Shuvinai Ashoona, “Polar bear sketching people” (2023), colored pencil and ink on paper, 50 1/4 x 97 1/4 inches (image courtesy Fort Gansevoort)

While state resources were focused on containing the fire and transporting the wounded to care and federal aid yet to arrive, those left behind in Maui in those first weeks were left to fend for themselves. Many of the residents were afraid to leave the area because of fears of looting or inability to return to their home when access was severely restricted. Immediately the local Maui community mobilized, activating what local Hawaii residents fondly call our “coconut wireless” – informal word of mouth, so rapid in execution that it seems to fly untethered through the air. Our ability to move rapidly is due in part to our experience surviving in an economy with an extremely high cost of living and low wage service jobs, and in part due to intact kin networks, rendering us astonishingly effective at making much out of very little. Included in this great movement of the people was Noelani Ahia, a Kanaka Maoli with genealogical ties to Lāhainā. (The Kanaka Maoli or Kanaka ʻŌiwi are the indigenous people of Ka Pae ʻAina, commonly known as Hawaiʻi.) KEEP READING

So interesting: Mauna Medic Healers

The Maui Medics Healers Hui mobilized immediately in response to the devastating Lāhainā Fires, in August of 2023. VIDEO: https://youtu.be/dBrGC0qvlpw

ORIGINS

In 2015 Mauna Kea, our sacred mountain, was proposed as the site of yet another telescope. This time it was a massive thirty meter behemoth in what we as Kanaka Maoli refer to as Wao Akua, the realm of the gods. Our success in preventing this desecration was due to the strength of our Lahui with kokua from other Indigenous Peoples across the world. When Standing made a kahea (call) we had to answer. Dr. Kalamaokaaina Niheu was one who traveled to North Dakota to stand against fossil fuel insanity in protection of Mni Wichoni, the water that nourished millions of people. While there she co-founded the Standing Rock Medic Healer Council and created a template that allowed us to move in swiftly, then build up strong…continue reading