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The wildfires in Maui aren’t natural disasters, they are colonial disasters and a direct result of both the fossil fuel industry and the military industrial complex.
Realtors preying on property in Lahaina- while Kānaka Maoli who resided there for generations are now houseless- is a result of greed and disaster capitalism.
Citizen journalists on the ground are reporting on the devastating cost these fires have on their communities and the untold stories in the media about the tourists still actively extracting land and from already limited resources.
Kaniela Ing said Lahaina’s pre-colonial history is particularly important for people to know—not just for the sake of Lahaina’s Native residents, but because it reveals the deeply unnatural roots of this so-called “natural” disaster.
It was only because of colonization and climate change that it became a tinderbox.
“Lahaina wasn’t always a dry, fire-prone region. It was very wet and lush, historically. Boats would circle the famous Waiola Church. Lahaina was also the breeding place of aquaculture. It had some of the world’s first and most innovative systems of fish ponds.
”But at the dawn of the 18th century, sugar barons arrived and illicitly diverted the water to irrigate the lands they had stolen. (Note: 18th century European sugar and pineapple barons also brought invasive grasses, Wired reports, which now cover 26 percent of Hawaii and become “explosive” fuel for wildfires.)
“Today, descendants from those same barons amass fast profits from controlling our irrigation, our land use, and political influence. Alexander and Baldwin are two big missionary families of the original oligarchs, and they’re currently the largest landowners on Maui. That’s the name of their corporation and they’re one of the top political donors here today.
“So 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.“
[ID: Illustration of a pale grey horse with a dark smouldering head from which a great deal of smoke erupts. The smoke climbs onto a very dark stormy sky, the colors slowly blending together. The foreground is made up of lots of dried prairie grasses.]
