The legend of Eddie Aikau

The film Hawaiian: The legend of Eddie Aikau, provides an insight of true Hawaiian culture and how it lives through surfing legend Eddie Aikau. While the film focuses on the story of Aikau, it also explains the history of Hawaiian culture, How imperialism affected Hawaii, and how Hawaiian culture shaped the life of Aikau and so many other Hawaiians. The ocean is a massive part of Hawaiian culture. The Polynesian Ancestors celebrated the ocean and relied on it for food and navigation. When the United States annexed Hawaii, they took away that culture. Suddenly, the white sandy beaches were filled with white people. Hotels popped up everywhere in Hawaii. Schools no longer taught the Hawaiian language, and Hawaiian people went to work in the sugar industry. Every single bit of the Hawaiian culture had been taken away, but the ocean still remained. Hawaiians flocked to the ocean where there was still one major tradition. The Hawaiians were the inventors of surfing, and eventually it became the only way for Hawaiians to experience their culture. The culture lived through Aikau. He surfed day and night until he was the greatest alive. Eventually Californian and Australian surfers took over and held competitions in Maui. Hawaiian surfers were believed to be non existent and not talented enough to compete. But Aikau would not let them take surfing away from the Hawaiian culture, it was all they had left. He worked until he eventually won the Duke Competition. He had preserved his culture. After retiring he reverted to sailing, which was another great Hawaiian tradition. He set out to sail from Hawaii to Tahiti as his ancestors did. When the ship flipped over in a storm, he set out on a surfboard to get help on shore. Eddie went missing and was never found. He might have died young, but through his relentless effort to spend his life surfing and sailing, he truly connected with his Hawaiian culture