“I was 19 when I first stood against the police to protect Mauna Kea”: Interview with Malia Hulleman
The original interviews I did for Youth to Power were longer than could fit in my book, but I wanted to share the valuable information with you all. These interviews will be up online as a permanent, free resource for people, young people in particular, looking for inspiration.
— Jamie Margolin
Malia Hulleman (she/her), 24, is a Kanaka Maoli (Indigenous Hawaiian) Earth Defender, Water Protector, food justice activist, and indigenous justice activist.
Jamie Margolin: How did you become an activist?
Malia: Central to my activism is being an indigenous person. I was born and raised in Hawaii, and it’s really different being indigenous Hawaiian than being indigenous to Turtle Island (the indigenous name for United States mainland). We’re the majority here in Hawaii, so we grow up with our own culture and language. But I’ve always been interested in diving deeper into who I am as an indigenous person.
Diving deeper into my culture, I realized so many things that have been lost because of the colonization. It peels like an onion from there as you look into what has been lost and why. Hawaii is a byproduct of corporate greed because it was just five companies that really convinced the U.S. to overthrow Native Hawaiian leadership.
When you realize that, then you start not wanting to say that you are American. You realize that even though we in Hawaii are legally American, we as Hawaiians still legally hold sovereignty. We’re a part of the U.S. by force but we’re still in a really great place to gain global recognition as our own nation.
Hawaiian rights, also known as Kanaka rights, inspired me to stand up for our right as a sovereign people, to be a kingdom of our own, to not only stand up for my rights but also for Hawaii.
So when did you get fully invested in being an Earth Defender and a Water Protector?
It all started with the Protect Mauna Kea movement. Mauna Kea is actually the tallest mountain in the world measured base to tip, but more than half of it is water. It is the most sacred mountain to our people. We call it the realm of the gods. As humans we’re really not supposed to be up there, but we’re supposed to protect our sacred land, so when the mountain was under attack, we were present. This is what happened: because Hawaii is the most geographically isolated place in the world, there is hardly any light pollution, which makes it a great place to study the stars. Six or seven different countries wanted to create a thirty-meter massive telescope (eighteen stories tall!) But there are already telescopes and observatories, which my ancestors protested against.
This telescope would be amongst the biggest telescopes in the world! We don’t want it on our sacred mountain, and we’ve been fighting against its construction for over ten years, but the movement really took spark around four years ago. That’s what got me to pay attention to the fact that our land is speaking, and being native of that land, being native of that dirt, we have the responsibility to speak for that land. When the land says no, we have to stand and protect it from colonization and destruction
And look — astronomy is super cool! I love astronomy. We indigenous Hawaiians are astronomers, the original astronomers! We navigate by the stars. It’s how we’ve always gotten around for thousands of years. But Mauna Kea is such a delicate ecosystem with endangered species; the microbiome of the mountain is extremely delicate. Not to mention there are already telescopes, so why another one?
Telescopes in operation produce large amounts of chemical waste. A lot of it is in the form of mercury. There is a tall lake on the mountain that we used to do ceremonies in, but that lake has been contaminated and now we can’t go there anymore because of the toxic chemical waste from the telescope maintenance. That chemical waste from the telescope upkeep is stored in underground vats, which leak directly into the soil and continue to destroy the whole delicate ecosystem. So stopping the construction of this massive telescope is more than just topical.
I was nineteen when I first stood against the police and construction vehicles to protect Mauna Kea. The mountain is high and it was cold and the air is very thin so it’s hard to breathe — but we stood our ground. You’re not supposed to sleep up there, but we protectors were present on the mountain for over one hundred days. We stood our ground and are still fighting for Mauna Kea. We stand in peace and we use our bodies as barriers to protect the mountain.
So what pushed you to also join the Standing Rock #NODAPL movement?
So I was in the film industry for a while (I quit after Standing Rock and now I’m a full-time Earth Defender), but at the time of the initial attempts of construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, I was still in the industry.
I was doing this one film, and something clicked and I was like, “I want to live in LA.” It was a huge moment of wanting to live off of my island. I had never wanted to leave before, but I felt a tug to go to LA, so I went. Los Angeles is the film mecca.
Then when I was there, my best friend told me about Standing Rock. She told me about the pipeline wanting to go through the reservation and the kids running to raise awareness of it.
I organized a caravan with that same friend along with others to go from LA and to the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia to protest in favor of Bernie Sanders because we knew he wasn’t going to win the Democratic nomination, and he opposed the Dakota Access pipeline. It was then that we were informed that the runners (youth running across the country to raise awareness about the pipeline) were in Ohio, and we went there, met up with them, and organized rallies for them in DC and New York.
Before Standing Rock, I wasn’t tapped into the global indigenous activism community. Meeting the runners was my first interaction with people of indigenous identity outside of Hawaii. Jasilyn Charger, the young founder of the #NoDAPL movement, was the first runner I connected with. I gave her a carved bone necklace of a turtle that I [had] never [taken] off until that day, and she gave me her medicine bag which was also shaped like a turtle. It was a beautiful moment of connection.
On our way to New York in tandem with the Standing Rock runners, we got word that pipeline construction was starting in North Dakota, so we headed there to protect the water and stop the pipeline. On the way to North Dakota, I turned twenty-two. I got to Standing Rock the day after my twenty-second birthday. And the next day, I was arrested.
What were the most powerful moments at Standing Rock?
I’d say it was the very first time that we started experiencing the armored vehicles. Authorities raided the north camp. [A] line of police and [a] line of water protectors face to face. We were not letting the police pass us to build the deadly Dakota Access Pipeline, and so we served as physical barriers between the construction and the sacred land we were protecting.
The police were armed and wore body gear and armor. We came in peace.
There was a specific moment when I was with Jasilyn Charger and we got pepper sprayed. I was yelling out to the youth council: Keep your eyes on the weapons! Once you see the mace come up, duck! The police were trying to get us to back down and let them build the pipeline.
Jasilyn was sprayed, and I pulled her away and helped flush her eyes. Then I was sprayed and she helped me. After hours of that, the police line and armored vehicles stopped and over the loudspeaker said, “All police personnel, report behind the armored vehicles!”
Those police backed away, and we were shoulder to shoulder looking around, thinking, What’s going to happen?
Meanwhile, there were more armored police with bean bag guns that flanked us and on the other side there were snipers pointed all of us Water Protectors. With snipers pointed at my friends and me, that was the moment that I feared most for my life. None of us had any clue what was going to happen to us. But we knew that we were there to protect the water and our mother earth, so we stood our ground.
What are your tips for other young activists?
SLOW. DOWN.
As protectors, we become hardened. Especially as youth, we start to get really aged as we face the injustices in our world. We stop seeing the beauty in life. And that really really affects our mental health and it’s not a sustainable way of going through the world. If you keep moving so fast, you’re gonna go down a rabbit hole, become depressed, and BURN OUT.
When I look to my elders and think How the hell have they been doing this for so long and still do it?! they tell me they’ve lasted so long in our fights for justice because they’ve been taking it day by day.
You do not have to be present for everything, You do not have to fight for every cause and you do not have to fight alone. You can and should take breaks. Especially when you know you’re tired. Understand your personal boundaries and the signs in your mind and body that point to you being exhausted.
You’re not going to be the one who fixes everything. You’re not always going to be the one who makes a difference, and that’s okay. Encourage others to be leaders — as a leader you also have to be an incredible supporter of others, [who] listens and is confident in others to make a difference.
Be mindful that sometimes when we think of solutions, what we think of are these really large blanket solutions. But most of the time the solutions are in the microcosms, the little things we do. Change is not going to be easy. The small things [are] where you can make a difference; changes in your daily life like living more sustainably. Ask yourself if you’re willing to do this and if you’re not, then ask yourself if you’re really willing to heal what has already been done.
Also, don’t neglect your physical health! What we consume, what we eat, how we maintain our microbiome of our gut, which is so important to mental stability and mental health and our overall wellbeing. Take care of your body as you work for justice, always.
