Malia, a Native Hawaiian salt farmer, is confronted with the effects of Climate Change. She grew up molding clay into salt beds, transferring water from the natural ocean wells, and raking through her family’s crystallized salt sheets.
Now, the ancestral salt ponds where generations of salt practitioners have built farms for their families are flooding. The summer season, their peak time for harvesting, is too wet for salt to form.

A fierce and determined leader of the salt-making community, Malia takes it upon herself to find the cause of this crushing stop to their cultural practice.
Combining modern science with indigenous knowledge, she discovers that sand dunes between the rising ocean levels and the farm area are shrinking from the weight of tourists’ vehicles. She and the community behind her successfully advocate for local government policies to protect the area.
A few years later, she is able to return to salt-making.

Her fight against the global climate crisis is far from over.
We wanted to tell her story to the world.