Make Hawai’i Great Again

The island group of Hawai’i was born by enormous fire: a crack appeared in the surface of the earth, hundreds of metres below sea level, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Hot lava poured out of the planet’s inner core, with such violent force that its effects are still clearly noticeable in the many impressive mountain peaks and deep valleys of the islands. 

This energy makes the colours more intense, gives food a richer taste while scents are more vibrant. Many are those who have likened this part of the world to an earthly paradise.

The islands that were formed in this volcanic area gradually shifted north due to the movements of the tectonic plate, allowing for the continuous formation of what are now hundreds of islands of varying sizes. 

The initial volatile eruption of fire has continued ever since that first outburst, creating a chain of islands. The volcanos also helped to capture moisture in the air, in effect bringing rain to the newly formed islands. For thousands of years, this rain has moulded the black lava peaks and transformed them into dramatic mountain ranges. Beneath sea level, coral reefs have successively emerged.

Like almost all other island paradises, Hawai’i is geographically isolated from the outside world. The islands are hundreds of miles from the nearest mainland. In many ways, it’s incredible that they have been inhabited for as long as they have. 

The first people probably arrived around 1000 AC, after which they lived in isolation for hundreds of years. During this time, they developed their own philosophy of life and culture, interlaced with and based on the exotic natural characteristics of the islands.

Since 1959, Hawai’i is part of the US, and its cultural image has become strongly influenced by American pop culture; 1980s posters of two sloping palm trees on Kaanapali beach in sunset, Tom Selleck as Magnum PI, Elvis Presley’s Blue Hawai’i and Kauai operating as the backdrop of the Jurassic Park-films. Without even having visited, many people have a strong idea of what Hawai’i looks like: White beaches, clear blue sea and verdant greenery. 

Hula skirts, hula dancing and leis. The clichés are so numerous, as well as consistently reinforced, that they often overshadow the actual place and the real-life experiences that it holds. This is also why there seems to be so many different aspects to Hawai’i: not only the commercial myth, as seen in TV-series and films, nor simply the actual islands of Hawai’i with their particular kind of scent, sounds and a unique colour splendour, but also a third dimension, hidden in plain sight – the ancient, Hawaiian knowledge of how life should be organized, not least in regards to how the material world in many ways is interconnected with the spiritual realm.

In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed legislation apologizing for the US role in the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. The apology, meant as a means of reconciliation with Native Hawaiians, acknowledged the historic significance of the event, without providing federal recognition to Native Hawaiians (as other federal laws provide to American Indian tribes). 

This signalled a symbolic shift in the relationship between Hawai’i and the American government.

All over the world, people are protesting the effects of mass-tourism on ecosystems and local communities. Hawai’i is no exception – more than 100 plant taxa have already gone extinct, and over 200 are considered to have 50 or fewer individuals remaining in the wild – but here the protests are interconnected with a rejection of the American occupation.

Via Zoom, we met with Melinda Healani Sonoda-Pale, spokesperson for Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi, a native initiative for Hawaiian self-governance and self-determination.

Can you explain the current main challenges in Hawai’i?

We have two major industries in Hawai’i, one is the military complex and the other is tourism. Both are two of the worst industries you can imagine ever having as your main staple industries for your area. And Hawai’i is known as the “Endangered Species Capital of the World”, so they’re not conducive to our lifestyle, our environment or who we are as a people. These are industries that are extractive, destructive, and have caused so much harm, and are really part and parcel of the whole colonial agenda.

We don’t have diversified agriculture, where we could sustain ourselves; we import 90 percent of what we have in our grocery stores, and we are way behind in any kind of self-sustainability. So, we’re very dependent on food being shipped in from the outside.

Even though the tourism industry is a private industry, it’s supported by taxpayers’ money, and it has done so much damage to our environment and our culture, especially in terms of socioeconomic impact. The tourism industry is one of the lowest paying industries in the world – you need two to three jobs to pay the rent – and at the same time we in Hawai’i have one of the highest cost-of-living ratings in the US.

The medium price of a home here in Hawai’i just went up to 1.1 million USD. That’s unrealistic when people are living pay cheque to pay cheque! There’s no regulation of tourism in Hawai’i. There’s never been an environmental impact-statement done, in fact, and there’s never been any kind of real study being done on this industry’s impact on Hawai’i in terms of traffic, pollution, and how it’s affecting our education system. I grew up here, and I went through the public school system which is a very colonial kind of education. We were taught that we need tourism, that without it we would have no money and no jobs and nowhere to live. This has been ingrained in us, but it’s not benefitting anyone, really, except for these big, multinational corporations and the colonial settler project, bringing in more people so that we are kept in the minority. I don’t know how we’re going to recover.

Another consequence of having uncontrolled tourism in Hawai’i – there’s no cap on how many who can come to our island, and we’re dependent on one aquifer – is that with the tourists’ arrivals, we’re almost doubling our population. The price of everything, including housing, goes up. People want to buy a second home here, so now we have 30,000 or 40,000 homes that are empty most of the time, and at the same time we have a housing crisis. Also, the short-term rental housing industry has been very destructive, because it’s driven up the prices. It’s a real struggle here in Hawai’i, families are living out of their cars.

People don’t come here just for the beaches, they come here for the culture, but no one has ever really acknowledged that from the US. They created a whole industry off our culture. Just to give you context; we were invaded in 1893 by the US military, our monarchy was overthrown, and since then we have been illegally occupied by the US. As a result, here are many of us who struggle for Hawaiian self-determination and liberation and educating our people on what we’re entitled to. Can you imagine exploiting a place like this? There have been other extractive industries that I haven’t even touched on like the sugar industry and other mono crop-industries as well as the military industrial complex. Tourism is now our top industry which I see as part of a neo-colonial project. This industry commodifies Indigenous culture, land and bodies, projecting who we are through colonial lens to entice visitors who ultimately becoming part of our oppression.

Have you seen any real consequences of President Bill Clinton’s apology?

I think it raised consciousness, both in Hawai’i and globally. It was an admission of guilt on the part of the US played in the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. The apology acknowledges that this land belongs to the native people of this land, and that we never gave it up. The US admits that they supported a coup led by a handful of businessmen. It’s a very powerful tool.

Did Covid and the ensuing travel restrictions raise awareness on the effects of mass tourism?

Because we live 2,000 miles away from the nearest continental land mass, all tourism stopped when we went into lock-down for a year and a half. Of course it was a terrible time, it was a pandemic and people were dying – but it was also an aha-moment; ‘we got to see Hawai’i without tourism for over a year’. And that was the most beautiful time for a lot of us. To go to the beaches and there’s no one else there. The air was clean. The fish came back.

Hanauma Bay was a great example of that. Studies came back showing the water was way cleaner, the fish were coming back, and they were seeing marine species reviving themselves during that time.

When the tourists came back, we felt ravaged. It was like breaking open the doors, tourism came back with a vengeance, and we realized how crazy it was. Covid made us see other possibilities, even among those who supported tourism. It made us see what Hawai’i could be, and that was a powerful thing.

Tourism lost a lot of support after the COVID-19 lock down. During the lockdown visitors were still trying to “vacation”, and after it was all too obvious to the public that people feel entitled to come here, without any respect to our very fragile ecosystem or community by ignoring rules, increasing pollution, and overwhelming local resources. So that was an eye-opening moment, a lot of people realized that it’s not good for us and that Hawai’i wasn’t going collapse with no tourist industry because the fact of the matter is we survived a year and a half without tourism.

Has the recent presidential election affected the Hawaiian sovereignty movement?

About 30 percent of indigenous people here voted for Trump, and I can see why. Under Biden, inflation was rampant, and people were struggling to make a living, and maybe they thought this was a way out of the situation.

We’ve lost our land, but we do get special federal funding for Hawaiian housing, education, and health, as a kind of compensation, and thousands of Hawaiians and programs rely on that funding. The funding has helped to sustain a huge movement to bring back our native language and to build cultural educational programs. At the University of Hawai’i, there is a whole department for Hawaiian Studies. Funding for programs that help increase educational attainment and support cultural responsive and Hawaiian immersion schools and programs, may now be in jeopardy. We’re trying to figure out what’s worth the fight, and what’s not. I see the sovereignty movement as always shifting, and this has caused us to shift gears.

I know that Hawaii is on the verge of a greater water catastrophe. Could you explain what has been happening?

The Red Hill water crisis is a public health crisis and environmental disaster caused by fuel leaking from the Red Hill Underground Fuel Storage Facility into the freshwater aquifer underneath the island of Oʻahu. On November 20, 2021, 19,000 gallons leaked from the Red Hill underground fuel storage facility into the well that supplies water to the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam Water Distribution System on O’ahu, Hawaii.

The US Navy controls 20 underground tanks that hold 25 million gallons of fuel each, which they started building 80 years ago, right before World War Two. It was a secret for many years, and then it was declassified in 1995. Since it was built, it has leaked hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel. In November 2021, a report showed that the amount of fuel leaked into Hawai’i’s land and water from the Red Hill facility could be as high as two million gallons.

We live on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, we rely on one aquifer that is beneath the island, it’s a sole source aquifer. Imagine a body of water like a huge lake under the island, it’s gigantic! There are fuel plumes in our aquifer – the real extent of the damage to our aquifer done by 80 years of leaks from Red Hill is unknown. O’ahu is living through a water crisis.

A lot of the people are still dealing with long-term health issues from the 2021 Red Hill spill and some pets died. Right after the spill on November 20th, 2021, a group of us environmentalists, indigenous leaders, and community members came together and formed the O’au Water Protectors to demand that the US Navy shut down Red Hill. It was a very difficult fight. O’ahu has the largest population and is the center of government and commerce. Because we are located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean we are also on the front lines of climate change having to deal with rising sea levels and droughts. So, everything is compiling. If there’s not enough rain, the aquifer doesn’t get refilled. If we pull too much water from the wells, the salinity could increase ruining the well. The military is claiming that O’ahu’s water is safe to drink, but we’ve been monitoring water tests and know that there’s still fuel in the drinking water and the ground water. Advocating for remediation of our aquifer and wells is our next step.

Is it desirable to leave the US? Is it possible?

With movements like ours, it’s always about hope. In recent years, it’s become more of a movement about survival. Trump will push more people into our movement. We’re a peaceful movement. The future is unwritten, so it’s up to the people to write a future that’s liveable for our children.

The shutting down of the US Navy Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility– closing a military facility due to societal outcry – is unprecedented, so things are happening. The O’ahu Water Protectors had no funding, no institutional support – just hope. With every crisis, there is hope and an opportunity to do things differently than before. The presence of the US military is the biggest threat to a liveable future here on O’ahu. You need to look for that hope.