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Editor’s note: For Hawaii’s Aug. 10 Primary Election, Civil Beat asked candidates to answer some questions about where they stand on various issues and what their priorities will be if elected.

The following came from Z. Ka’apana Aki, candidate for Office Of Hawaiian Affairs Hawaii Island Trustee. His primary opponents are Hope Alohalani Cermelj, Kaialiʻi Kahele and Hulali Waltjen-Kuilipule.

Go to Civil Beat’s Election Guide for general information, and check out other candidates on the Primary Election Ballot.

1. What do you see as the most pressing problem facing Native Hawaiians, and what will you do about it?

There are two most pressing and interrelated problems facing Native Hawaiians and they are cultural identity erasure and economic instability.

The overrepresentation of Native Hawaiians among the most financially insecure, impoverished, and homeless stems from unresolved historical injustices that have long deprived Native Hawaiians of land, home and economic opportunities. As a result, Native Hawaiians outmigration — essentially being priced out of Hawaii — is also happening at a greater rate than any other group.

When Native Hawaiians are removed from their ancestral lands, the traditional and customary practices of the culture become lost, and the sacred places and natural-cultural resources become vulnerable to desecration and destruction. This is Native Hawaiian cultural identity erasure. 

Effectively addressing these prevailing issues requires a major policy shift in the State of Hawaii that both recognizes Native Hawaiian vulnerability and disparities in these areas as well as a commitment to advance necessary solutions.

As an OHA trustee, I will be in a position to require OHA to face these issues by dedicating its resources toward solution-driven operations. These are enormous conversations that need to be held in every community across the state and with stakeholders (including government agencies) involved every step of the way.

2. Should OHA be subject to oversight by the Hawaii State Ethics Commission?

Yes, OHA should be subject to oversight by the Hawaii State Ethics Commission. Ethics are in place for transparency and accountability contributing to the public good and OHA, as a state agency serving not only Native Hawaiian beneficiaries, but everyone who calls Hawaii, home, should be held to those laws.

3. Do you support the construction of the TMT atop Mauna Kea? Why or Why not? Could the new management structure help to resolve long-standing disputes?

I could support the construction of the Thirty-Meter-Telescope and other responsible astronomical development atop Mauna Kea. I also think that the new management structure could certainly contribute to resolving long-standing disputes. OHA should be playing a bigger role in that. However, I believe the existing TMT model hasn’t quite reached the level of responsible astronomical development that I’m comfortable with, nor should we, as a state, accept.

To me, responsible astronomical development (and development, generally) means that, at the very least, there will be equity in the give-and-take of our shared public resources — especially those resources that are deemed to be among the most sacred by long-standing Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners.

TMT could serve as not only a tool to advance western astronomy, but also Native Hawaiian traditional astronomy. TMT could serve as a hub for cultural practitioners stewarding the summit. TMT could also contribute to greater economic development by establishing workforce pipelines that provide youth with scholarships to degree programs in astronomy (and Native Hawaiian cultural) related disciplines as well as guaranteed jobs upon graduation. TMT could serve as a model responsible astronomical development and I strongly support that.

4. What role should the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands play in reducing homelessness?

The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, with regard to homelessness, should be focusing on expeditiously reducing its waitlist. DHHL was a product of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920 to stave off Native Hawaiian erasure (health decline, loss of land and forceful out-migration). It was determined that Native Hawaiians needed their own homesteads in order to rehabilitate. By federal mandate, DHHL doesn’t serve all Native Hawaiians — there is a blood quantum requirement.

So let’s be really clear here, Native Hawaiians are in fact overrepresented among the homeless in Hawaii, but that is not because DHHL hasn’t developed enough housing inventory to adequately address the needs of HHCA beneficiaries (blood quantum-qualifying Native Hawaiians) on its waitlist. Native Hawaiian overrepresentation among the homeless is a symptom of an oppressive socio-economic system of state governance — keep in mind, the skyrocketing cost of living isn’t just a Native Hawaiian problem.

It’s the governor’s and the Legislature’s responsibility to mitigate homelessness — it’s not DHHL’s responsibility. Again, DHHL’s role should primarily be focused on reducing its waitlist.

5. Why do you think Hawaiians are disproportionately represented in our prisons and jails? What can be done about it?

I know that the reason for Native Hawaiian overrepresentation in our prisons and jails is due to socio-economic upheaval and instability stemming from unresolved historical injustices. Native Hawaiian self-determination was stolen 131 years ago — the ability to determine how one should live and even thrive.

Native Hawaiians were subjected to ethnocide, where our culture (language) was seen as the primary resistance to accepting the new order, and erasing Native Hawaiian identity was the only means to pacify Native Hawaiians. Native Hawaiian communal structures and systems were dismantled. Native Hawaiians were forced from their ancestral lands and in their absence, their roots (the sacred places, burials, evidence that they existed) were destroyed and paved over by a new history.

The plight of a great many Native Hawaiians is not only filled with trans-generational trauma, but also trans-generational economic instability that is continuously compounded and worsened. Our social structures were destroyed and never repaired, so those vulnerable to the trauma have no support structure to uplift them. We’re all in a big rat race to survive, so we lack the resources to freely give and support each other. The most vulnerable end up in jail or worse.

6. What are your views regarding Hawaiian self-determination?

I absolutely support Native Hawaiian self-determination. Let me clarify what that is, as a formally trained juris doctor in international law and federal Indian law. Self-determination is simply the ability to make decisions free from external intervention. Each of us exercise some degree of self-determination in our daily lives. As a state, Hawaii exercises a degree of self-determination that is free from federal control.

There are seemingly infinite models for what Native Hawaiian self-determination might look like. It’s not total independence versus a state-within-a-state model (that many Native American tribes possess). It’s certainly not an “everyone who isn’t Native Hawaiian has to leave Hawaii” conversation — for me, that’s not an option.

I would like to see a degree of Native Hawaiian self-determination that empowers Native Hawaiians with the authority to control decisions made that impact our existence — for our better future.

7. Is OHA getting its fair share of ceded-land revenues from the state?

No, OHA is not getting its fair share of its portion of the proceeds of the public land trust lands (“ceded lands”) revenue.

Ceded lands are those lands that were once crown (lands owned by the monarch) and government lands held by the Hawaiian Kingdom that were stolen and then given to the U.S. by those who overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom government. The U.S. offered up those lands as the territory of the future State of Hawaii.

By federal mandate on the condition of Hawaii’s admission into the union, a portion of the proceeds and income generated from public lands must go to “the betterment of conditions of Native Hawaiians.” OHA was created to manage and administer those proceeds and income. It had been determined that OHA’s portion was 20%.

OHA is not getting 20%. For example, OHA doesn’t get any portion from the proceeds and income generated from the airport, despite being ceded land. State agencies holding ceded land are also responsible for calculating the 20% owed to OHA, but that calculation isn’t done uniformly across the board, so there are accounting concerns. There are also agencies, who disagree with having to contribute to OHA.

8. Is OHA fulfilling its mandate to serve the Hawaiian people?

No, OHA is currently a broken trust. As a Native Hawaiian and longtime public policy advocate and former public policy manager for OHA, I can say that OHA is not fulfilling its constitutional mandate (Art. XII sec. 5 and 6) nor its statutory mandate (HRS chapter 10-3).

I have frustratingly served on the frontlines of OHA’s advocacy and struggled to get the agency to move where it needs to be to better address its purpose to seek the betterment of conditions of Native Hawaiians. I have seen the hard work of experienced and expert staff getting undermined by administrators and trustees playing a political game for their own personal benefit.

I have seen staff build campaigns to address gap area services for individuals and families experiencing intellectual and developmental disabilities, only for that work to be undermined and shelved by incompetent brand new management looking only to advance strategies that they selfishly come up with. I have seen campaigns to elevate historically disadvantaged rural Native Hawaiian communities get rudely laughed at because they’re reciprocally beneficial to personal career advancement or not flashy or attention-grabbing like Hakuone (OHA’s Kakaako Makai proposal).

9. Is Hawaii managing its tourism industry properly? What should be handled differently?

In my opinion, as a lifelong resident of the state, no, the state isn’t managing its tourism industry properly.

Resident quality of life is being undermined by the tourism industry. We know this because over the long history of tourism here in Hawaii, we’ve developed negative sentiments to the idea of tourists. Tourism is incredibly beneficial to Hawaii — there is no doubt about that — but tourism is also a direct contributor to quality of life disruptions that are indicative of a greater problem with the model of tourism.

Residents see daily problems like competition with tourists, resulting from opportunistic tourism and its crossover with social media that now popularizes locations that local residents once had to ourselves. On a cultural level, more tourists showing up to once-secluded beaches mean disruptions to cultural practices (like fishing), which ultimately leads to identity erasure (because those practices can’t be passed on to the next generation).

Of course, there are also challenges that are less obvious, like how the allure of Hawaii has contributed to runaway real estate prices that contribute to the housing crisis and hurdles for small business enterprise and startups.

10. How would you make OHA more transparent and accessible to the public and the Hawaiian people?

Native Hawaiian beneficiaries and the general public do not see the vast majority of what OHA is up to. As a former OHA public policy manager, the need for greater transparency and accessibility was apparent to me.

I tried to be more transparent and accessible by chronicling the work we were doing through OHA’s Ka Wai Ola publication. I scheduled community advocacy workshops to better interact and engage with all community members. I also attempted to budget for app development so the public could better track our work, and to create a podcast to provide insight and updates.

Most of these attempts at greater transparency and accessibility were rejected by those who I believed did not want to be held to greater accountability. As an OHA trustee, my office would revisit these projects, providing a lens through which the public can see into OHA’s initiatives.

I also believe that there needs to be greater public engagement and interaction. As an OHA trustee, I would push for far greater community engagement — OHA’s operation within an obfuscated silo is the reason why it has become a broken trust. Greater transparency and accessibility is what OHA needs.