Title: WIND, POWER, AND PROTEST: DISCOURSE, GOVERNANCE, AND RESISTANCE IN RENEWABLE ENERGY TRANSIONS: A COMPARATIVE CASE STUDY OF KAHUKU AND LAVA RIDGE

Program: Public Policy and Administration PhD

Committee Chair: Chris Birdsall

Committee: Chris Birdsall, Jared Talley, Christopher Courtheyn

Abstract: This dissertation examines how community resistance to renewable energy infrastructure reflects deeper struggles over governance, legitimacy, and cultural meaning. Through a comparative case study of the Kahuku Wind Resistance in Hawai‘i and the Lava Ridge Wind Project in Idaho, the study investigates how Indigenous and rural communities mobilize discourse, memory, and social capital to challenge energy development that is framed as sustainable but experienced as exclusionary.

Using a combination of thematic analysis and critical discourse analysis, the research analyzes more than 190 documents—including Facebook posts, public comments, policy reports, and media coverage—to trace how resistance actors construct counter-narratives, assert alternative forms of legitimacy, and challenge the framing of land and sustainability.

Findings show that in Kahuku, resistance is rooted in Indigenous ethics of stewardship, genealogy, and kuleana, rejecting extractive governance and calling for relational approaches to sustainability. In Lava Ridge, resistance centers on the protection of the Minidoka National Historic Site and rural land practices, with Japanese American descendants and local residents opposing the project as a violation of memory, place, and community integrity.

The dissertation introduces the concept of cultural environmentalities—a form of resistance grounded in ancestral obligation, sacred relationships to land, and ethical refusal. These cases illustrate that resistance is not necessarily opposition to climate action, but a demand for more just, inclusive, and culturally grounded energy transitions.

It concludes with policy and theoretical recommendations for improving environmental governance by centering community voice, memory, and place-based meaning.