大象传媒

On Aug. 8, 2023, 13-year-old Kaliko was getting ready for her hula class at her mother鈥檚 house in West Maui. The power was out, and she heard there was a wildfire in L膩hain膩, where her dad lived, but she didn鈥檛 think much of it. Wildfires happened all the time in the summer.

Within hours, Kaliko learned this wasn鈥檛 a normal fire, and that her dad鈥檚 house was gone. The L膩hain膩 fire consumed the town, killing 102 people and destroying more than 2,000 buildings, the flames fanned by a potent .

This month marks the one-year anniversary of the deadliest wildfire in modern United States history, one that changed Hawai驶i forever and made Kaliko more determined to defend her community.

This summer she who forced the state of Hawai驶i to agree to , which is responsible for half of the state鈥檚 greenhouse gas emissions. (We are only using her first name because she is a minor and filed the lawsuit without her surname.)

Now 14, she has spent the past year going to protests and testifying at water commission meetings to defend Indigenous water rights. She sees her advocacy as part of her kuleana, a Hawaiian word that connotes both a privilege and a responsibility, to her community in West Maui where her Native Hawaiian family has lived for 19 generations.

鈥淚鈥檓 from this place, it鈥檚 my main kuleana to take care of it like my kupuna have in the past,鈥� she said, referring to her ancestors. 

Across the country and globe, young people are filing lawsuits to try to hold governments and companies accountable for their role in promoting climate change. At the center of many are Indigenous youth like Kaliko who feel an enormous urgency and responsibility to step up and protect their land and cultural resources from this latest colonial onslaught on their way of life. 

In May, 鈥攈alf of whom are Alaska Native鈥攕ued the state to block a liquefied natural gas pipeline project that鈥檚 expected to triple the state鈥檚 greenhouse gas emissions. In June, Indigenous youth and environmental groups in New Mexico in a lawsuit challenging the oil and gas industry. 

In July, the Montana Supreme Court , a lawsuit brought by Montana youth challenging the state鈥檚 law that forbids agencies from considering climate change in their environmental reviews. The plaintiffs include Native American youth who say worsening wildfires and warmer days are making it harder to continue their cultural traditions. 

It鈥檚 not just the United States. In 2022, Indigenous youth in Australia against a destructive coal project. A few years earlier, Indigenous youth in Colombia joined a broader youth lawsuit Rainforest to protection and conservation. 

The cases are part of globally including a rise in climate cases in countries ranging from to New Zealand. 

Korey G. Silverman-Roati, a fellow at the Columbia Law School鈥檚 Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said there鈥檚 growing recognition that not only are Indigenous people uniquely susceptible to climate impacts but their unique human rights protections can lend extra power to climate cases. 

The lawsuit Kaliko helped bring wasn鈥檛 centered on Indigenous legal rights, but most of the plaintiffs were Native youth like her, and they collectively secured one of the most successful outcomes in the history of U.S. climate litigation. 鈥淭hat might be a signal to future folks interested in bringing climate litigation that these might be especially persuasive plaintiffs,鈥� Silverman-Roati said.

To Katy Stewart, who works at the Aspen Center鈥檚 , the willingness of Indigenous youth like Kaliko to take the lead in these cases makes sense. Her organization recently surveyed more than 1,000 Indigenous youth and conducted focus groups to learn what they care about. When it came to climate change, emotions ran hot. 

鈥淲hat we are seeing and hearing a lot was anger, frustration, and a want to do something,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t was hopeful to me that there wasn鈥檛 sort of a 鈥榞iving up and this is over for us.鈥� More of 鈥榃e need to do something because we鈥檙e the ones seeing this right now.鈥欌��

For teenagers like Kaliko, litigation offers an opportunity to force change in a political and economic system that has long resisted calls to climate action. It also feels like a necessary step to protect her home. 

鈥淚t鈥檚 really important to me that other kids don鈥檛 have to go through what I鈥檝e experienced, and that鈥檚 what drives me to do this stuff,鈥� Kaliko said. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 really just like the thought of 鈥業f I don鈥檛 do it, then who will?鈥欌��

When Johnny Juarez from Albuquerque thinks of climate change, he thinks of New Mexico鈥檚 oil fields, vast and expansive and dominant in the state鈥檚 economy. Juarez is 22, and in the time he鈥檚 been alive, the state鈥檚 oil production has ramped up 10 times.

The drilling has expanded even though there鈥檚 scientific consensus that burning fossil fuels is causing incredible damage to the Earth. It鈥檚 ramped up despite affecting neighboring communities and regardless of the deadly risks to workers, such as in the case of Randy Yellowman, a 47-year-old

Talking about the harms of the oil and gas industry is hard in New Mexico, though, because it鈥檚 such an entrenched economic driver. Yellowman had been on the job 17 years when he was killed. Juarez, an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna, knows Native families whose parents and grandparents worked in the oil fields and see it as a viable career for themselves and their children. 

鈥淲hat a just transition looks like to us is centering those families that are going to be most impacted and making sure that they get the support they need,鈥� Juarez said. Juarez has talked a lot about the 鈥渏ust transition鈥� in his job as a community organizer, the concept of moving away from fossil fuels to rely instead on green energy and doing so in a way that respects the rights of marginalized peoples. 

He thinks it鈥檚 an essential step, and that鈥檚 one of the reasons he鈥檚 one of the that contends the state is violating its constitution by failing to control pollution caused by the fossil fuel industry. 

To Juarez, suing to stop the fossil fuel industry feels like a necessary continuation of his family鈥檚 legacy of standing up against environmental racism. Long before he was born, his great-grandfather sued the Jackpile Mine, a gigantic open-pit uranium mine, for violating their property rights. The family lost their suit, and decades after the mine closed, Indigenous families continue to of the mine.

Juarez鈥檚 family left the reservation because of the uranium pollution, and Juarez grew up in Albuquerque, where he was raised by his grandfather, a former sheepherder and graduate of a federal Indian boarding school. Still, they returned to the reservation to celebrate feast days, and Juarez鈥檚 childhood is peppered with memories of fishing with his grandfather and watching cultural dances. 

鈥淎s Pueblo people, we鈥檙e really fortunate that, despite very violent attempts, we were never removed from our ancestral homelands and reside exactly where the colonizers found us,鈥� he said. Environmental justice feels like another birthright. 

鈥淭his was actually a fight that I was really born into,鈥� Juarez said. 鈥淭he fossil fuel industry and fossil fuel extraction and fracking and oil and gas exploration is really just the next chapter in colonial extractivism in New Mexico.鈥�

That鈥檚 exactly how Beze Gray of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Canada feels. In 2019, they , three of whom are Indigenous, who sued the government of Ontario for weakening its climate goals. Gray grew up in the and saw firsthand how pollution hurt their community. Now, compounding that harm are climate-change-fueled shorter winters that are making it tougher to continue Indigenous ways of living. 

鈥淲e used to have a month to do sugar bushing, and now it鈥檚 spread out into days,鈥� Gray said of their traditional practice of collecting maple water and boiling it into sugar. 鈥淭his feeling of loss and grief of experiencing life with climate change鈥攊t impacts so many of our traditional ways.鈥� 

Even though Juarez鈥檚 lawsuit passed its first legal hurdle, it鈥檚 far from clear whether it鈥檒l be successful. Gray鈥檚 case, too, has faced setbacks and is awaiting a ruling on appeal. Many climate lawsuits don鈥檛 go anywhere鈥攁 court decides that the people suing don鈥檛 have standing, or the law doesn鈥檛 say what the plaintiffs think it does, or a judge decides that their concerns are valid but they sued the wrong defendants the wrong way. 

Those disappointments have taught plaintiffs to be persistent. is an Oregon-based nonprofit that has spearheaded many of the youth-led lawsuits in the U.S., including the cases in Montana and Hawai驶i. When their attorney Andrew Well talks about their Alaska case, he clarifies that their current litigation is called Sagoonick v. State of Alaska II. A previous lawsuit, Sagoonick v. State of Alaska, with the same named plaintiff, failed after a judge ruled that the youth couldn鈥檛 sue the state for its systemic actions but could challenge particular state agency decisions. So that鈥檚 what they鈥檙e doing this time, challenging the state鈥檚 support of a proposed 800-mile liquefied natural gas pipeline stretching from north to south. 

Summer Sagoonick, an I帽upiat Alaskan from Unalakleet, was just 15 when the first lawsuit was filed. Over the past 10 years, climate change in Alaska has accelerated, with the state warming Permafrost , salmon are disappearing from the Yukon River, and crabs are . By the time this next case resolves, the Alaska that she grew up with may not exist.

Globally, Indigenous peoples because of their dependence on land and water. In the U.S., modern-day reservations are more susceptible than Indigenous , extreme weather events expected to worsen as the Earth warms. 

Stewart from the Center for Native American Youth said not only are Indigenous youth watching their climate change firsthand, but they鈥檙e also experiencing climate loss on top of existing trauma. Youth like Juarez are just a generation or two away from government boarding schools that ripped Indigenous children away from their homes in an attempt to assimilate them. Now, many are in the process of trying to reclaim the cultures and languages that were stolen from generations before but are confronting the reality that a warmer Earth could prevent many traditions from persisting. 

Becoming plaintiffs in climate lawsuits is a way of combating that grief and turning it into something productive.

鈥淚f you can take this despair and anger and frustration and be able to put it somewhere, that does wonders for your own self-esteem and your own belief in the future and your own hope for the future,鈥� Stewart said. 鈥淭he starting point of believing that you matter is being listened to. And I think we鈥檙e seeing young people stepping into that role and having hope that things can get better.鈥� 

Holding onto that hope isn鈥檛 easy. The day L膩hain膩 burned, Kaliko was shocked, but thinks it may have been easier for her to stomach the loss because it wasn鈥檛 the first time she had lost a home.

She was just 8 years old back in 2018 when a tropical storm hit Maui. on the island before, but her mom had a bad feeling about this one, and so she told Kaliko to pack up some of her things and they left. 

Theirs were the only family in the valley they knew of that evacuated, and when they came back, theirs was the only house that had been completely destroyed by flooding. Gone were the paintings in Kaliko鈥檚 bedroom, including the pretty one of the cardinal above her bed. Gone were her dresses, including her favorite pink-and-green one with a lei on it.

In that way, the grief of the L膩hain膩 wildfire felt familiar. But this time, her whole life was upended. Suddenly, school was completely online. Then she and her classmates were moved to a temporary campus. She couldn鈥檛 go to the beaches where she used to swim after the state blocked off the burn area. She didn鈥檛 see her friends as often because they were moving around a lot and missing a lot of classes. 

Kaliko felt grateful that she had her mom鈥檚 house, that she hadn鈥檛 been in L膩hain膩 the day of the fire, and that she hadn鈥檛 lost loved ones the same way that other kids did. But she also felt scared. 

鈥淭his is just going to keep happening,鈥� she thought. The realization is motivating her to join the Hawai鈥榠 Department of Transportation鈥檚 youth council created by her lawsuit鈥檚 settlement so that she can hold the state accountable to its decarbonization promises. 

More recently, in a lot of ways, life has gone back to normal. This summer, she attended her eighth-grade banquet, graduated from middle school, and competed in the state championships with her outrigger canoe paddling team. 

Still, she feels acutely aware that everything can change overnight. And she doesn鈥檛 want what happened to her to happen to anyone else. 

Twenty-one years from now鈥攖he deadline for the state of Hawai驶i to decarbonize its transportation system鈥擪aliko hopes to still be living at home, doing what she can to make a difference. 

鈥淚 want to mainly be advocating for my community,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think I can imagine myself doing anything else.鈥�