Chief of War: Jason Momoa’s passion project tells a story we’ve never seen before

Pa’a Sibbett used to be upset by the way Native Hawai’ians were – or weren’t - represented on screen.

For years, Elvis Presley films and TV shows Hawaii Five-0 and Magnum P.I. beamed images of the island paradise into homes all across the US and the world. Palm trees, colourful shirts and lots of smiles – and white protagonists.

Or in the case of Cameron Crowe’s Aloha, Emma Stone playing a character who claimed to be one-quarter Hawai’ian.

What was missing was the indigenous people of the archipelago.

“People have never seen us in all our complexities. I used to be offended by that,” Sibbett, a writer, producer and Native Hawai’ian, told The Nightly. “But the truth is, it’s actually our responsibility to our stories. Now, the part that we could get more frustrated or angry about is our representation behind the camera.

“Making sure we have our writers, our directors, our producers are being given a chance. It shouldn’t take the starpower of somebody like Jason Momoa to be able to tell this story.”

That’s exactly what it took for Sibbett and Momoa to mount Chief of War, a nine-episode historical epic that details the unification of Hawai’i in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It was a violent and political process to unite disparate kingdoms including Oahu, Maui, Hawai’i, Kaua’i, Moloka’i and Lana’i.

Momoa co-created the series with Sibbett, who has a story credit on Aquaman: The Lost Kingdom, and also stars as Ka’iana, a fierce warrior chief from a noble family who travelled beyond the islands and discovered the threat of western colonisers, and then pushed for Hawai’i’s self-determination.

Chief of War is grand in ambition and scale with complex battle sequences and delving into the intricacies of the politics of the time. Shot in Aotearoa New Zealand and Hawai’i, it was a predominantly Polynesian cast, which also included Kiwi actors Temuera Morrison, Cliff Curtis and Luciane Buchanan.

Almost all the dialogue is in Olelo Hawai’ian, a language that had been suppressed by colonisers by banning it in schools, but has increasingly been revised since the 1970s.

Sibbett and Momoa had the idea for Chief of War a decade ago, but had to wait until the stars aligned.

“When Jason and I would talk about it, we understood that it wasn’t the right time,” Sibbett said. “Jason knew that his star needed to rise, and then I needed to make sure that I could prove myself as a writer and producer too, that we could actually make something this.

“Because if we had pitched it (back) then, it would either die immediately or it would eventually become somebody else’s project. So, in order to retain the respect that a cultural-based project like this needed, we knew we had to hold on to it.

“It was a waiting game, for Jason’s career to get to where it needed to be, and for me to be able to instil confidence as a writer and creator. When those worlds came together, we were able to put something on.”

Sibbett pointed to Maori cinema as inspiration for the production, as that was, for him growing up, the closest thing to “representation for us”. To have Curtis, a veteran of the industry in NZ, on board as not just an actor but also as a producer was immensely helpful once filming moved to Aotearoa.

“He won’t say how much we leaned on him but we did,” Sibbett said.

Chief of War was the first time Curtis had worked with either Sibbett or Momoa, and when he joined, he found an idea that had already been scaled up and ready to go. He was still able to share his experiences from his decades spearheading authentic Maori storytelling on film, and how important it was to have a voice at the table.

“About 10 years into my career, I was all too familiar with walking onto a set as a Maori, and being told by people who are not Maori how to speak, what I should look like. It was a bizarre experience to go through life, having people tell me how I should be and how I should represent myself,” Curtis said.

It made Curtis think about how to get behind the camera and start producing, and he wants to do more with the Chief of War team.

“We’ve got a lot of projects we want to work on together, and we don’t have to ask anyone’s permission, and we can put it in our own language if we choose, which we’re doing,” he added.

Curtis is clear on what should be happening next, which is indigenous cultures owning what they create, so that it reflects their values of community needs, and is sustainable across generations.

Representations of Polynesian culture, and Hawai’i specifically, on screen isn’t just something that “happens over there”, some abstract element of commercial art that has no real-world effects.

Tourism is the largest industry in Hawai’i and there are daily flights from Australia. In May, there were 19,595 airline seats from Sydney and Melbourne, according to the Hawai’ian Tourism Authority.

When you land in Honolulu on the island of Oahu, a 15-minute drive from the famous Waikiki strip, you will find the five-metre tall bronzed statue of King Kamehameha I erected across from Iolani Palace.

Kamehameha is a character in Chief of War and Sibbett hopes that audiences who watch this series before their next Hawai’ian holiday will have a different appreciation for the land, the culture and the history.

“Hopefully a show like this generates dialogue so that we can start to discuss what is the next evolution of tourism will look like,” he said.

“Indigenous peoples are also getting to the place where they’re feeling like, ‘You know what, I don’t necessarily want to be the background of somebody else’s story’. I want to make sure that people know, when they come here, this is what you’re stepping into.

“You’re stepping into a long lineage of proud, educated and capable people taking care of things and getting things done. Stories like this allow us to re-examine our positions in society with one another.

“Let’s start an open dialogue of what that looks like and what can be a byproduct of a story like this.”

Chief of War is streaming on Apple TV+ with new episodes weekly on Fridays