Native Hawaiian discusses cultural landmarks, art and artifacts destroyed by Maui wildfire

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• Geoff Bennett:

  As disaster recovery efforts ramp up across Maui, so too has the painstaking search operation. That confirmed death toll now stands at 106 people. But with most of the victims still unidentified, families and friends of the missing are left fearing the worst.

  It's been one week since the first fires tore through Maui, turning vibrant communities like Lahaina into scorched ghost towns. Days after evacuating, residents are gradually returning to survey the damage and rebuild their homes and their lives from the ground up.

• Kiet Ma, Lahaina Resident:

  Not just me lost everything. It's, yes, everybody. Everything's gone.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Official say two regions of the island are still ablaze. As of Tuesday night, the Lahaina fire on Maui's western coast is 85 percent contained and the Upcountry Kula fire only 75 percent contained.

  In Lahaina, search teams aided by cadaver dogs have been recovering human remains from destroyed buildings and burnt cars. So far, crews have scoured some 32 percent of the search area, and they're racing against the clock. Forecasters say a high windstorm this weekend could hamper their efforts.

  Today, FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell spoke from the White House.

• Deanne Criswell, FEMA Administrator:

  Given the conditions and the need for additional resources, we will have at least 40 canine search teams on the island, in addition to hundreds of search-and-rescue personnel, with more on the way.

• Geoff Bennett:

  As coroners begin the process of identifying the dead, officials have called on family members to help, urging relatives of the missing to submit DNA samples.

  Authorities have started to notify the victims' next of kin. Among the deceased, 79-year-old Buddy Jantoc, 68-year-old Franklin Trejos, and 60-year-old Carole Hartley, all longtime residents of Lahaina.

  The wildfires were propelled by high winds from a distant hurricane. What caused them is still under investigation.

• Shane Treu, Maui Resident:

  Fricking power line just went down.

• Geoff Bennett:

  As the fires tore through the island, Maui resident Shane Treu recorded smoke billowing outside his house after a utility pole snapped.

• Shane Treu:

  I look, there's a power line right there. And shortly after, the thing was just arcing away on the ground, landed right in dry grass, so sparks, and then there was a fire.

• Geoff Bennett:

  The state's primary energy provider, Hawaiian Electric, now facing multiple lawsuits, alleging the utility company kept power on, despite high wind warnings.

  Meantime, President Biden says he will travel to Maui on Monday to survey the damage firsthand.

  Historic landmarks, art and artifacts have been destroyed. The cultural loss has been significant, especially for Hawaiians who have generational ties to Maui.

  Noelani Ahia here has been helping with recovery efforts in Lahaina. She's an activist and co-founder of Mauna Medic Healers Hui.

  Thank you for being with us.

  What has the last week been like for you, your friends and your family?

• Noelani Ahia, Mauna Medic Healers Hui:

  It's so difficult, because we have this incredible devastation.

  Our beloved Lahaina town is now a graveyard with over 100 dead that we know of and potentially hundreds more. There are still over 1,000 people missing. So it's this incredible grief and shock and trauma. But, at the same time, there's been this enormous uprising of community support and community care and grassroots organizing to get supplies and medical care and take care of basic needs of people who have been stuck in Lahaina since the fires.

  So our team has deployed out there and has been taking care of people. But the entire community is wrapping its arms around each other and loving each other up and taking care of one another. So there's this incredible beauty at the same time as this incredibly deep pain. And it's a lot to carry right now, to be honest.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Maui has for decades been a magnet for tourists. But for people who live there, especially native Hawaiians, it's been home — it's been a home with a rich history. Tell us about that.

• Noelani Ahia:

  It's such a rich, rich history.

  And it's unfortunate that it that it gets painted as a tourist town, because that's sort of the bane of our existence in Hawaii. In Lahaina, as Moku'ula and Mokuhinia, which was an ancient fish pond that had an island in the middle, Moku'ula, and our ali'i, or our monarchs, chose that place to go reside.

  In fact, our first Constitution during the kingdom era, in the mid-1800s, was written there in that area, and it's just a very sacred area. Adjacent to that is the cultural center and the Na 'Aikane o Maui Cultural Center, which burned to the ground.

  And that was a place of solidarity for our people. It was a place to learn. It was a place that had artifacts, old maps, research materials, genealogy. Many of us can trace our genealogy back generations. In fact, I go back 22 generations to one of the families that lived in that area, Moku'ula and Mokuhinia.

• Geoff Bennett:

  There are Maui fire survivors who say they're getting phone calls from real estate developers and real estate investors who are trying to swoop in and buy up land where people's homes were destroyed.

  How real is the fear that outsiders will try to cash in on this tragedy, and change Maui, change Lahaina, as you knew it?

• Noelani Ahia:

  Well, it's a very real fear. And it's a founded one because it's already happened.

  The Maui that people know today is not the Maui of days of old. We have already — Kanaka Maoli have already been displaced by the plantations with land theft and resource extraction, taking our water away, and then the whaling industry, and then overtourism, hyper development for wealthy outsiders that come in and buy up large swathes of land and develop and bank water for that.

  So, for Kanaka Maoli, we are very well aware of the threat of outside moneyed influences coming in and further removing us from our ancestral places and continuing a system of settler colonialism where the design is to destroy the indigenous, the indigeneity and replace it in the settlers' image.

  And it's a very real fear that's happening right now, with people getting these phone calls.

• Geoff Bennett:

  In the long term, how should officials focus the repair and rebuilding effort to meet the needs of native Hawaiians, not just trying to clear the way for tourists to return?

• Noelani Ahia:

  Right.

  Well, the administrations, both local, state and federal, really need to listen to the Kanaka Maoli people and center our voice. This is an opportunity for us to restore Lahaina to what it once was. In fact, I have an elder who said he woke up the day after he found out his carving collection was lost.

  And he told me that he dreamt of seeds. He dreamt that we were planting seeds of our indigenous plants that were geologically connected to of our kalo plant, of our medicines and other things that makes us Hawaiian that have been stripped from us for so long.

  So I think that dream, that vision, that prophecy holds a future for us that we can gather around and believe in and work towards.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Noelani Ahia, our hearts go out to you and all of those affected by the wildfires in Maui. Thank you for your time.

• Noelani Ahia:

  Thank you so much for having me. Aloha.