Melissa Chimera, Clay Trauernicht, Kapuaʻala Sproat, Kekai Keahi
Panel Description
Among the many lessons to take from the 2023 Maui fires, it is clear that caring for land is fundamental to community safety as well as protecting ecosystems mauka and makai. Over the past year on the Land and People podcast, Melissa Chimera and Clay Trauernicht have had the incredible fortune to speak with and record the voices of Maui residents who have helped make sense of this tragedy and its emerging legacy. In the aftermath of the fires, the community in West Maui is showing the pae ‘āina and the world that reverence for and access to water is central not only to cultural practice and lineal relationships to land, but to the vision of abundance given to us by Lahaina’s people and history. For this plenary session, they have invited Kekai Keahi, a farmer, community leader and lineal descendent of Maui Komohana, and Kapua Sproat, Professor of Law and Director of the Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law at the University of Hawai’i for a podcast-style talk story centered on two key questions: How has the historical and political struggle for water rights on West Maui positioned or prepared the community there to envision and work towards a future in which communities are thriving and safe from disasters like the Lahaina Fire? and How can (or should) the ‘conservation community’ contribute to the physical, social and/or political changes required to achieve this vision?
Panelists:
Melissa Chimera
Born and raised in Hawai‘i, Melissa Chimera is a conservationist and a visual artist since 1996 having worked for the Department of Defense, The Nature Conservancy and National Park Service in land stewardship and most recently as a coordinator for The Pacific Fire Exchange. She is the co-host and co-producer of the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa podcast Land and People which documents the evolving relationships of Hawai‘i people to the land upon which they work and live. Her visual artwork which consists of research-based investigations into species extinction, globalization and human migration can be found in private and public collections. She is the recipient of the Catherine E. B. Cox Award in visual art, finalist for the Duke University Lange-Taylor Prize for documentary studies, and in 2022 was Anchorage Museum’s artist-in-residence and University of Toledo’s Mikhail Endowment grantee for her work concerning immigrant narratives.
Clay Trauernicht, PhD
Clay grew up on Long Island, NY and came to Hawaii in 1999 as a wildlife project intern. He soon turned to plant science, pursuing graduate degrees at the University of Hawaii and University of Tasmania, which led to work with community-based land care programs in many parts of the world. He’s been Extension Faculty at UH Manoa in the Natural Resources and Environmental Management Department since 2013, working on wildfire and ecosystem restoration to support local communities, watershed programs, and landowners across Hawaii and Micronesia.
Kapuaʻala Sproat
Kapuaʻala Sproat is a Professor of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi’s William S. Richardson School of Law and the Director of Ka Huli Ao Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law. Ka Huli Ao is an academic center that promotes education, scholarship, community outreach, and collaboration on issues of law, culture, and justice for Native Hawaiians and other Pacific and Indigenous Peoples. Professor Sproat also co-directs the law school’s Native Hawaiian Rights Clinic and teaches courses in Native Hawaiian and environmental law and legal writing. For years now, Ka Huli Ao’s Clinics have been providing direct legal services to communities across Hawaiʻi seeking to more proactively manage their natural and cultural resources, including those living in the wake of climate disasters such as the 2018 floods on Kauaʻi and 2023 Maui wildfires. Professor Sproat’s areas of scholarship and interest include Native Hawaiian law, water law, indigenous rights, climate justice, the public trust doctrine, and natural resource protection and management. Since 1998, she has also worked as an attorney in the Mid Pacific office of Earthjustice where she remains Of Counsel. Committed to protecting and restoring Hawaiʻi’s natural and cultural resources, Professor Sproat has litigated state and federal cases under the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, State Water Code and various Hawaiʻi laws. Kapua has a special interest in empowering and supporting Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) culture and people and works to preserve the resources necessary to perpetuate her culture.
Kekai Keahi
Kekai Keahi is a Maui Komohana community leader and kiaʻi, and a ninth generation Lahaina resident. Kekai is an educator and thoughtleader, advocating for Maui Komohana and its wai since before that was a thing of panels and infamous instagram videos. In the wake of the wildfires that ravaged Maui, he is who the community looks to for guidance on water and really any issue concerning Lahaina, Maui Komohana, or Maui Nui.
