As Fires Destroy Native Hawaiian Archive in Maui, Mutual Aid Efforts Are Launched to Help Lahaina

if we get an update now on the impacts of the wildfire in Lahaina the area in West Maui that's of historical importance to indigenous people entire neighborhoods wiped out by the Wildfire including the naakaini O Maui Cultural Center which had a massive archive lost to the Flames the head of the center said quote the place is burnt to the ground we're joined now on Maui by noelani ajia kanaka mauli activist long time organizer in Lahaina Town she's also the co-founder of the organization Mauna medic healers Hui and is involved in mutual Aid efforts as the community responds to the devastation welcome to democracy now noelani it is an honor to have you with us can you describe from your vantage point where you are and especially the cultural center is the center of Lahaina in terms of what has been lost at the center and overall all in the town yes thank you so much Amy it's so good to be here um not icono Maui Cultural Center was founded about 20 years ago in historic Lahaina town and it happens to sit adjacent to a very sacred area of Maui called umia and this is a traditional place what we would call A vahipana or a sacred Place dating back to the 1500s where one of our um one of our former Kings who who presided over the islands with peace lived and his sacred family was birthed there and we have stories that carry us down today that connect us back to that place that re-route us and this island umla was in the middle of a wetland it was Lush and beautiful and green um because of settler colonialism and because of the impositions of of the settler government it was covered over um a long time ago and there's baseball fields now on it and tennis courts and uh the icono Maui Cultural Center has been working to get get the get the access in order to restore moku Ula and to clean it up and make sure it's a place of reference again and the folks at nikoni have been working for decades on all kinds of issues protecting burials protecting land right issues um and just generally being there for the community to provide classes and workshops and cultural practice in cultural protocol and that building also housed a collection of artifacts as well as historical documents old Maps um just Priceless things that are all lost in the blink of an eye it was burned to the ground and all of those things are lost it also had a collection from an esteemed kupuna steamed Elder Named Sam Kai whose collection was being housed there and for this coupon uh this elder this was his life's work this one he's 85 now and this was 50 years worth of of carvings that he himself did of collecting items from all over the South Pacific when he traveled on the Hokulea double hold canoe voyaging project back in the 80s and had the um I had the the burden you could say of telling him yesterday that his collection was gone and it was devastating it was a devastating this is this man's life work and he created all of these things but for himself but for future generations to understand how brilliant our kanakamali people are and how how ingenious we were because so much of that history and that culture was lost to us after the overthrow and with the the new government and the wave of people that came in and took over lands particularly we're talking about you know the plantations and the the oligarchy that Connie Ella was talking about so many Hawaiians were dispossessed from their land and we lost so much of our culture including our language and so when acupuna with an elder like this dedicates his life to retrieving and retracing and remembering those pieces of ourselves that um that allowed us to live here on this isolated island how to make tools how to make rope how to make the instruments that feed us um all of these things that allowed us to have life and survive here all of those things that he dedicated his life to are are now a memory but I will say he told me yesterday morning that he woke up having a dream about seeds and what he said was he saw us planting seeds back in that Ash he saw us putting back our traditional our traditional plants our traditional medicines our collo plant our tarot which is very sacred to us we're ancestrally connected to the column he saw us putting those things back in the ground so that new life can come again and for for somebody of his age who's who's closer to moving into the next realm than than many of us for him to still be thinking about the Next Generation and still be thinking about what the future could be in Lahaina for me is is the measure of what it means to be indigenous and what it means to be genealogically connected to this man Melania here it is so painful to talk to you right now at this moment with the destruction uh that your island has undergone um if you could talk about the mutual Aid efforts you know we first of all in the rest of the corporate media we hear almost no native voices no native Hawaiians and why it's so important to hear your voices and then what is happening on the ground you know there's a big debate now like why weren't people alerted earlier where was the early alert system why were people just looking out the window or smelling the smoke and seeing the fire right in front of them and how important that is but also it's just described Lahaina as a great tourist destination how tourism has affected the whole environment if you could speak about that as well absolutely thank you so much you know it's very um disturbing for us as kanakamali to see the headlines and talk about you know see Lahaina as this tourist town as if that's all it is because for us uh it's it's so much more and the tourism is is part of the commodification of of our culture it's part of the Erasure of our culture that narrative literally just takes us out of the picture and you know without Hawaiians there would be no Hawaii everybody loves Aloha but they forget about the people that that breathe Aloha into the world the the root and the source of Aloha so and that's the kanakamali people um the the over tourism the over development the the dispossession of kanakamali from our lands the monocropping as kaneeling was talking about those are all things that contributed to the conditions that created this and you know as we live on an island there's only so much space and there's only so much room and there's only so much resources and for over 130 years our water has been diverted to go to those sugar plantations and pineapple fields so what used to be a lush verdant uh Lahaina in fact I'll tell you a little something that the Lahaina is not an old name one of the older names for Lahaina Isle and it means land of the flying breadfruit because Lahaina used to be covered in breadfruit which is a staple for the Hawaiian diet it's incredibly nutritious it's being studied the world over to um to help with food sovereignty uh in underprivileged areas it's just an amazing rich rich historical um plant for us and Lahaina was covered with ULU until the sugar plantations came in and chopped it all down and they they permanently changed our ecosystem with that one app that on top of the diversion of water for the plantations what's happening now uh that the plantations have shut down is unscrupulous developers are diverting the water and banking it for real estate and it's not real estate for the kanakamali or the local people it's for foreign investors it's for gentlemen's estate Farms that have giant swimming pools it's for excuse me really inappropriate use of one of them our most sacred resources in fact the name form water in Hawaii is by and the name for wealth in Hawaii is which means if you have water you have life but our water has been has been taken away from us and it's left us in this dry Barren almost unrecognizable um it would be unrecognizable to our ancestors this condition that we're currently living under the settler government um so you combine the you combine the dispossession with the over tourism with the over development and you have this Trifecta um for disaster and that's what we're seeing today is absolute disaster it's absolute devastation we only have a minute and then we're going to go to a fire scientists at the University of Hawaii but the mutual Aid efforts on the ground those Grassroots efforts that are saving everyone thank you the mutual Aid group in Maui has mobilized we're working with them as we've got Medics food distribution we're working on organizing housing for people but one of the issues that we're having is we've been we're being prevented um access and it's really really disappointing because the people on the ground know what the community needs the people on the ground self-organize and are able to move fast quickly and get the needs of the people where they need to go but unfortunately they're there I have to say there has been some um blocking of those efforts and and it's always done under the guise of safety um but when our people are on the are in Lahaina and they're suffering because they don't have any food and they don't have any water like we're not allowed to get them resources it's really really challenging so we're finding some some um unique ways to to get resources to people folks have been taking boats around uh from the other side of the island in order to get to get resources in and we've been using whatever methods we can to get the needs of the people met but it's a beautiful effort the people on the ground are so strong and so resilient and so ready to jump in to help one another we say that means love going out love coming back and one of my good friends today your your disaster emergency kit must include community community is first and that's really what it's about is taking care of each other nilani are here I want to thank you so much for being with us and all the very best kanakamali activists long time organizer in Lahaina co-founder of the organization Mountain medic healers Hui

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 69,309

Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

Id: VENe4IqzX9g

Length: 12min 16sec (736 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023