January, 1997
It’s been 27 years since ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Imaikalani surrendered a life of work, play, and abundant comfort. That many years since he’s swapped all that might be measured by a bank account, personal ambition, or the accumulation of possession for the intangible goal of faith in his ancient Native Hawaiian culture.
December, 1997
It's been twenty-six years since we met. A single mom, career journalist. and author collided with a Native cultural practitioner committed to following the guidance of his ancestral Grandmothers.
We lived through the required ten years of ‘Iokepa’s immersion into his authentic Native culture - our “walk of faith.” We lived homeless in tents on the ‘aina; hungry more-often-than-not; accepting that we’d never again work for a paycheck. “My culture can never be for sale.”
September, 2007
It’s been sixteen years since we took our lived-experience of those first ten years, and for the first time shared those stories widely.. We drove a donated car for tens of thousands of miles across the American continent, coast to coast and back again. We filled our gas tank from a sporadic donation bowl’s dollar bills, and we spoke our heart’s stories in living rooms to no more than a dozen or so strangers - who are strangers no more.
November, 2010
Three years into what became an annual winter speaking tour, Grandmothers Whisper was published, It is the award-winning memoir of those hungry, homeless, faith-filled years on the Hawaiian ‘aina. But now, the tour included bookstores. Six months of every year - winter into spring - we drove across states small and large, from one invited venue to another, The audiences grew.
October, 2013
Three years passed, The Return Voyage was published. This memoir is a collection of stories. It picks up where Grandmothers Whisper ended. We are on the road, sharing Native Hawaiian culture with Native Americans, African Americans, at Jewish synagogues and Buddhist enclaves - with intellectual skeptics, with fervent New Agers. They share theirs.
The Intervening Years
Our lives followed a pattern. We were six months on Island - listening and learning – homeless still, and living in faith. Six months of the year, financed only by generosity and donation, we followed the map of invitations and responded with the ancestral Hawaiian wisdom. Tiny living rooms became mammoth conferences halls, mega-churches, college auditoriums - and audiences more typically numbered more close to 1000.
Until mid-2020.
And then came Covid.
November, 2021
The pandemic kept us on Island, but the enforced quiet wasn’t unproductive. My newest book was birthed, and then it was published: Girls Don’t! is the memoir that I anguished over for years before I met ‘Iokepa. His relentless encouragement – and the gift of quiet – made it a reality.
The book is a page-turner, a love story, and most of all, provides a deep plunge into the continuing gender battles women-in-the-workplace wage still. It is also the most humanizing Vietnam War book you’ll ever read.
The New Tour: December 2024 – April, 2025
Last year and this one, we’ve been doing something a bit different - more intimate – and you are very much invited. Girls Don’t!, my early-days feminist memoir, documenting young Inette’s audacious plunge into the machismo of that long-ago war in Vietnam, was released in the thick of the pandemic. ‘Iokepa and I were unable to take that book on the road. This year we’ve been rectifying that.
This Winter - Spring, we’ll offer this. When your organization selects Girls Don’t! for their reading pleasure, we will join you - preferably after you’ve read the book - to discuss it and answer your group’s questions for a couple hours. Don’t forget to invite your Veteran friends and family. As always, we do not charge for our visits – but we will be driving distances and we ask for private accommodation for a night or two.
Of course, we continue to be open to that powerful immersion into a Return Voyage gathering, where we speak the truth of the authentic, Native Hawaiian, ancestral wisdom, and our unique experience of it.
Email your invitation; we’ll respond promptly. We very much look forward to joining old friends (and new ones) for an evening of reminiscence and thoughtful conversation.
Welcome to the 2024 Return Voyage Tour.
info@ReturnVoyage.com