The unveiling of the new Pacific Hall at the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu, with its emphasis on an interconnected ‘Blue Continent’, was bold and invigorating. Opened in 2013, it presented the Pacific Ocean as the focus of historical attention in its own right; as an entity, not as a largely empty space whose histories were driven by neighbouring continents. Exhibits and events in the Pacific Hall were collected in, above, and around a central core rich in the histories and technologies of maritime travel. Over it all presided an extraordinary piece of art: Anu‘u Nu‘u ka ‘Ike (‘Learning step by step’). Created by over thirty students and master artists of Indigenous Pacific Island heritage, the mural expresses the ocean’s physical, historical, and spiritual identities.1