The Crisis Facing Hawaii: A History of Colonization and Displacement

On the 8th of August 2023, the island of Maui burned. Hurricane force winds sent a wall of flames tearing across the island on Tuesday, giving residents little time to react. Wildfire devastation in Maui. It is now the deadliest natural disaster ever for the state of Hawaii. Lahina, the historic capital of the Kingdom of Hawaii, the first indigenous nation recognized by European powers, was consumed by fire. These wildfires weren't a freak accident. They were the result of a century of outsiders robbing Havi. 93, the Queen of Hawaii, ambitious Lilio Kalan, was dethroned and the US missionary's son, Sanford B. Dole was set up as the first president of the Republic of Hawaii.

Hawaii has now reached a breaking point. Every year, more than 15,000 native Hawaiians leave the islands, fleeing rising costs, climate disasters, and a tsunami of tourists. Wealthy investors kick Hawaiians out of their homes. The American military poisons the water supply. Bit by bit, the islands are becoming a playground for the rich. Mark Zuckerberg doomsday bunker. And the people who made this place what it is, who fed it, who protected it, who raised families on it, and buried loved ones in it for centuries are being pushed out. To most outsiders, Havahi looks like paradise. Postcard beaches, my ties, aloha, hospitality. This all just masks a painful history of a kingdom stolen, a

culture erased, a fertile land turned into riches for outsiders, and ashes for residents. To really understand what's going on, we have to go back to the beginning. To a land forged by fire, sustained by water, transformed by sugar, and taken by force. Welcome to the United States of America. This is Hawaii, 50th State of the Union. We are not Americans. We will die as Hawaiian. The Hawaiian Islands didn't break off from any continent. Millions of years ago, lava hit the ocean and created land. What we now call paradise began as raw volcanic fury. Jagged, lifeless peaks bursting through the Pacific Ocean. Then came the drifters.

Seeds and insects clinging to birds, winds, and the ocean currents brought life to these islands. Over 20,000 species soon called this place home. Many of them are now found nowhere else in the world. The tall mountains pulled the moisture from the winds, cloaking the windward slopes in mist and trees, leaving the leeward side of the islands dry as they baked in the sun. Mistcovered valleys, Martianlike lava fields, dense jungles, rough seas, calm beaches. This is a land of contrasts. Lush but brutal. Gentle yet unforgiving and completely alone. Then between 2,000 and 1,000 years ago, sails appeared on the horizon. These

were Polynesians, the astronauts of the ancient world. They had crossed thousands of kilometers of open ocean in doubleh hold canoes arriving in pulses from the marces and Tahiti. They used just the stars, the swell of the sea, and the movement of birds to navigate the vast oceans. These people settled across the vast Polynesian triangle. They didn't just stumble into Havaii, they found it. Because of their isolation, these islands had no large mammals and no native crops that could support a civilization. But these Polynesian ships were like great arcs carrying pigs, dogs, chickens, rats, coconut palms, taro, bananas, bread fruit, sweet potatoes, paper mulberry, and sugar cane. The Polynesians that landed here

became the kanaka ma, the native Hawaiian. Kanaka means person. Ma means true, original. This word echoes across Polynesia from Maawi in Tahiti to Mai in Aeroa. And then suddenly the voyaging stopped around 1,400. For reasons we still don't fully understand, new ships stopped arriving and Havayi was left alone. But in that isolation, something incredible happened. The Kanaka Maoli transformed the land, cutting terraces in the hillsides, channeling streams into huge irrigation networks that fed ponds in which they grew taro, fields of sweet potatoes, and damp bread fruit groves that shaded the land. They built hundreds of giant fish farms fed by their canals or the sea with huge stone

walls, some 1,500 m long, covering more than 50 football fields. By the 1700s, just these ponds produced 1 million kgs of fish annually. Much of what we think of as Havaii's natural beauty today was handcrafted by the Kanaka. At the heart of all of it was taro, or as it's known in Hawaiian, call. In their mythology, the gods created the Hawaiian islands and then call. From call came the Hawaiian people. To harm the land was to harm your own family. The land was aina, that which feeds. For Kanaka Maing, the gods weren't distant. They were in the rain, the stones, the volcanoes, the waves, the crops. Their religious duty was malama, to care for the land, which would continue to house and feed future

generations. The Ali or nobles managed society, religion, and production. The land was divided into a hoopwa, long wedges of land from mountain to sea. Each one contained everything a community needed to sustain themselves. Plots in the Aupua were handed to Oana extended families who fished, farmed, and gathered what they needed. People living in the uplands sent down wood and water. Lowlanders sent up fish and salt. They fed and clothed the Elite, who in turn made sure the land remained fertile. If the Elite failed to do their job, the people would take them down.

Water flowed through irrigation canals called ovi built and managed by the community. Water or vi was seen as the source of all wealth. The Hawaiian word for wealth is literally just vivi water. Water. Everyone who helped build terraces, ponds or canals shared in what they produced. Everyone depended on everyone else. This society built large temples made of volcanic stone, the remains of which are still etched into the landscape of Hawaii. They had a rich oral tradition, music, hoola dancing, surfing, and specialized craft work. Life revolved around kapu or sacred law called taboo. In other Polynesian societies, kapu governed everything.

When to plant, when to fish, when to fight, who could eat what, who could marry whom? The Iapu law prevented men and women eating together. Breaking Kapo could result in you being killed. These were delicate, isolated islands. Kapu protected this ecosystem, and the smart Ali knew when to place Kapu on fragile resources. During spawning season, for example, there would be a Kapu on small fish. Now, this wasn't some utopia. Like in most societies, the nobles took more and worked less. War was common, but this society did create one of the fastest growing populations on Earth, which means Hawaiian children were surviving childhood more frequently than in other societies. By the 1700s, around

500,000 people lived on these islands in the middle of the Pacific with better nutrition and more leisure time than their counterparts in England. Then in 1778, sales appeared on the horizon. Captain James Cook was exploring the Pacific for the British Empire when he became the first European to set foot on Havi. The Kanaka greeted these visitors with a warm aloha. Gifts were exchanged, ceremonies were held, and Cook and his men were treated to feasts on every island they visited. But when Cook returned a year later, tensions rose. Cook's men insulted the Kanaka. Then a British boat was stolen. Cook tried to kidnap a high chief as payback. In the

chaos of his attempted kidnapping, the Kanaka killed Cook and his journey ended there in Kaakua Bay in 1779. The British retaliated by burning a village and taking heads as trophies. Havi's long isolation was over. James Cook and his men left behind more than just bodies and trinkets. They left something invisible, something deadly. smallox, gorrhea, influenza, tuberculosis, bubonic plague, whooping cough, cholera, mumps, measles, and the feast of other European diseases. Tiny organisms clinging to clothes, skin, and breath. This would be Havaii's first real introduction to Europe. Like the millions of other native peoples with no immunity to European diseases, Hawaiians

began to die in apocalyptic numbers. By 1800, Hawaii had become a hub for European and American merchants, sailors, and whalers to resupply and get desperately needed vitamin C. Hawaiians called them how or outsiders. These newcomers brought disease, but they also brought guns, cannons, and ships. On the big island, Anali Kamehameha seized these new tools and used them to conquer his rivals. By 1810, he had united the islands into the Kingdom of Havi. He centralized power, expanded trade with the US and Europe, and even sent Hawaiian flagged ships to trade in China. But even as Kamehameha built a kingdom, his people kept dying. In the century after Cook's arrival, European diseases killed 90% of the Hawaiian

population. Kamehahha died in 1819 and afterwards his son Liholo took the throne. The Hawaiians could see that their people were dying. The gods were doing nothing and the Howa broke Kapu without consequences. So Lo and his adoptive mother, Kahumu Manu, sat down to eat together, breaking centuries old Kapu against men and women eating together. Nothing happened. They abolished the Kapoo system, burned down their temples, and cast aside their state religion. At that exact moment, Christian missionaries from the United States were sailing towards Hawaii.

The missionaries arrived just months after the capo system was abolished. They were armed with Bibles and a burning desire to convert what they saw as savage heathens. The Hawaiians welcomed these people and they set up schools across the islands. Hawaiians quickly embraced reading and writing. Within a few decades, Havaii had one of the highest literacy rates on Earth. Havaii rapidly adapted to the new world they found themselves in. Just 60 years after Cook's visit, Havaii had created a constitutional monarchy with elected representatives, its own Supreme Court, and a declaration of human rights. Havaii's Aolandi Palace had electricity before the White House did. The missionaries educated a new generation of now Christian Hawaiian kings and

chiefs. They then used that to secure roles as powerful advisers in the Hawaiian government. Their strict form of Calvinist Christianity despised the warm, welcoming, close-knit, and what they saw as overly sensual Hawaiian culture. These proper New England Christians encouraged Native Hawaiians to cover up with a more modest style of clothing. Cohabitation before marriage was outlawed. The ancient hoola dance was banned. One reporter traveling in 1825 said, "The streets, formerly so full of animation, are now deserted. Games of all kinds, even the most innocent, are prohibited. Singing is a punishable offense." After a French attack in 1839 stole $20,000, Havi dispatched diplomats to Europe. With a rapidly falling population, they knew

they couldn't fight off the colonizing powers, so they tried to use law against them. By 1844, France, Britain, and the United States officially recognized Hawaiian independence. The Kingdom of Hawaii became the first indigenous nation recognized by the colonial powers. But Havaii walked a razor's edge. European diseases were destroying the Hawaiian population. Empires were eyeing up these fertile islands. The Hawaiian monarchy needed to use the tools and knowledge of the missionaries to strengthen their kingdom. Even as those same missionaries work to erase Hawaiian culture and reshape these islands in their image, the sons of missionaries were born in Hawaii, but educated in New England, raised in schools shaped by the American

ideology of manifest destiny. When they came back, they didn't return as equals. In Hawaii, they didn't see the Hawaiian homeland. They saw inefficiency, a land that was used to feed Hawaiians instead of markets. As one missionary, William P. Alexander, stated, "We have hundreds of acres of fertile soil that might easily be irrigated by our perennial streams. Yet, we produce almost nothing but callow, whereas we ought to produce and export a,000 tons of sugar annually." The missionaries knew that they could get rich on sugar, but the problem was they didn't own any land. Hawaiian land was not privately owned.

It belonged to the community that worked it. In 1848, King Kamehameha III, under advice from his missionary adviserss, passed the Mahel, transforming Hawaiian land into private property. Foreigners could now buy land. The floodgates were opened. What was once communityowned land was carved up, sold off, and converted into massive sugar and pineapple plantations. The Native Hawaiians, once rooted in the land, became just tenants paying rent. If they couldn't afford the rent, they were kicked off the land. Sugar is a thirsty crop. It takes 2,000 L of water to produce a half a kilo of sugar. To feed their crops, the new plantation owners diverted massive amounts of water from the wet windward sides of the islands to

the sunny but arid fields on the leeward side where sugarcane grows best. By 1920, the sugar industry in Havi was diverting nearly 4 billion L of water daily. For reference, that's the same amount of water that modern New York City's 8 million residents use per day. The network of call plots and fish ponds and bread fruit groves were destroyed to make way for sugarcane and pineapple monoculture. The Kakamoi no longer had enough water. Their crops died in the fields. They couldn't pay rent. They lost their homes and then starved in famine. Being displaced, stressed, hungry, and forced to move to slums near plantations or cities made Kanaka even more vulnerable to disease. By 1920,

only 24,000 kakamoi remained alive. Havaii became a cash crop economy, forcing the displaced population to work on the plantations for low wages to pay for rather than to grow their own food. But this didn't matter to the sugar barons because sugar exports soared from 120 million kg in 1890 to more than 900 million kg by 1932. By 1893, 85% of all the land in Hawaii was controlled by the Howa, who made up between 5 to 10% of the population. Hawai's economic life depends in great part on its sugar crop. The sugar barons got filthy rich. By 1900, the big five corporations, mostly founded by missionaries and their sons, Alexander and Baldwin, Castelan Cook, C.

Brewer, Amfac, and Theo H. Davies controlled the entire sugar industry as well as the banks, railroads, utilities, and shipping lines. The big five became the true power on the islands. But they ran into a problem. The Kanaka were dying. The Howa refused to work the fields and sugar harvesting is backbreaking war. So the sugar barons turned abroad. Displaced kanakamali turned into landless wage laborers were joined by tens of thousands of indentured laborers imported from China, Japan, Portugal, Korea, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. They rapidly outnumbered the Kanaka population. Labor conditions on these plantations were brutal. Indentured laborers were legally bound to plantations until their 3 to

5-year contracts expired. Laborers were whipped, stripped of their names, and were only identified by their metal bango tags. It was the shared experience on these plantations, living near each other, working together, and observing different ways of life that modern Hawaiian multicultural identity was born. The Hola never gave up their American identities. They tied the sugar economy to the United States. But as an independent nation, Hawaiian sugar paid tariffs to enter the US market, which cut into the sugar barons profits. In 1887, the sugar barons were renegotiating a treaty with the US to allow Hawaiian sugar into the US tariffree. To make it work, the United States demanded a military outpost at

Pearl Harbor. The Hola wanted this treaty at all costs. King Kalakua and the Kanakamoli refused because a military base would endanger Hawaiian independence. Knowing that they could not win democratically, the Ha took matters into their own hands. A secret group of Howa elites formed the Hawaiian League and then they teamed up with the Honolulu Rifles, which was an all Howa unit of the Hawaiian Kingdom's military. They demanded that King Kalakua bring in a new constitution, and they implied that there would be violence if he refused. This was a coup. The king signed what became known as the bayonet constitution. It's called that not

because literal bayonets were pointed at them, but that there was the implication of violence. This constitution written by the Howa stripped the Hawaiian monarch of most of their powers. Now, every decision the monarch made had to be approved by the cabinet. It gave Americans and Europeans, even if they were nonitizens, the right to vote in Hawaiian elections, but denied that right to Asian residents. This was the very first time in Hawaiian history that democratic rights were determined by race. In order to vote, you must have held at least $3,000 in property, which denied the right to vote to most Kanaka.

The new constitution was brought in, and the now how dominated cabinet signed the reciprocity treaty with the United States. They handed over Pearl Harbor to the US and enjoyed massive sugar profits. But for the Howa, this wasn't enough. The reciprocity treaty would have to be renegotiated every few years. The only way to truly guarantee tariff-free access to the American market forever was to make Havaii a part of the United States. They wanted the US to annex Havi. In June of 1869, the American newspaper The Atlantic stated, "We have converted their heathen. We have occupied their sugar plantations.

We furnished the brains that carry on their government and the diseases that are destroying their people. We want the profit on their sugars and their tropical fruits and vegetables. Why should we not seize and annex the islands themselves?" King Kalakawa loved Hawaiian culture. He brought back Hoola after a 60-year ban, and he began to systematize the recording of ancient chants and legends. Tuberculosis killed him in 1891, and his sister, Lilyu Kalani, took the throne. She was educated by missionaries, she was a devout Christian, but like her brother, she was a fiercely proud Hawaiian. When the queen took the throne, her people were suffering a

demographic collapse worse than the Black Death. The Sugar Baronss had seized control of the country and the United States was hungrily eyeing up her kingdom. On the day of her coronation, the Chief Justice of Havi's Supreme Court, Albert Jud, told her, "Should any members of your cabinet propose anything to you, say yes." Queen Lily Kalani would say no. Having received petitions signed by thousands of her subjects, in January of 1893, the queen drafted a new constitution, undoing the bayonet constitution and removing the wealth and race-based voting laws introduced by the

Holla. Fearing any move towards a more democratic constitution, a missionary son, Lauren Thirsten, who wrote the bayonet constitution and the Hawaiian League with support from the US Minister, John L. Stevens began to prepare a coup. On January 16th, Stevens ordered American Marines aboard the USS Boston to land in Hawaii and take control of the country. The Queen's Guard was ready to resist, but Stevens made it very clear that if Hawaiians fought back, the overwhelming military power of the United States would come down on Havi. With American troops in the capital, the queen surrendered to avoid bloodshed. blood that her people could not afford to lose. She said, "I yield to the superior force of the

United States of America to avoid any collision of armed forces and perhaps the loss of life. I do this under protest and impelled by said force and I expect that the government of the United States upon the facts being presented to it will undo the action of its representatives." On January 17th, the missionary son Sanford B. Dole was installed as president of a new provisional government without a vote. The Hawaiian monarchy was declared abolished. The United States had recognized Hawaiian independence for decades. This was an entirely illegal and undemocratic overthrow of a friendly sovereign state by Americans. The Hawaiians never gave up their

independence. The provisional government rebranded itself as the Republic of Hawaii. Dole's government fortified the palace with gatling guns. They crushed an armed rebellion and they imprisoned the queen. Dole built a white supremacist state that had to borrow racist laws from Mississippi in order to deny voting rights to non-whites in Hawaii. As president, Dole helped his cousin James Dole build a pineapple empire in Hawaii that transformed into one of the largest fruit companies in the world.

President Cleveland recognized that the coup was illegal and he refused to annex Hawaii into the United States. But he didn't do anything to reverse the coup. The Ha would just have to wait for a more expansionist American president. In 1898, the United States declared war on Spain and they wanted a base to attack the Spanish-owned Philippines. Havaii became too strategic to ignore. Dole's government finally got what they wanted. President McKinley annexed Havaii against the wishes of the island's people. On that day, Havaii's national anthem was played for the last

time as the flag of the kingdom was lowered and the American flag took its place. That afternoon in 1898, America's empire stretched across Havaii, Samoa, Guam, the Marianas Islands, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guantanamo Bay. American propaganda immediately rewrote the story. A book published just 2 months after annexation stated that the islands were annexed to the United States, not by purchase, nor by conquest, but by the vote of the Hawaiian people who offered them to us as a gift. Queen Lilyu Okalani lived out her final years under surveillance. Mocked in US newspapers as a violent savage as she lobbied the US government to undo their crime, she never gave up her fight to restore her nation.

Throughout her life, she remained a cultural powerhouse, crafting poetry and songs for her people, which continued to be deeply important in Hawaiian culture today. She died in 1917. Havaii remained a US territory until it was made the 50th state in 1959. The United States military transformed Havaii into a strategic launchpad for its empire building across the Pacific. During the United States brutal war on the Philippines, Havaii served as a staging ground for American forces that would go on to kill hundreds of thousands of Filipinos. It was the American military base at Pearl Harbor. the symbol of US power in the Pacific that became the target for the Empire of Japan's infamous attack in December of

1941, bringing the United States into the Second World War. For centuries, Oleo Havi, the Hawaiian language was the soul of a nation. But in 1896, Dole's government banned it from schools. Speaking Hawaiian, became shameful. Hawaiian children were beaten for speaking their native tongue. Americanization was enforced through brutal boarding schools that forcibly removed Hawaiian children from their homes well into the 1960s. By the 1970s, only 2,000 fluent Hawaiian speakers remain as the language was erased. So was the land. Havaii is now the endangered species capital of the world. Over 90% of Havaii's dry forests have been destroyed. More than 100 native plant species are extinct. First, the names of the plants and animals were

erased, and then the plants and animals themselves were erased. Wildfires scorching Hawaii's Maui and Big Islands have killed dozens of people, left behind smoldering ruins and forced thousands of residents and tourists to flee. This is now the deadliest wildfire in America for well over a century, and the casualties are still being counted. fire. On the 8th of August 2023, winds of up to 120 km per hour whipped up small fires into a flaming hurricane that tore through Maui. The air thickened with smoke. Within hours, the historic Hawaiian capital of Lahina was erased.

People rushed into the sea to avoid burning. people lost everything. Homes, jobs, their cars, some their pets. Still get dead bodies in the water floating and on the seaw wall. They've been sitting there since last night. everything is gone. The fire was sparked by downed power lines. Emergency sirens that are installed across Maui never sounded. On the night of the 8th of August, while Maui burned, Maui's emergency response director texted his secretary about the fires. She replied, "Still burning." His response was, "Wow, lol." At least 102 people died and thousands of people were left displaced. The cost of the damages exceeded $5 billion. Lahina was incinerated. Just a few short centuries

ago, Lahina was the lush, water-rich capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom, covered in breadfruit groves, wetlands, and irrigation canals. The British captain George Vancouver who visited Lahina in the 1790s called it the Venice of the Pacific. Here a 10-acre fish pond at Mohania contained a small island Moola that was sacred to Hawaiian royalty. This indigenous built ecosystem held the moisture in the soil which cooled the land. Massive wildfires simply couldn't start here. With the rise of the sugar baronss, the bread fruit groves and the lowland forests were slashed and burned to make way for sugar plantations. They diverted water from the streams to feed their sugar. The mohane was drained and

paved over with a car park. The land dried out. When the sugar industry began to decline in the 20th century, they began to pivot to real estate and tourism, rerouting water to resorts. Maui, which is home to about 160,000 people, takes in nearly 3 million tourists per year. The Grand Vilea Hotel alone uses 1.9 million L of water a day. The many golf courses that dot the island use between 2 to 4 million L of water every single day, while locals are fined $500 for watering their own plants. The abandoned sugar fields were quickly overrun by dry invasive grasses

introduced by Howless settlers and left unmanaged after they began to abandon their sugar plantations. The result was a vast flammable tinder box. And it was into that tinder box that the downed power lines fell. The streams and ponds in Maui that had been diverted for sugar and then resorts could have served as natural firereaks against the spread of flames on the 8th of August. But they weren't there. For years, Kakamoi warned that this would happen. They called on the government to restore the wetlands, to replant the bread fruit, to address the unmanaged grasslands, and to bury the power lines. After a wildfire in 2018, community leaders begged the state to take action, and they were told that

it was too expensive. Then in 2023, what was once the Venice of the Pacific became a hell of smoke and ash Lahina burned, museums holding native Hawaiian history, documents, and priceless memories went up in flames. Hawaiians sprang into action on trucks, motorboats, and even jet skis to deliver aid and shelter to Maui from day one. In this moment of despair, the people pulled together, but history and homes were lost forever. As this was happening, developers began to circle the ashes. Just days after the fires, houseless survivors were being pressured to sell the land where their homes once stood. Since the fires, rent has spiked by 40% and landlords have evicted survivors to bring in people that will

pay more. Many Hawaiians could only afford to live in this area because they lived in multigenerational homes. With those gone, many residents have no chance of returning. As Lahina's residents grieved, still houseless fire victims returned to work in the hotels while bodies were still being recovered from the waters as tourists were snorkeling offshore. The same forces that burned Lahina to the ground will continue to profit from it while the locals are pushed out. The same missionary families who came with Bibles still run the plantation. They still control the land and land is key to generational wealth. In 1993, just 80 land owners controlled 95% of Havaii's land. When plantation workers started

demanding basic rights and wages, the big five packed up and moved production overseas. Dole pineapples now mostly come from the Philippines. Since Havaii became a state in 1959, hotels have become the new plantations, and the campaign to displace Hawaiians only escalated. In the 1970s, entire families were evicted from the Kalama Valley to make room for luxury developments. activists resisted. The police beat them and then bulldozers were brought in to crush their homes. At one time, Sand Island was only a neglected dumping grounds for garbage and industrial wastes. During the 70s, over 100 Hawaiian families and fishermen came here to live, clearing the beach, building homes and peers, and taking up

the shoreline lifestyle of their ancestors. The development of a 180 acre state park along this shoreline meant the eviction of the community who were legally declared squatters. We Hawaiian people, natives. This is our life. Dogs in our own country. How you treat Hawaiians, ladies and gentlemen. put them in jail, lock down their homes, kill their culture, and eliminate the Hawaiian race. Rents in Hawaiian neighborhoods were jacked up 700% by landlords who were often descendants of sugar barons and missionaries to force the locals out. Ancestral lands were paved over, sacred sites were bulldozed, archaeological sites were bombed, all to

build condos, military bases, and vacation rentals. In 1959, 250,000 tourists visited Hawaii annually. Today, it's nearly 10 million tourists per year in a state with just 1.4 million residents. At any moment, about 15% of the people on the islands are tourists. Tourism makes up a quarter of the Hawaiian economy. But the jobs it provides, maids, line cooks, drivers, and hoola dancers are some of the lowest paid jobs in the country, forcing people to work multiple jobs just to survive. Native Hawaiian struggle as their homeland has been turned into the most expensive state in the United States.

Hawaii's cost of living is 86% higher than the US average. A one-bedroom apartment averages around 1 $800 a month. To afford that and nothing else, a minimum wage worker would have to spend 80% of their income. To comfortably pay that, a single person would need to make $70,000 a year. The per capita income for Native Hawaiian is 67% the state average, just $26,000. As the ultra rich flock to Hawaii, they drive up the prices while wages stay stagnant. Between 2012 and 2025, average rents in Hawaii soared 57.2% while wages rose just 19%. While multinational corporations extract billions upon billions of dollars from these islands back to their headquarters in the US and Asia, Hawaiians are living paycheck to paycheck, which means that a

single setback, a lost job, a medical bill, anything can send people spiraling into houselessness. which is why Havaii has the highest houselessness rate in the United States. And Native Hawaiians are much more likely to be houseless than any other ethnic group. On the island of Oahu, Native Hawaiian make up just 10% of the population, but they make up half of the houseless population. This means that there are families sleeping in tents or cars on beaches and in car parks. While parents are working full-time, their children are doing homework in cars by torch light. Many houseless Hawaiians work full-time in the luxury resorts that stand in jarring contrast to nearby parks and beaches crowded with houseless

families. Officials continue to conduct homeless sweeps at public parks. Instead of helping, the police do sweeps where they remove tents and displace people further because their existence is an eyesore to the tourists that feed a 20 billion industry whose profits are extracted by wealthy outsiders. Short-term vacation rentals, some now going for $1,000 a night, eat up the housing supply. The median home price in Maui is now $1 million, and more than half of the homes are sold to non-residents. Developers keep building on the coasts. Even the Hawaiians keep asking them not to. When the rising sea starts swallowing their investment, they dump sandbags or erect seaw walls, which end up destroying public beaches to save

their private property. The billionaire Mark Zuckerberg now owns 1,500 acres of Kauaii, which he bought for $300 million. He has sued locals to force them to sell their land, and has tried to make them pay his legal fees. Jeff Bezos dropped $80 million on his Maui estate, which sits on 10 archaeological sites. Larry Ellison, the billionaire co-founder of Oracle, owns the entire island of Lai, every business, every house. If you work there and lose your job, you also lose your home. He's building luxury hotels and wellness retreats for celebrities like Tom Cruz and Elon Musk. Wanted international war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu does Pilates there. Native Hawaiians live shorter

lives and are among the most displaced, incarcerated, and impoverished people in their own homeland. Of the 680,000 living Native Hawaiian, only 300,000 remain on the islands. They've suffered a strange process that has been described as ethnic cleansing by real estate. Unaware tourists come to enjoy themselves at the expense of Hawaiians with no reciprocity. The state of Hawaii has stolen the warm, welcoming concept of Hawaiian aloha and made it into a slogan. While the indigenous people are sleeping in cars outside of luxury resorts named after their ancestors while performing caricatured versions of their own culture for the entertainment of the people pushing them off their own

land while families scramble for scraps of land. The US military controls nearly 6% of all Hawaiian land where they station 50,000 personnel on Aahu. The Navy leaked 180,000 gallons of jet fuel into the island's only aquifer, which gave the local population severe health effects. The military seized the island of Co and bombed it for 50 years. The island is still littered with explosives. In the 1970s, native Hawaiians like Walter Riddi occupied Koh, demanding an end to US bombing. Aloha. So, the love of the land was going to conquer the United States military, and it did. The 1970s sparked a Hawaiian cultural revival and resistance across the islands. The Hawaiian language returned to schools and homes, and today,

Hawaiians are teaching it on Tik Tok. Just a few generations ago, Havaii was a sovereign nation. To many Native Hawaiians, it still occupied land. The erasia of Native Hawaiian was not done with one violent act, but through a slow, methodical process of colonization. Their land was privatized, their language was banned, their culture was outlawed, and their people were priced out, poisoned, criminalized, and displaced in their own land. This is how people are erased. Not all at once, but acre by acre, word by word, and law by law. so that a small group of mobile outsiders could profit. Once those outsiders suck Hawaii drying and leave a burntout ruin, they will move on to their next disaster as they have always

done. Oligarchs can live anywhere. Native Hawaiians are part of the land. Havaii today is still a land of contrasts, immense wealth beside crushing poverty. to speak the language, to refuse to sell, to teach, to fight, to remember, to care for the land, all send a message. We are still here. Stories like this, stories that need context and depth, rarely get the space they deserve on mainstream platforms. Deep dives into global issues are often buried in favor of faster, simpler content, which makes it harder to stay truly informed about the world. One of the ways I tried to keep up is by watching series like War Room, a monthly

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