Hawai‘i

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic dominated the latter part of the period under review. The State of Hawai‘i entered a lockdown that was stricter and more protracted than those in many parts of the United States, thereby achieving the lowest rate of infection in the nation before reopening in June 2020 (Hawaii News Now 2020). After the reopening, Hawai‘i experienced a faster rate of growth of covid-19 cases than any other US state. Developments in politics, culture, and the economy were to some extent overshadowed by covid-19.

The economy was severely impacted by the coronavirus-induced shutdown of businesses and schools, with unemployment soaring from under 3 percent to 39 percent in a period of weeks. In tourism-dependent Hawai‘i, hotel room occupancy reached a low of 8.4 percent before rebounding in June 2020 to 15.7 percent (Schaefers 2020a). This represented a 68 percent decrease from June 2019, when occupancy was 83 percent. To put the unemployment numbers in perspective, this was higher than the peak unemployment level (25 percent) during the US Great Depression in the 1930s (Schmitt 1976). Hawai‘i was the recipient of federal aid through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (cares) Act. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser noted: “The Department of Labor and Industrial Relations reported total unemployment filings in March of 160,929. While that number, reflects some claim duplication, it shows the magnitude of what the agency has been dealing with since covid-19 lockdowns disrupted many facets of the state’s economy” (Schaefers 2020b).

According to the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (dbedt), economic indicators in the third quarter of 2019 were “mostly positive,” including general labor market, construction jobs, and visitor arrivals. Tax revenues were up (dbedt 2019). In contrast, the major economic indicators by the second quarter of 2020 were “mainly negative,” with visitor arrivals plummeting by 98 percent. General tax revenues, jobs, salaries, and construction were all in the red (dbebt 2020). Data showed that the most vulnerable in Hawai‘i—Pacific Islanders—were hardest hit by covid-19 (Grube 2020a).

Before the advent of the pandemic, it was the movement to cease the development of the Thirty Meter Telescope (tmt) on Hawai‘i Island’s Mauna Kea that dominated headlines in 2019. Buoyed by tentative victories and the slogan “Kū Kia‘i Mauna” (Stand and Protect the Mountain), an encampment was erected at Pu‘uhuluhulu, surrounding the gate that leads to the summit of Mauna Kea, and activists chained themselves to the cattleguards, blocking the road in an act of civil disobedience.

When measured from the seafloor, Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain on Earth. Decades ago, a new telescope was proposed for the summit. There are already a dozen telescopes there, but the construction of the tmt on a summit that Hawaiians consider sacred has provoked the largest protest movement in recent years, rivaling the mass movement in the 1970s to stop the US Navy’s target practice on the island of Kaho‘olawe. In July 2019, Kānaka ‘Ōiwi (Native Hawaiians) began to make US national news over their efforts to block the construction of the tmt. nbc News covered the emergence of a school at the encampment, which seemed to rise out of the lava rock. Called Pu‘uhuluhulu University, it offered free classes, taught mainly by Kānaka ‘Ōiwi. nbc’s headline read that protestors (who call themselves “protectors”) started the school to teach “local culture and values” (Broder Van Dyke 2019).

After the arrests of kūpuna (elders) and thousands of visits by supporters, the activists, the Hawai‘i County Sheriff’s Office, and the Department of Land and Natural Resources reached a truce that would temporarily halt development of the tmt. Organizations opposing the tmt included many Indigenous nations, Amnesty International (Hawaii Independent 2019), and the Hawai‘i chapter of the Sierra Club, which issued a statement supporting kia‘i mauna: “For Hawaiians, there is only one Hawai‘i, one homeland, and only one Mauna Kea. There is no replacement, no alternative, for this particular mountain. As Amnesty International highlights, proceeding with the...