WAITANGI, NEW ZEALAND » The last time Hokule’a crews set foot on this panoramic, cloud-swept beach in New Zealand’s north land, they helped revive a voyaging tradition that had disappeared there.

On Saturday, as several hundred Kiwis looked on, those crews from Hawaii returned ashore for the first time in 29 years with their Maori brethren carrying them over the frigid breakwater on their shoulders.

This homecoming of sorts, the latest stop on the Hawaiian voyaging canoe’s odyssey around the world, reaffirmed a Polynesian bond that has endured across a vast ocean distance for hundreds of years.

A massive traditional Maori war canoe containing nearly 90 imposing paddlers joined the crews of the Hokule’a and escort vessel Hikianalia on Saturday in the Bay of Islands, a sprawling scenic inlet on the North Island. Once on land, the canoe crews faced an impressive and even fearsome rite of passage to enter the Maoris’ traditional gathering place, called a "marae."

Then, once inside, the voyagers from Hawaii and the Maoris from Aotearoa (New Zealand’s traditional name) exchanged stories of how far they had all come to get to this day, in a ceremony called a "powhiri."

"For us Maori, it’s a proud moment," said Stanley Conrad, reflecting on the day. Conrad is a New Zealand resident who sailed on the Hokule’a during its original 1985 voyage here, when crews sailed the canoe farther than they ever had before.

"It’s getting back to this linkage" as a common Polynesian people, Conrad said. "The only thing that keeps us apart is the ocean. But don’t be afraid of the ocean — it’s who we are."

Back in 1985, upon the Hokule’a crew’s arrival, Sir James Henare, who was arguably the most prominent Maori leader of that day, unexpectedly declared the voyagers a new, sixth tribe of New Zealand’s northern Tai Tokerau region.

"It was his desire that it be woven into our Pacific identity, and to find some sort of Polynesian brotherhood," recounted Shane Jones, a Maori and former member of New Zealand’s parliament who witnessed the canoe’s 1985 arrival.

Henare’s unprecedented declaration was more than a formality — it carried real significance that persists in Aotearoa, said Henare’s son, Erima, who attended the ceremony Saturday in Waitangi.

"In a Polynesian sense, it’s normal" to declare a new tribe, he said. "It’s not a token."

A relatively young crew, including next-generation traditional wayfinding navigators Ka’iulani Murphy and Kaleo Wong, guided the two canoes from Tonga to New Zealand over a 13-day sail.

A Kamehameha Schools delegation of 18 students and nine staff members serenaded the seafarers as they came on shore. Also waiting on the beach, blended into the crowd, was Marion Lyman-Mersereau, a veteran of the Hokule’a’s earliest voyages. She had come to see her son, Hokule’a crew member Kaniela Lyman-Mersereau, help return the canoe to New Zealand.

"I’m so glad he’s safe and had this wonderful adventure in the wake of his ancestors," Lyman-Mersereau said. "It’s sort of hard to believe that 34 years have passed since I sailed. I found that Kaniela, he had that same — he was drawn to the canoe."

Sarah Tailby, a Kiwi, brought her two young sons Saturday to witness the canoes’ reception.

"It’s just a significant event for Maori to have these visitors," she said. Most Kiwis wouldn’t know specifically of the Hokule’a’s 1985 landfall, but many know of the subsequent relationship between the Hawaiian and Kiwi voyagers, added Liz Tailby, Sarah’s mother.

The Ngatokimatawharoa, the 127-foot-long, 24-ton war canoe that accompanied the Hokule’a and Hikianalia into the bay, was named for an ancient Hawaiian voyaging canoe that the Maoris say landed in New Zealand hundreds of years ago.

Unlike in Hawaii, where the islands’ ancient voyaging history was lost, many Maori can still trace their genealogy back to the first "waka," or canoes, that arrived there centuries ago. Conrad called those ancient canoes the "bridge to our ancestors."

However, when the Hokule’a arrived 29 years ago New Zealand didn’t have any voyaging canoes, local Maori leaders say. Since then, two traditional canoes have been built using the island’s large kauri trees, mostly due to the efforts of local Maori elder and master navigator Hekenukumai Busby. One of Busby’s canoes, Te Aurere, sailed to Hawaii in 1995.

Members of the Hokule’a’s sixth tribe, known here as Ngati Ruawahia, have also maintained close ties with their Maori counterparts in New Zealand, Conrad said.

Traditional protocol rites dominated Saturday’s ceremony. Young Maori men dressed in traditional garb greeted the visitors from Hawaii with fierce chants and screams. They charged right up to Hokule’a’s captains with spears and weapons in a traditional demonstration of prowess, while the canoe crews stood stoically.

The Maori hosts gave the Hokule’a’s leaders a shoe-box-size block of kauri wood that they said was about 45,000 years old, taken from an ancient forest of the large trees to the north that had once been upended and buried under layers of mud.

At Saturday’s ceremony, Polynesian Voyaging Society President Nainoa Thompson said the group will ask permission from the peoples across the Pacific, while the canoe crews are in New Zealand, before the Hokule’a ventures out of the Pacific for the first time and into unfamiliar waters.

The Hokule’a and Hikianalia will spend the next six months in this home away from home, preparing for the remainder of the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s sail around the world.