Climate Justice and the Maui Fires
And how colonialism and capitalism are at the root of the devastation
The scenes out of Maui last week were the definition of apocalyptic. Billowing walls of smoke obscuring everything in the backdrop as cars fled Lahaina on the two-lane road leading out of the town. Winds whipping flames into a frenzy forcing people to jump into the ocean to escape the quick-moving burn. Flames racing down the mountainside and engulfing everything in its way.
The scenes of the aftermath are equally apocalyptic. As of this writing, at least 96 people have died from the blaze making it the deadliest fire in the U.S. in a century, over 2,200 structures were damaged or burned, and it looks like almost the entirety of the historic and beautiful town of Lahaina has been decimated. It is unimaginable and horrific and I can’t even begin to conceptualize the amount of shock and grief the people of Lahaina and Maui and Hawai’i are going through right now.
The fire was fueled, of course, by increasing heat and dry conditions because of climate change. But there are other factors that show the climate justice implications of such a disaster. For one, the state vastly underestimated the fire risk and committed far less than they should have to prevent the disasters and the severity of them. But that is also a part of the root cause of the entire problem that fuels these disasters not just in Hawai’i, but all over the world. It’s the story of colonialism, which in Hawai’i, it is as relevant today as when the United States overthrew the kingdom of Hawai’i in 1893 thanks to the capitalistic and corporate interests.
Before I go much further into this, I need to note that I am certainly not an expert on Hawai’i nor Indigenous rights. Although, for the past few years, I’ve been doing my best to unlearn the narrative around Hawai’i as a mainlander’s tropical playground. You know the one where I’d re-watch the Hawai’i special episodes of The Brady Bunch and Saved By the Bell that had me dreaming of beaches and palm trees and drinks with colorful umbrellas. It’s the same kind of unlearning I’ve been doing around the Euro-centric colonial narratives taught to me growing up on Native land.
For Hawai’i’s part, the beach-dream narratives are feeding into the century-plus of harms caused by the U.S. government’s occupastoin. In this 2021 story in Afar notes, author Chris Colin, interviewed academic and activity Kyle Kajihiro who gave this very impactful quote:
“Even people who are otherwise politically conscious—they’d get to Hawai‘i and their brains just slip into vacation mode. They have this vision of Hawai‘i as this multicultural paradise. They don’t understand that there’s a history of colonialism and dispossession inscribed in the landscape itself.”
This quote hits home for me in that I know I’m complicit in this. I’m that “politically conscious” person that can easily slip into vacation mode. I’ve been to Hawai’i twice before (once as a college student and once recently when Finch was a toddler). And while I did what I normally do when I travel, attempt to stay off the typical tourist path, I was still complicit. As a college student, I was years away from really diving into the colonial history of anywhere let alone Hawai’i. But on the more recent trip, I was at a place in life where I knew better. And to my credit, I did a bit more research on colonial history, but as a harried new-ish mom of an almost-two-year-old, I very easily got into vacation mode. Or as much as one can when you’re wrangling a toddler. I look back on these trips and wonder how I could’ve done them differently. And then also wonder whether we should’ve been there in the first place.
It was during the pandemic and my deeper reflection of complicity in not only white supremacy as a whole, but in undermining Indigenous justice if by my pure lack of understanding around sovereignty, I had a renewed and different perspective on Hawai’i. Although that, of course, wasn't the case of all potential tourists.
In 2021, when the people started to get back out into the world and back to tropical destinations like Hawai’i, an acute water crisis was happening. As Amber X. Chen explains in this Atmos story, the causes of the crisis can be traced to the U.S. military presence and overtourism. So during that time, as tourists began to flock back to the islands, locals were under strict water restrictions while, as some locals told The Washington Post, that hotels and the tourism industry weren’t held to the same standards of water conservation.
It is this very water crisis from an increasingly dryer and hotter climate that is related to the devastation in Lahaina and across Maui.
And we’re not even a week out from the fires, the community of Lahaina is just at the beginning of the grieving process, and there are reports that investors and realtors are calling victims to buy their land from them. It’s reports like those that are evidence of why locals fear being left out of the rebuilding process altogether. Corporate interests don’t adhere to the ethics of humanity in the same way. A prime example of disaster capitalism perpetuated by the Hawai’i land grab that has already happened over the centuries.
So as I think about the people of Maui and do the only thing I can do to help by donating to locally-vetted organizations, I can also listen to Native Hawaiians about whether and how to travel there in the future. Of course, now (and probably long into the future) is not the time to travel to Maui. But as recovery efforts proceed, there will be the draw back to their pristine beaches.
This is also an important reminder of how we can responsibly travel everywhere we go. Hawai’i is an example of how tourism is not an end-all-be-all economic generator for certain places. We can’t just justify our presence in a place because of our money. This is especially the case when climate justice is concerned. But we can travel responsibly by listening to locals, learning about the history and the culture, and by being very aware of how our money is being spent in that it isn’t going to corporations rather as much to locals as it possibly can.
What You Can do for Maui:
Some organizations to follow include Kāko'o Haleakalā, ʻĀina Momona, and Kanaeokana. Recommended locations for donations include Hawai’i Community Foundation’s Maui Strong Fund, Maui Mutual Aid Fund and the Maui Food Bank.
For future travel tips, my friend Sachi, who is from Hawai’i wrote these recommendations for Bebe Voyage, on how to travel consciously to the islands.