Hawaiʻi and the heavy history of “beautiful” places
The wildfires that devastated Maui and Lāhainā were kindled long ago.
Fire and reflection have turned my thoughts to two Pacific islands this week: Hawaiʻi and its distant neighbor, known in Māori as Aotearoa, or the Land of the Long White Cloud.
My father came to the United States from New Zealand in 1979. We never visited Hawaiʻi during my childhood, but our family’s steady vacation diet of camping trips gave way to the occasional international feast, nearly all of them trips to see his family and homeland. Reading about the wildfires that devastated Maui and Lāhainā, and the history that kindled those flames, has brought to mind something people often tell me about New Zealand: “It’s so beautiful there.” The same is often said of Hawaiʻi. And it’s true. Epically so.
In New Zealand, one can travel from one microclimate to another in an afternoon, or even a single drive. My dear friend Kay once took us, shortly after our plane touched down, from urban Auckland through the Waitākere rainforest to the black sand beaches of Piha Beach. There was even ice cream at the end of the 30-min ride. A week’s trip with my dad took us from sandy beaches to waterfalls to fiordland to a glacier (only while supplies last!). Aotearoa is smaller than Colorado but, as you might have seen on the silver screen, large enough to contain all of Middle-earth. That’s how magical it is.
It is also, like Hawaiʻi, a deeply altered beauty. My last trip there took me through Wellington, or Te Whanganui-a-Tara, the capital, and to the wonderful Te Papa, the national museum. I had read about the country’s history before, but it was those exhibits that conveyed just how much my ancestors and other newcomers ravaged the land they found. Those rolling green hills where my grandfather once raised sheep and cattle are actually a denuded landscape, stripped of the forest that once blanketed the land. The kiwi is beloved, but many other native birds did not survive.
I’ve been reflecting on this history as the last embers in Maui are put out. We know that our centuries-long experiment in warming the earth has sparked these fires. If common sense alone is not enough to tell you that U.S.’s deadliest wildfire in a century was a product of the hotter drier temperatures driven by climate change, there is plenty of recent science.
But as you probably have heard, there’s another c-word that’s operative in the destruction of the original capital of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi: colonization. As Kaniela Ing, a seventh-generation indigenous Hawaiian living in O'ahu, told Emily Atkin of Heated: “on one hand, the climate emergency caused this. On the other, it’s also that history of colonial greed that made Lahaina the dry place that it is.” It’s a legacy that’s thankfully been covered in depth in The New York Times, The Guardian and The New Republic. Ing, a former state legislator who is national director of the Green New Deal Network, also had an op-ed in Time.
After a lifetime of hearing Hawaiʻi and New Zealand celebrated as verdant paradises, the disaster and these writings were a fresh reminder to me of just how utterly such landscapes have been transformed by European colonization. Lāhainā, as Ing put it, was changed from a wetland into a tinderbox. Yet I feel the two islands stand out only in the contrast between perception and reality. The rest of the United States has also been altered, as have other nations.
Five syllables, dozens of countries, countless lives; colonization can feel overwhelming. Yet it is also a tangible history of blood, soil and extraction. It is invaders bearing arms and disease, native forests cleared for foreign crops and livestock, mountains pillaged for precious metals, hotels and swimming pools and golf courses sucking up precious water. And it is, for many of us, a personal story.
I know relatively little of my father’s family history, and still have much to learn about the nation where he grew up, but there’s one tale that stays with me. My grandfather once met a Māori woman, then about 100 years old, who at age 7 had swam from Ōnawe Peninsula — where my dad was raised — to what is now the town of Akaroa. It was not a feat of daring, but an escape from an intertribal massacre, one supercharged by European muskets. The strip of land that was the site of her tribe’s last stand was part of my grandfather’s farm until, in 1998, a settlement returned it to the tribe, the Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu.
It’s a story that deserves its own essay, which I will get to when I can better learn the tale, but I share it here in brief because we too rarely consider those inheritances. All of us on colonized lands live, to some degree, on bloody soil. Some of us can even draw a direct line from European impact to our own family’s acreage. Yet that long shadow touches us all, one way or another. For many Hawaiian families — whether of colonizers or colonized — it means homelessness today, thanks to a fire that ran rampant on a colonized landscape. As Faulkner put it, ‘the past is never dead. It's not even past.’
The good news — and yes, I do believe there’s some hope — is that those in power are waking up to what’s best for the land, and for all of us. Decades of organizing by Native activists has started to bend the arc towards justice. We can see it, most recently, in the coverage of the tragedy in Hawaiʻi. An enormous body of science, too, is convincing decision makers in places from government to philanthropy of a reality Indigenous peoples have always known: that they are the best caretakers of their ancestral lands. There is less deforestation, more biodiversity, and more carbon sequestered in areas managed by Native peoples.
It’s unfortunate that self-interest is partly driving this late awakening, as a rush for climate solutions lends overdue support, rather than the moral imperative of returning what was stolen. To me, that puts extra weight on all of us to make sure this is the first of many steps, with Native people leading the way. A particular responsibility lies with those of us, like myself, who can count their own benefits from this history, however distant. New Zealand has done more than most nations, from reparations to naming, even if work remains. The United States, meanwhile, has barely begun.
I know more about this legacy than I did a few years ago, whether from reporting on land taxes and activism or simply learning the way to say and spell Hawaiʻi that I’ve used throughout this essay. It is an ongoing journey. I am writing not as an expert, but as one finding my way towards justice. No doubt I have written something here I will regret, phrased something in a way that will reveal my own ignorance and conditioning. Yet I have only learned by not being too afraid to make mistakes.
This is a newsletter about how the changes we need to repair our climate are also better for all of us. Returning land to Indigenous hands does not, of course, cancel out an inheritance of oppression. But it is a step towards, to use a phrase many Native peoples use, being in ‘right relationship’ with the land. My distant ancestors were part of a wave of Europeans who took territory by force. My grandfather built a life, like so many other white settlers and their descendants, on those seized lands. My generation, if we follow the lead of Indigenous activists, can be the ones who start to reverse that history. And that would leave us all better off.
Give relief. There’s an incredible list of funds from the Hawaiʻi Alliance for Progressive Action. (Hat tip to Aileen Suzara.) You can donate directly to individuals thanks to community-managed spreadsheets or to relief efforts by groups like the Hawaiʻi People’s Fund.
Back resistance. Sign the petitions to stop land grabs and protect Maui’s water. I just did.
Vacation responsibly. Some Hawaiians have asked outsiders to stay away, while certain workers and unions want a return, with officials saying “respect the west but visit the rest.” Consider who your dollars will support.
Have other suggestions? Reply to this newsletter or email me to get in touch.
What’s your family’s history with colonization?
This Island on Which I Love You | excerpt
And when, on this island on which
I love you, there is only so much land
to drive on, a few hours to encircle
in entirety, and the best of our lands
are touristed, the beaches foam-laced
with rainbowing suntan oil,
the mountains tattooed with asphalt,
pocked by telescoped domes,
hotels and luxury condos blighting
the line between ocean and sky,
I find you between the lines
of such hard edges, sitting on
the kamyo stool, a bowl of coconut,
freshly grated, at your feet.
…
– Brandy Nālani McDougall, Poet Laureate of Hawaiʻi
Read in full at poets.org. Want more? I found Pō and Star-Spangled Banner both hauntingly beautiful.
This week’s newsletter, more so than ever, exists thanks to my invaluable editor-in-chief, Roshni Kavate, and, of course, my father and copyeditor, Steve Kay. Equally, please consider any missteps this week, of or punctuation, as mine alone.
These weekly dispatches are free. If they make you think, that’ll make me happy. If they make you act, that would be even better. If you want to pledge support, that will allow me to do more with this newsletter in the future. But if you would rather donate that sum, or if it’s not in the budget right now, that’s fine by me. And if you loved it? Feel free to tell a friend.