Front Burner - Hawaii wildfires lay bare tensions between locals, tourists

Episode Date: August 18, 2023

For tourists interested in a beach vacation, Maui residents have a simple message: this is not the time to visit Hawaii. The wildfires that decimated the historic town of Lahaina, leaving at least 111 people dead and hundreds more still missing, have also laid bare the long-simmering tensions between native Hawaiians, and wealthy tourists and developers. Today we’ll be talking about why many Hawaiians have been asking tourists to stay out long before the fires and why many are afraid recovery will open the door to even more outside ownership. Savannah Harriman-Pote is an energy and climate change reporter and the lead producer of This Is Our Hawaiʻi, a new podcast from Hawai‘i Public Radio. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Tamara Kandaker. The same waters that our people just died in three days ago are the same waters the very next day these visitors, tourists, were swimming in. And that says a lot about where their heart and mind is through all of this and where our heart and mind is, though.

You don't see our people swimming, snorkeling, surfing. Nobody is having fun in tragedy. A few days after the devastating wildfires in Maui, this resident had a simple message for tourists. Stay home. This is not the time to vacation in Hawaii. There is two Hawai'is right now. There's the Hawai'i we're living in and the Hawai'i they're living in, they're visiting in. The fires, which decimated

the historic town of Lahaina, leaving at least 111 people dead and hundreds more still missing, have also laid bare the long-simmering tensions between native Hawaiians and tourists and wealthy developers.

There's a lot of real estate speculation happening right now that is really frustrating. And I just want to remind all you real estate investors around the world, like, Lahaina is not for sale. Please don't reach out to these families and take advantage of them during the most devastating time of our lives. Today, we're going to be talking about why many Hawaiians had been asking tourists to stay off the islands long before the wildfires, and why many are afraid the recovery is going to result in the loss of even more of their land. I'm joined now by Savannah Harriman-Pote. She's an energy and climate change reporter and the lead producer of This Is Our Hawaii, a new podcast from Hawaii Public Radio. an energy and climate change reporter, and the lead producer of This Is Our Hawaii, a new podcast from Hawaii Public Radio.

Hi, Savannah. Thanks so much for doing this. Hi. Thank you for having me. So, Savannah, as we just heard, locals have been pleading with tourists to cancel their trips. Government officials have been saying the same thing. We even heard something, a similar message from Hawaiian actor Jason Momoa. He's been warning people not to come to Maui, saying it's not the place to have your vacation right now. Why are people saying right now is a bad time to come? We have definitely observed among residents, people who live here, that sentiment. And I will say that there are a couple of specific reasons why people are asking

visitors to delay their trips. That includes the large displacement that we're seeing of residents as a result of last week's fire. This is now the deadliest wildfire in modern U.S. history. What we know about this tragedy is already unbearable. Nearly 100 dead, more than 2,000 homes and buildings destroyed. Most of the structures that were destroyed were homes, and the governor has called for diverting hotel rooms, which are normally occupied by tourists, specifically for displaced residents,

as well as for the influx of emergency responders that we are seeing come in to assist with this crisis. In just the last two days, we've secured the following. 402 hotel rooms now available to immediately put people who have been displaced into a hotel room for their family. Starting tomorrow, 1,400 units from Airbnb will be available. Another 160 citizens have stepped up. So there is a need basically to reserve as much space as possible for people who are already here

or people who are assisting directly with the crisis. That makes sense. And it sounds like most people have been heeding that call, according to the Hawaiian Tourism Authority. But apparently not everyone has listened. And there's been video circulating of people snorkeling and, you know, pictures in the Daily Mail, for example, of Paris Hilton on a beach in Maui with her family, which sparked a lot of backlash. And I'm just wondering what kind of reaction you've seen to people still enjoying the oceanfront right now. I think that the people of Lahaina specifically, but residents more broadly, those who have family members on Maui or who have connections to that place as well as just our entire community

have endured and are still processing an incredible tragedy and the trauma that comes with it. And so those types of photos for some might just be so discordant, so different from what their lived experience have been of the last week that I can understand how it would seem kind of jarring to have people going about their vacations or engaging with Hawaii in a way that doesn't seem to have any acknowledgement of what local residents are enduring. There is a boat company that's still taking out tourists snorkeling in the waters of Lahaina that still has bodies inside of the water. These tourists clearly have no alpol, black gut, zero self-awareness,

zero observational skills, zero empathy for what is happening here. I think in general, among residents, there is a little bit of a sentiment that sometimes people's experience of Hawaii isn't reflective of what it's actually like here. One way I've heard it described is that there are two Hawaii's. There's the Hawaii that is presented to outsiders, that is commodified in some way, of our islands as a paradise. And then there's the lived experience of local residents, particularly Native Hawaiians, that, one, deals with the complicated colonial history on this archipelago, and also the challenging realities of cost of living and health inequities, educational inequities

that are very much part of people's experiences here. And I think in the last week, as a result of this crisis, that contrast has just gotten even more stark. All the resources that are currently here need to be used on local residents. And before someone hits me with the bullshit about tourism dollars, the thing is, we don't need your business. We need your help. And if you don't want to provide that, that is a reflection of you, not us. And I want to explore this idea of the two Hawai'is with you in depth kind of throughout our conversation. But before we even get into that, I just wanted to spend a bit more time on

the recovery efforts. So these are the deadliest fires in modern U.S. history, and the devastation is overwhelming. Even from afar, thousands of people have been displaced, their homes have been burned, hundreds of people are still missing. What is ahead in the rescue and recovery efforts at this point? So the rescue and recovery is ongoing. There are still many people unaccounted for and many folks who have not heard from or do not have knowledge of if or how their family members were impacted by the fire. So our local government is asking for help from residents who have unaccounted for family members to provide DNA samples in order to try to identify some of the deceased who have already been found in destroyed Lahaina town. But everything that we're hearing from the county government and the state government

who are working in companion with our environmental protection agency and FEMA are saying we have to move very slowly because the area is still unsafe and because we don't know necessarily what we're going to find. But beyond those short-term responses, the actual recovery of Lahaina Town for the people who live there, when they'll be able to rebuild, if they'll be able to recover any portion of what was lost, we don't have a timeline for that. If they'll be able to recover any portion of what was lost, we don't have a timeline for that. Obviously, people are going to be focused on the immediate future right now. But I've also seen that there are fears of locals being shut out as Lahaina is rebuilt. And I'm wondering what concerns you've heard from people about that specifically? Yeah, so a lot of journalists and advocates are working to document any sort of predatory realtor activities, basically claims residents have that they've been receiving calls

from realtors offering to buy their land in Lahaina. Josh Green, our governor, addressed this directly. I've actually reached out to our attorney general to explore options to do a moratorium on any sales of properties that have been damaged or destroyed. Moreover, I would caution people that it's going to be a very long time before any growth or housing can be built. And so you will be pretty poorly informed if you try to steal land from our people. And just to get yourself in the headspace of what it might be like to receive one of these calls, many of the people in Lahaina still haven't had the opportunity to go back into the destroyed area. And so they might receive a call asking to buy their land before they know if they still have a home to return to. Wow.

Yes. So it's a very emotional situation to be put in. And that's why we're seeing such a strong response from community members as well as local officials pushing back against that kind of behavior. against that kind of behavior. The people need to be in control and help what's happening here right now. Do not allow outside investors to come in and buy land out of trauma that these people, they need anything they can get

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who owns the islands and why do so many local people feel like they're being left out? And can you walk me through some of the tensions that existed before the wildfires? I will say that in all of my life, I was born on Hawaii Island or the Big Island. There has been a palpable tension between local residents and visitors. And one thing that you have to understand about the demographics of Hawaii is we have at our peak, so this was pre-pandemic when we were seeing the most visitors, anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 tourists in our islands at one time, which is more than many of the populations of our smaller islands. So they truly do have an impact, almost like a voting block in terms of infrastructure, in terms of overuse of natural spaces. And that's just people who are coming to visit Hawaii. What our podcast tried to look at a little bit more in depth is people who choose to live here. Some folks who move here, not all, are coming to Hawaii because they view it as a paradise.

And what we've heard from residents that we've spoken to in the podcast is not so much that there is a concern about individuals who move here, like literal people who move here from other places, but there is a sentiment among some residents that folks who move to Hawaii don't understand what makes it special. Lahaina is my home. What we do not want is to have our people leave our islands. The scary part is we're already outnumbered by everybody moving here. Okay, we don't have much locals left on the island, period. But now I feel like with all their homes burnt, our own people will start moving away off the land, which we need them to create aloha spirit. We just don't want anybody coming in here.

In Hawaii, I think that there's a real sentiment that you serve the land and you serve the community. It's not necessarily about your individual needs. It's about the community needs. And when people see an influx of visitors, many of whom have more wealth than local populations do, they feel like they're losing what makes Hawaii so truly special, that sense of community and that sense of serving the land. One of the things that you often hear when people talk about Hawaii and whether or not they should visit is that Hawaii needs tourism. And I wonder if you can talk a little bit about how Native Hawaiians actually view

the tourism industry, because my understanding is that most Native Hawaiians don't benefit from this industry, right? Yeah, I certainly don't want to imply that Native Hawaiians are monolithic or that other local residents don't share the sentiments either for or against tourism. Tourism emerged in the late 20th century really to fuel the vacuum that was left by large plantation agriculture. And so in many communities like Maui, we've seen tourism and oftentimes luxury tourism fill in the gaps of what was once a community that was built around an agricultural system. And I don't think that we as a community ever really reckoned with the legacies of that system either. And that permeates cultural dynamics between residents and visitors, as well as the tangible divisions between residents and visitors experienced today. So we have to go much

further back than the first couple of decades of tourism to really understand the relationship and the feelings that people have about Hawaii. These present-day tensions, they're rooted in a long history that has to do with who owns the land in Hawaii. And you talk about this on the podcast. It's a long, complicated, debated history. But it starts with the arrival of Westerners who bring with them the concept of private land ownership, which I understand didn't exist in Hawaii until 1848. And up until then, there was a communal land system and people were basically stewards of the land. And in 1848, that changes. So how did Native Hawaiians end up in the situation they're in today where they own so little land? hundreds of years, and that was the Ahupua'a system. And even prior to the establishment of private property, as we understand it in a Western system, that previous system, the Ahupua'a system,

was already severely strained by the population collapse of Native people that we saw as a result of the introduction of foreign diseases. By roughly 1850, so the middle of the 19th century, the Native population had been reduced to one-fifth of its total population prior to Western contact, the first arrival of people from outside Hawaii, due to diseases and other forces. That created this huge vacuum in how people manage land. And so private property came in and filled in the gaps. The other really important part of this story is when private property was instituted, one, it gave Native Hawaiians rights in lands that were

internationally recognized for the first time, but it also gave foreigners the opportunity to own private property in Hawaii. And if you flash forward 50 years or so to the end of the 19th century, you see an accumulation of land as well as power and interests among foreigners, particularly American interest groups, who then become the people who stage a coup against Queen Liliuokalani, the sovereign monarch of the sovereign kingdom of Hawaii. And once the alii, Kingdom of Hawaii. And once the Ali'i, Queen Liliuokalani, is no longer in power, these large landowners, we start to see their power grow and consolidate. That's when we get our large sugar oligarchies that start to claim more land as well as water rights, because at the time, if you had control of land, you had control of water.

It's also when we start to see more U.S. military bases being constructed in Hawaii. It's also when we start to see American homesteader projects, so efforts to get more Americans in Hawaii to impact the demographic vote and protect the stronghold of American interests that was present at the time and has been present since then. That gets us up to the start of the 20th century. And I think it really is a legacy that not just votes who live here have to deal with as part of their lived experience, but visitors or those who have interest in Hawaii, particularly in this time, really should take some time to inform themselves about so that they can understand the legacy of this place. These concerns about not being able to live where you're from, they're growing even more now because of these fires, right? You mentioned earlier these reports of realtors and investors calling up residents of Maui about buying up their land.

And how worried are you about that? I would say that it is worrying, certainly. And to say otherwise would be dismissive of Hawaii's history, as well as dismissive of many of the fears that residents have in Lahaina, as well as elsewhere. in Lahaina as well as elsewhere. But what I will say is that the many community members are speaking out incredibly vocally against that kind of practice and against any sort of dispossession of Lahaina. And I think that that voice, that sentiment among community members is going to be really, really, really hard to ignore as we chart a path of recovery for Lahaina. Before we say goodbye, Savannah, I was wondering if you could leave us with some words for people who would like to visit Hawaii in the future. What do you have to say to them?

like to visit Hawaii in the future? What do you have to say to them? We don't know exactly what the future of Maui is going to look like, of Hawaii at large is going to look like. And so I hesitate to provide any sort of prophetic wisdom. What I would say is try to be sympathetic to what this community has endured and will continue to endure. Try to be informed and try to be respectful. And there are many, many, many resources available about Hawaii literature that community members have written that can give you a sense of the history of this place and the dynamics that are currently present. So seek those resources out. I mean, our podcast is one of them. This is our Hawaii. Great. Yeah, I wanted to say it is a really wonderful podcast, and I can't wait to see the episodes that you guys produce next. Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate this. Thank you for your time. Before we go today, I do want to mention that we're also seeing some dangerous wildfires closer to home in the Northwest Territories. On Wednesday, residents in Yellowknife were officially told to evacuate,

as the fire is expected to reach the capital in the coming days. Many have driven hundreds of miles to safety, and others have signed up for emergency flights. This is a rapidly evolving story, and we're going to keep watching. You can find the latest on cbcnews.ca or on the CBC News app. on cbcnews.ca or on the CBC News app. That's all for this week. Frontburner was produced by Imogen Burchard, Derek Vanderwyk, Joyta Sengupta, Shannon Higgins, Lauren Donnelly, Matt Mews, and Matt Amha.

Our sound design was by Sam McNulty. Our music is by Joseph Chabison. Our executive producer this week is Elaine Chao. And I'm Tamara Kandaker. Thank you so much for listening. FrontBurner is back next week.