Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 22, Number 9, 1 September 2005 — Present at the creation [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Present at the creation

A key figure in the establishment of OHA anel later the state's first Hawaiian governor, John

Waihe'e III remembers the agency's birth anel contemplates its future

lnterview by Derek Ferrar Photos by Sterling Kini Wong /h 1978, a young Hawaiian attorney named John David Waihe 'e III was the unofftciaI majority Ieader at the state Constitutional Convention and a key figure in the establishment of the Offtce of Hawaiian Affairs and other groundbreaking Hawaiian measures. Eight years later, Waihe'e heeame the state 'sfirst governorofHawaiian ancestry, and during his term he negotiated a payment of more than $130 million in long overdue ceded lands revenue payments to OHA - funds that formed. the core of a trust that is now worth about $400 million. Tod.ay, Waihe'e's son, John Waihe 'e IV, serves as one of the agency's nine elected trustees. part of Ka Wai OlaA speeial series commemorating OHA's 25th year, we sat d.own with former Gov. Waihe'e to get his mana'o on the birth of OHA, and. how the agency he helped create has fared. since then. You haā a major role in forming the iāea of OHA. What was your intent anā hopes for the agency back then? It started with a kind of evolution in the '70s, with people whose objective was to gain control of resources and programs, especially Hawaiian Homes, that were meant for the benefit of Hawaiians but weren't being run by Hawaiians. Meanwhile, there was a lot of development going on across the state, and Hawaiians started to look at land issues. That was followed by the Kaho'olawe movement, whieh added a spiritual basis to the land struggle. Then something very significant happened, whieh was that the struggle turned from social action into a kind of nationalism.

All of these things eome together by 1978, when we find ourselves at the convention, and the magic word at the convention is "sovereignty." From that whole mix evolves the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. Was there one particular moment when the iāea really took form? Aunty Frenchy [De Soto] called a meeting of the Con-Con's Hawaiian Affairs Committee, so that all these interest groups could eome together and thrash it out. Nobody left the room. There was prayer, there was yelling, and whatever else you needed to have. At the end, a consensus emerged. It was Aunty Frenchy - maybe they were terrified by her, maybe they were persuaded by her; I don't know. My job was to get the rest of the convention to pass what the Hawaiians put together in the eommittee, and to get the broader eommunity to buy into it. We had to take this concept of an elected Hawaiian entity, the closest thing we had to sovereignty since the overthrow, and sell it to a group of people that never thought something like that would be possible in their lifetime. In order to do that, we had to fit it into things that people could understand, and one of those things was reparations for the overthrow - that there needed to be a vehicle through whieh Hawaiians could have some say over the ceded lands. So OHA heeame that vehicle. But you know, the idea all along was that all this would fold into something larger someday, basically the kind of Hawaiian governing entity that we're discussing today. That was the natural progression. Why āiān 'l it happen sooner? I guess ultimately it was because we weren't ready yet. Maybe today we are. Even in the Hawaiian eom-

munity, it was seen as a radical departure from the norm, and if you ean understand the hesitation among Hawaiians, you ean understand that there was even more hesitation in the general puhlie. The first thing that happened after it eame out of the Con-Con was that it just barely passed ratification by the general puhlie. Then when we got to the Legislature, they tried to undo everything we had done, so by the time OHA was finally started in 1980, it really did not reflect the whole spirit of the Con-Con. How so? OHA was restricted, and the Legislature intended it never to be a strong agency. If many people had their way, it would have been just another Hawaiian committee discussing issues without any teeth. In fact, one of the most interesting understated facts of Hawai'i's history is that when the OHA legislation was actually voted, not a single member of the legislature who had been a delegate at the Constitutional Convention voted for the OHA bill, because it had been sold out. How did that happen? The first thing is that they didn't deal with the issue of funding. The second thing is that they made it in charge of everything, but without

anything to work with. But the worst thing was that they didn't follow through on the idea that OHA should have a strong executive. The first legislation that was initially written proposed that the OHA trustees would be like a legislative branch, but there was to be a very central, strong executive to get the program started. But all of that was taken away, and what happened instead was that OHA essentially became like a committee. What you had then is a group of people with a huge mandate, but without any funds. So just the fact that OHA has survived 25 years is kind of a tribute. How do you feel about the agency today? I'm very pleased with the role OHA is now playing with the Akaka Bill, because I think that was something that we envisioned. OHA was as far as we could go in 1978, but it was also meant to be a transition, and the anticipation was that someday somebody would take a second step. If you look at all the Hawaiian legislation that eame out of the Con-Con, it was made to be put together. It identified every issue we were entitled to. It clearly identified ceded lands as a Hawaiian legacy. Water rights, land revenue, funding of Hawaiian Homes, customary rights of access, making Hawaiian an official language of the state, mandatory Hawaiian cultural education in the public schools. All these things were put in the constitution. This was a very comprehensive package, and if you put all of it together, you have the creation of a nation. See WAIHE'E on page 8

S E R V I N G { H A W A I I A N S

Waihe'e

Continued from page 5 Whul do you think will happen as result ofthe legal challenges now facing OHA anā other Hawaiian programs? Obviously, my hope is that the Akaka Bill gets passed, and it all gets straightened out. But my fear is that the worst is yet to eome. I think that these challenges that are happening to natives are part of a mueh broader national scenario. Today, there are right-wing forces, with a lot of money, who have the same agenda as a hundred years ago. Only now they are mueh cleverer at selling it. The insidiousness of the lawsuit situation is not what immediately happens the day after we lose this suit or that suit; it's what happens 50 years from now, when you look back and you realize that you no longer have anything. It's like the OHA elections; now everybody votes in the OHA election, and at first that seemed like a sin beyond compare. Now we're eomfortable with it, and it really hasn't changed mueh. Let's say we lose the admissions to Kamehameha Schools; that's the next great sin. But in a little while, a few kids will get admitted, and for the most part things will continue as usual. But it will no longer be a Hawaiian institution. Our greatest enemy in all of these battles is that the pain that we are going to feel is not so painful. That's the real danger that I see, that it's so easy to accommodate it. But 50 years from now, when the school is no longer what it's like today, it'll be too late. This is the danger of this whole situation These are perilous times. The only

silver lining is that perhaps it takes these kinds of times to unify our eommunity. Whul woulā you say OHA's biggest successes have been, and what have been it's biggest shortcomings ? OHA's biggest success is that it has survived. I know that sounds a little trivial, but from the very day it started there were people who intended it not to survive. The fact that it didn't just fade away like many people wanted and is still out there kicking for Hawaiian

issues is a major accomplishment. When OHA has had its bad moments is when it has not moved forward, for whatever reason - because the trustees were fighting, because it didn't have money, or whatever. When it's had its good moments, it has accomplished something. Let me put it this way: for me, 25 years later, if the Akaka Bill passes, I believe it will be largely as a result of what OHA is doing. And for me that would mean the last 25 years was worth every moment. Because in 1978 when we created OHA, it was precisely to do something like that, and the rest is icing on the eake. To read an expanded version of this interview, visit www.oha.org. T-;i