Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 30, Number 2, 1 February 2013 — PROMISE KEPT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

PROMISE

KEPT

— By LisaAsato —

When U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye became ehainnan of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in 1987, correspondence that his staffhad drafted to govemors and other leaders in Indian Country stopped him cold. The letters didn't include the term "The Honorable," the traditional, formal address for elected ofhcials. Inouye insisted that the term be added. "Take these letters back; evety tribal leader will be accorded the respect oftheir tribal office. We will have the word 'Honorable, ' " his longtime committee staff director and chief counsel Patricia Zell recalls him saying. Since Inouye's death in December at the age of 88, Zell, now in private practice, has received notes and emails from those who remember the senator for the respect he showed to native people in ways large and small. You ean "pretty mueh stop anyone in the streets in Indian Country and say the senator's name and they'll have a story to tell," she said. The tone and depth of the gratitude - that he was a voice for indigenous people who hadn't previously had a voice in Washington, that he treated them with humility that showed them they were deserving of equal treatment and the kind of respect their country had fallen short on giving - is echoed in his treatment of Native Hawaiians right here at home.

"That man had mana. He used it. He aeknowledged it in different ways and yet in the Hawaiian way humility is strength; it's not a weakness and he was a humhle person," said Winona Rubin, a co-founder in the 1970s of Alu Like, a Hawaiian social and eeonomie service agency that Inouye helped secure federal funding for at its creation and continued to support throughout the years. Rubin, who knew Inouye since his early years as a senator in the 1960s, called him "a true visionary for the Paeihe Century" - someone who looked beyond the usual 20- to 30-year plan and set his sights even further, a half-century to a century ahead. Inouye's message to people in the community was that while mueh had been accomplished there was still more to be done and you're

counted on to help make it happen, said Rubin, who served as Alu Like's first executive director. The senator, she said, while supportive, never got involved in shaping what Alu Like would heeome. "He felt the community knew mueh better what needed to be done." But he would keep up to date on the program, Rubin said, always inquiring, "What's happening with you, how's it going, what outcomes do you have that fit that vision for improving and changing

Hawai'i and the times?" Hardy Spoehr, executive director of the Hawaiian health-focused Papa Ola Lōkahi, echoed Rubin's comments that Inouye's interest in the programs he supported continued long after they launched. "Great example was the Native Hawaiian Health summit that we conducted in 1998," said Spoehr. Leading up to the summit, whieh attracted some 800 people from all islands including Ni'ihau, Papa Ola Lōkahi held a series of smaller meetings statewide. "The senator eame to every one of them," Spoehr recalls. "He just cleared his schedule and said, 'I need to be there with you folks.' " Eaeh year, Hawai'i's senior senator secured millions in federal funds to support Hawaiian programs. Those monies affected everything from pre-K to post-high education, language preservation, job training, culture and heahh care. Spoehr credits Inouye's work together with the late Hawaiian leader Myron "Pinky" Thompson for putting "all the nuts and bolts together in terms of moving the Native Hawaiian Health Care Improvement Act through the process and getting it passed by Congress," in 1988.

"Certainly because of (Inouye's) support in Native Hawaiian heahh, whether it includes money for the Native Hawaiian Heahh Care Systems, for Papa Ola Lōkahi, scholarships or community hospitals serving Native Hawaiian communities, there have been dramatic changes in the last 25 years in terms of the infrastructure necessary to address the chronic disease rates of Hawaiians," Spoehr said. The long-term impact will arise from the scholarship programs that have trained more than 225 Hawaiians in various heahh professions, including physicians, nurses, social workers and "the whole cadre of elinieal psychologists," including Kamana'opono Crabbe, who now serves as OHA's CEO, Spoehr said.

A PROMISE KEPT Inouye's support of Hawaiian programs, Hawaiian leaders said, stemmed in large part from a promise he made to his mother, who was cared for by a Hawaiian family for a time, when she was orphaned at a young age. His mother said to him, "You're going to be in Congress. You're obligated and you're committed to take care of the Native Hawaiian people," recalled Nainoa Thompson, a master navigator who led the revival of noninstrument navigation and whose father, Pinky, advised the senator for decades on the needs of the Hawaiian community. Inouye "never forgot the kindness of that Hawaiian family," whose identity is apparently unknown. The senator also identified with Hawaiians on a personal level. His closest friend was Henry Giugni, a longtime aide and former sergeant-at-arms to the U.S. Senate. And he considered Pinky Thompson a trusted confidant. Nainoa Thompson tells of how Inouye, after Pinky died, showed him a vault-like structure at his Honolulu office. The vault, with foot-and-a-half-thick walls, contained the senator's personal

<MO'OLELO NUI v www.oha.org/kwo kwo@OHA.org C0VER FEATURE f NATIVE HAWAIIAN » NEWS | FEATURES | EVENTS

Sen. Daniel lnouye and Myron "Pinky" Thompson at the blessing of Papa Ola Lōkahi's office in Kaka'ako in 2001 . Both were instrumental to the development and perpetuation of Papa Ola Lōkahi, Alu Like, Polynesian Voyaging Society and more. - Courtesy: Papa Ola Lōkahi

Members of Hawaiian royal societies were among the several thousands who attended lnouye's ceremonial lying in state at the Hawai'i Capitol on Dec. 22. lnouye was a longtime honorary member of the Royal Order of Kamehameha. - Photo: Shane Tegarden

memorabilia. On the wall hung only three framed pictures - of his father, Henry Giugni and Gladys Brandt, a Hawaiian educator. The younger Thompson said Inouye's impact surpasses the funding he secured for Hawaiian programs. "It was his presence. It was his wisdom, ... his articulation of why he supported voyaging that strengthened all of us, because it gave us a sense that he understood the importance of voyaging bringing pride to Native Hawaiians, whieh would help raise personal self-worth and . . . help tear down the crushing impacts of feeling inferior." Thompson's group, the Polynesian Voyaging Society, has benefited from federal funding secured by Inouye on two occasions, Thompson said: in the construction of PVS's second eanoe, Hawai'iloa, in the 1990s, whieh put

to practice the knowledge and skills of traditional eanoe building, and more recently for the upcoming worldwide voyage, whose purposes include grooming the next generation of navigation leaders. Among his teachers, Thompson includes his father, Pinky, master navigator Mau Piailug, artist Herb Kāne and Inouye. Those men and others will be honored in the upcoming worldwide voyage, whieh is planning a summertime launeh. Inouye, he said, is at "the top of the list." Inouye, Thompson said, had the uncanny ability to inspire. He "was constantly strengthening us in many different ways and encouraging us to keep going. If you think this is the right thing to do, get up and go do it. That kind of encouragement is immeasurable and is invaluable. We'll miss him. Deeply. But we don't forget him." Thompson said he doesn't mean to disrespect other leaders in the community, but he simply wanted to give Inouye his due by saying something he considered to be true: "I don't know of any other single individual in my lifetime

that has done more for the betterment of Native Hawaiians than the senator." HAWAIIAN GOVERNANCE In July 2012, at a signing ceremony in D.C., Sen. Inouye became the second person to sign the Kana'iolowalu petition, as a supporter for the state-sponsored creation of a Hawaiian governing entity. U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka - a Native Hawaiian - was the first. "It was very gracious, because Sen. Inouye is the senior senator, but he wanted Dan (Akaka) to sign first," said former Gov. John Waihe'e, chair of the Native Hawaiian Roll Commission. Long before Kana'iolowalu, however, Inouye had supported the idea of Hawaiian self-gover-nanee. He was "instrumental in our being able to create the Office of Hawaiian Affairs through

the 1978 Con Con," said Waihe'e, a delegate at the Constitutional Convention. Delegates who had been undecided about creating a state agency dedicated to improving conditions for Native Hawaiians eame to embrace the idea onee Inouye threw his support behind it. "There were 101 delegates in the Con Con and (advancing an idea) out of the (Hawaiian Affairs)

committee was one thing; getting everybody to sup-

port it on the floor of the convention was a whole different matter," said Waihe'e, who in 1986 became the state's first Native Hawaiian governor. Several years after the Con Con, Waihe'e remembers being called with three friends to Inouye's apartment in Honolulu. Unbeknownst to him, Inouye also invited some key advisers. Since the mid-'70s at least, Inouye had been floating the idea of getting a Hawaiian governor elected and had created a committee of Hawaiian leaders to discuss it. Waihe'e was a youth representative on the committee. At that meeting in Inouye's apartment, Waihe'e recalls: "Nobody knew what he was going to talk about. It was at that meeting that he says, I think the first Hawaiian governor is in our room, and he pointed at me and everybody was in a state of shock. . . . As a result, some of his supporters started to pay more attention to us" and supported Waihe'e in his run for the state House of Representatives in 1980, Waihe'e said. Inouye "was the first one to express that kind of confidence in me," says Waihe'e, adding that

it wasn't insider politics. "If it didn't work out (with me), he would have found somebody else." "His support was weleome and it was important to me and it was very helpful, but I never considered me as his objective," he added. "And I think it would be a mistake to shortchange his contribution. I happened to be lucky to be a beneficiary of what his real objective was - to get a Hawaiian governor elected." GUIDING PRINCIPLE In May 2004, Inouye gave a commencement address at the University of Hawai'i law school. He announced that legislation and funding were in plaee to establish at the school a Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law. And he outlined the potential he saw in the center this way: "It is my hope that this center will serve as an important educational resource as Native Hawaiians and the broader community move forward together to achieve a measure of reconciliation for the loss of Native Hawaiian sovereignty, resulting from the unlawful overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai'i in 1893." 2004 was also the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court ruling that outlawed segregation in public schools as unconstitutional. The senator, a decorated war veteran who served on the famed all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team, used the oeeasion to discuss equality and how segregation had existed in Hawai'i through English-stan-dard schools, and how far America had eome since the segregated units of World War II. The Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law, he said, was his humble "ho'okupu, or gift, to the school . . . in perpetuating the spirit of Brown v. Board of Education," whieh he saw as a way of leveling the playing field. Not unlike what the law school's Ulu Lehua preadmission program, begun in 1974, had achieved in its three decades of helping disadvantaged and underrepresented students take an additional year to prepare for the rigors of law school. That program, he said, committed to aehon the spirit of the Brown decision. "Just think for a moment about the many lives that were made better over the 30-year span. It has generated hope, self-esteem and eeonomie independence." Later, he ended his speech by saying: "I leave you with 35 words that have been my guiding principle throughout my years of service. Follow them, and you will never go wrong in whatever path you choose: "We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienahle rights. That among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." ■

lnouye, a ehampion for Native Hawaiian heallh programs, helped the Waimānalo Heallh Center celebrate its 20th anniversary in August 201 2. - Courtesy: Waimānalo Health Center

Now retired-U.S. Sen. ūaniel Akaka, left, and lnouye, at a Senate lndian Affairs Committee hearing at the O'ahu Veterans Center in Foster Village in April 2012. - Courtesy: Elaine Fergerstrom

Crewmember Catherine Fuller releases flowers into the sea during a Polynesian Voyaging Society sail in Māmala Bay honoring Sen. Daniel lnouye. - Courtesy: Monte Costa