribes – communities that knew how to care for each other, and for the natural world. Our survival depended on it - it depends on it still.”
‘Iokepa is a man of deep and proven faith - faith in his people’s birth-knowledge (ike hanau); faith in his ancestors’ wisdom (ke kahiko), faith in his own destiny and purpose. He comes from a culture that celebrates the connections: between people, and between every thread of our natural world. He lives and he speaks with the certainty that his ancient culture holds healing gifts for our warring world.
Within his name resides his destiny: “The best from the sky - who is the Creator - has chosen me, to work to bring the people together.”
INETTE MILLER ‘ĪMAIKALANI
Inette Miller - a Jewish woman, outspoken feminist, successful author, journalist and workshop teacher - surrendered her privileged writer’s life to join ‘Iokepa, camping on Hawaiian beaches with little food and no money – walking the paths of his ancestors.
She wrote the story of her overwhelming immersion into the authentic kanaka maoli culture in the book: Grandmothers Whisper: Ancient Voices… Timeless Wisdom… A Modern Love Story. The book won Book of the Year, Visionary Award. Her next book, The Return Voyage: 95,000 Miles on the Paths of Our Ancestors, continued the journey where the earlier book left off.
It has been for Inette, a faith-challenging rite of passage into Native Hawaiian culture. She has embraced it for the love of her husband, her belief in his people, and the certainty that every experience and gift of her own life and culture were the destined preparation for what is asked of her now.
Books
Books
Inette Miller has been a national and international journalist, lecturer, and writing workshop teacher throughout her life. She has published three memoirs and one collection of personal essays. Each memoir defines a pivotal, transformative life juncture, within late twentieth-century cultural currents. Her memoirs have been produced as feature film; translated into a half dozen languages; and honored with national awards. She is a member of the Authors Guild. Inette lives with her husband, a Native Hawaiian cultural practitioner, on the island of Kaua’i. She has an author’s website at: www.InetteMiller.com
LATEST RELEASE: January, 2021
GIRLS DON’T! A Woman’s War in Vietnam
The year is 1970; the war in Vietnam is five years from over. The women’s movement is newly resurgent, and feminists are summarily reviled as “libbers.” Inette Miller is one year out of college—a reporter for a small-town newspaper. Her boyfriend gets drafted and is issued orders to Vietnam. Within their few remaining days together, Inette marries her US Army private, determined to accompany him to war.
There are obstacles. All wives of US military are prohibited in country. With the aid of her newspaper’s editor, Miller finagles a one-month work visa and becomes a war reporter. Her newspaper cannot afford life insurance beyond that. After thirty days, she is on her own.
As one of the rare woman war correspondents in Vietnam and the only one also married to an Army soldier, Miller’s experience was pathbreaking. Girls Don’t shines a light on the conflicting motives that drive an ambitious woman of that era and illustrates the schizophrenic struggle between the forces of powerful feminist ideology and the contrarian forces of the world as it was.
Girls Don’t is the story of what happens when a twenty-three-year-old feminist makes her way into the land of machismo. This is a war story, a love story, and an open-hearted confessional within the burgeoning women’s movement, chronicling its demands and its rewards.
Available everywhere. Click below to order. If you choose to order through the publisher, Texas Tech University, you can use 20GIRLS for a 30% discount code!
Reviews For Girls Don’t!
Memoir writing at its finest
This magnum opus is unputdownable. The author was a young newspaper reporter in the 1970s who decided to become a war correspondent so she could follow the man she loved who was shipping out to Vietnam. Wow. What a premise for a present-day movie, only unlike a contrived Hollywood story this one really happened. GIRLS DON'T is a gripping narrative of love and war and journalism in our time, and the reader becomes very involved in the parallel stories told here; hers and his. You care deeply for both of these special people, and so want them to make it. Buckle up. What a ride!
Bruce Henderson, New York Times bestselling author of: Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler. and Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War.
New York Journal of Books
Inette Miller has the distance and detachment of a journalist trained to see the big picture—and the heart of a woman who understands what it is like to be “the other.” It is these differing perspectives that make Miller’s Vietnam War memoir Girls Don’t! so compelling.
Miller grew up in a time and place when women were generally expected to marry and have children. A job and a career came second to being a wife and mother. Miller does marry, but largely because in doing so she can go to Vietnam, a journey she makes precisely “because that’s not where girls were expected to go.”
Read in full: .https://www.nyjournalofbooks.com/book-review/girls-dont-womans-war
Reviewer: Author Katya Cengel, whose most recent book is the award-winning, From Chernobyl With Love: Reporting the Ruins of the Soviet Union.
Other Titles by Inette Miller
GRANDMOTHER'S WHISPER
“Who is this man I followed, literally, to the edges of civilization, to the brink of life itself?
Inette Miller is a Jewish woman, a writer, a level-headed single mother agreeing to a rite of passage that demanded she walk naked in someone else’s homeland – trek the blurred borders of magic. She was mute that first year, but she is no longer shy about telling her story. This is the story of the human possibilities of spirit. It is equally the story of the human path, burdened with fears and doubts. She went on vacation for a week, and she stayed for a lifetime.
RETURN VOYAGE
What Does Happily Ever After Look Like?
‘Iokepa is a Native Hawaiian, who relinquished “everything I’d worked for all my life” to embrace his aboriginal identity and reawaken his ancestral culture.
Inette is a Jewish woman, who surrendered a privileged writer’s life to join him, camping on Hawaiian beaches with little food and no money, and walking the paths of his ancestors.
Together, they packed all they owned into three suitcases and began their ancestor-driven Return Voyage across America. Their message: what Native Hawaiians lived for 12,000 years – ritual practices that prevented war – have profound implications for the 21st century.
Reviews for The Return Voyage
Reviews FOR GRANDMOTHER'S WHISPER
“…a grand yet unconventional love story, but it is so much more.”
“A different world is possible when we cultivate respect, kindness, devotion, ancient wisdom and great aloha in our relations.”
“Perhaps we all have a Grandmother who would whisper to us if we would only be available to listen…”
“ ‘Iokepa and Inette are humorous, loving, generous voyagers who have the great gift of maintaining a light touch, not taking themselves too seriously.”
“Faith often seems mired down by thoughts of religion, but in this book, faith is something deeper and more encompassing.”
“Turning the last page felt like saying goodbye to a dear friend.”
The Latest
The Latest
BOOK Tour
BOOK Tour
For each of the past sixteen winters (excepting the pandemic), we have taken our empowering Return Voyage speaking and book tour on the road. Coast to coast, we have shared our stories at varied clubs, churches, bookstores, universities and conferences.
We continue to welcome invitations (on Island or off) to speak to your preferred audience, in your chosen venue, at an agreed upon time. As always, we do not charge for our appearances. Contact us with your questions.
Gratefully, we’ll determine availability.
The History
The History
Who Are the Kanaka Maoli?
We are the proud, generous, faith-filled people who inhabited these Islands for over 13,000 years. Our aboriginal ancestors were born from the heart of our Creator and set down on these Islands to assume human responsibility for its stewardship.
TIMELINE
Before colonization, the nation of Lāhui (now Hawai’i) embraced a culture that insisted on the interdependence among and responsibility for every thread of Creation – human and natural.
These were a people whose ancestral wisdom guided their every breath; who welcomed strangers with open arms, open hands, and open hearts; who could imagine neither ownership nor greed, gender separation nor warfare.
When freed from foreign strictures, they live this still.
Language is my preferred milieu (I am, by vocation, a writer). Language is equally my nemesis. Every year the good folks responsible for dictionary inclusion of hitherto unlisted words determine their choices. At some point in an unremarkable, modern history, an academic phrase gained wider usage and “Cultural Appropriation” was endorsed.
But only in recent years has that phrase become a cudgel. Writers, visual artists, and all forms of creators now struggle with the moral implications of stealing from a people or a place they were not born to. I am no exception.