The decisions that Hawaii’s future queen made to keep people safe – and the pushback she received from angry citizens and frustrated business owners who didn’t want to quarantine or halt business activity – should sound familiar to people today. Which is why some teachers are using the story of Lili‘uokalani to help students face the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.

But while millions of visitors flock to America’s national parks each year, access to Papahanaumokuakea is highly restricted. Many people — even in Hawaii — don’t know that this special place exists. Don’t know what it looks like. What it sounds like. What will be lost if rising seas continue to wash away its low-lying islands, or politicians chip away at the laws protecting its borders.

Experience this remote and wild place with Civil Beat’s environmental reporter, Nathan Eagle, and his wife, videographer Alana Eagle, on a trip that opened their eyes to the beauty — and fragility — of island life. And changed their outlook on the world in unexpected ways.

These reunions aren’t always easy. Many families have been separated for years by not only distance, but also language and culture. Finding their way back to each other is a complicated journey that can lead to places no one expects.

But right now, our biggest challenge with London’s family is helping a reunion happen at all.

It didn’t take long for him to form instant connections with people who want him to know that he not only belongs in the Marshallese community but he is needed in the Marshallese community.

But acceptance and belonging are not the same thing. London is just at the beginning of a long and complicated journey to figure out where he fits into the Marshallese diaspora.

And Springdale is about to get him a lot closer to solving one of the biggest questions about his past.

But we’re not just in Springdale for London. We’re also here to try and find out exactly what’s happening with Marshallese adoptions today. To speak with private adoption lawyers, adoptive families, and Marshallese birth mothers about the adoption process.

Adoptions are big business. As international adoptions have dropped off, there are still hundreds of thousands of adoptive parents vying for an increasingly small pool of healthy babies. Many of them are turning to this small community in Arkansas where private adoption lawyers and their Marshallese liaisons – or fixers – are household names for quickly matching them with Marshallese birth mothers.

In 1986, as part of a treaty between the U.S.and three Micronesian nations, Marshallese were given the right to travel to this country with little if any immigration restrictions. But nobody anticipated the wave of migration that would follow. Or that the treaty would contribute to an adoption explosion from the islands.

Now, the migration has taken root in this quiet corner of Arkansas — where local judges say as many as nine out of 10 adoptions are of Marshallese children.

Her son, London, says he had a happy childhood, growing up in a big house in a town just past the Everglades. But he’s spent a lot of time searching for a connection to a culture thousands of miles from where he was raised.

And while he did a lot of research in college on American military history in the Marshall Islands, he wants a sense of what’s missing from Western textbooks.

Now, two decades later, some of these children are beginning to search for answers about who they are and where they come from. Some, like 25-year-old London Lewis, have never known a single person from their native country. Adopted as an infant from the Marshall Islands, London’s journey home would begin with a Facebook post.

This is a story about the abuse cases, but it’s also a story about the evolving role of the Catholic Church on Guam. And a reporter who’s struggled for years to explain where she comes from and what it means to be Chamorro, finding answers in some very unexpected places.

Offshore looks at the history of tiki bars, why they’re popping up all over the country and even the world today, and finds out more about the immigrants who served up the first tiki cocktails.

It’s also about our changing understanding of the universe. And competing visions for the future of our country — and our planet.

The story of Mauna Kea is also a story that is playing out in many other areas of the country. At Standing Rock where the Sioux tribe is fighting development. In Arizona, where the Apache Indians already fought a telescope battle of their own and now are trying to stop a mining company that wants to operate on their land.

Their mountains — their Mauna Keas — have changed people too.

But there are larger issues at play. Why is it so hard to convict cops in America? And, after losing in two trials, why won’t prosecutors just let Deedy’s case go?