Footage from 1985 documentary falsely linked to Maui wildfires

"Lahaina, Maui Cover-Up. Heartbreaking," says a September 7, 2023 post sharing the video on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. "This isn't the way to treat victims of a disaster...in your own country...even worse."

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Screenshot from X, formerly known as Twitter, taken September 11, 2023

The nearly two-minute video shows a young girl yelling at police before cutting to scenes of the officers handcuffing people, physically removing them from their properties and loading them into vans.

Similar posts spread the video across X and elsewhere -- including TikTok, Facebook and Instagram -- weeks after wildfires decimated the town of Lahaina on the island of Maui, killing at least 115 people.

Some posts blamed US President Joe Biden or warned of a government takeover, while others advanced a conspiracy theory falsely claiming the August 2023 fires were intentionally set by high-energy lasers.

But the shared clips instead come from the trailer for a documentary about the June 3, 1985 eviction of Hawaiians living on Waimanalo Beach Park on the island of Oahu. Local authorities confirmed to AFP on September 12, 2023 that the footage is unrelated to the recent fires.

The full trailer for the documentary (archived here) is almost four minutes long.

“In 1985, a group of houseless native Hawaiians took a stand for their right to live at Waimanalo Beach Park, an area set aside as Hawaiian Home Lands,” says an online description for the 37-minute film (archived here and here). “The resulting police action and violent eviction is the subject of this video. Iconic footage from this video has been used in numerous other documentaries around the world.”

Under the federal Hawaiian Home Lands Commission Act of 1920, some 200,000 acres of land across the state were reserved as "Hawaiian home lands" to be administered as homesteads to qualifying native Hawaiians with at least 50 percent Hawaiian blood.

Independent filmmakers Joan Lander and Abraham "Puhipau" Ahmad created the "Waimanalo Eviction" documentary via their production company Na Maka o ka Aina, which means "The Eyes of the Land."

The project aired on Hawaii's cable public access stations and the local PBS station, according to their website.

Reached by AFP, Lander said in a September 11, 2023 email that Hawaiian authorities had a policy of clearing the state's beach parks for cleaning on a rotating basis, during which time they would dismantle the tents and camp sites inhabited by homeless populations.

"A group of Hawaiians wanted to make a stand at Waimanalo beach park, on the island of O’ahu, to show that Hawaiians had a right to live on land that was designated Hawaiian Home Lands," Lander told AFP, adding that the grass shack seen in the footage was "the staging area for the demonstration."

"It was all planned out, to resist whatever police action might take place. But no one knew how the resulting struggle would actually play out. It got to be very emotionally devastating and physical, as the group of Hawaiians inside the shack, who had locked their arms together, were pulled, often violently, away and taken to the paddy wagons. One arrestee claimed his arm was broken by the action."

Lander estimated that between 15 and 20 people were arrested.

Ahmad, who died in 2016, can be seen reporting from the beach at the end of the clip being misrepresented online. He signs off as "Puhipau."

"This is the most recent in a series of arrests and evictions from the beaches of Hawaii,” Ahmad says.

Diamond Badajos, information and community relations officer for the state's Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, told AFP: "This decades old video has been erroneously linked to the current situation in Lahaina."

AFP contacted the Maui County police for comment, but no response was forthcoming.

AFP has previously debunked other misinformation about the Hawaii wildfires, including here, here and here.