 Aloha, welcome to Think Tech Hawai'i's Movers, Shakers, and Reformers Politics in Hawai'i series. I'm your host, Carl Kempanya. Today we're going to be talking about Native Hawaiian issues. There are a lot of Native Hawaiian issues to be really addressed that need to be addressed really in full, and it goes back to a long, long history. I'm not going to pretend that I know all of the history, but I do know some of it. I'm aware of it. So we have sovereignty issues. We have local issues here that deal with education. We have protests issues. We have land issues, which is related to sovereignty, but has obviously different capacities and different areas of that, including TMT. There's a lot of really areas to talk about. Today we're going to focus in a little bit on a couple of those areas, but I will invite you to join us and my guest today, Mr. Ikaika Hussi. Thank you for joining us today. Ikaika is a number of things, actually, and I want him to tell us a bit about him, but partially one of the things is he's a member of the Hawaiian Alliance for Progressive Action. So congratulations for that, and thank you for joining the show, and tell us a bit about yourself and where you are politically with Hapa, where you are Native Hawaiian side. Sure. So I've been involved in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement for about this point, let's see, 20 years, I think almost exactly 20 years. I got involved right after I graduated from high school, and it was a really interesting time. It was the mid-90s, a time when questions around Hawaiian sovereignty and governance were literally on the front page like every day, and... What school did you go to? I went to Iolani, myself, which I'm very proud is the same school that Principal Heel went to for a number of years, among other people who are interesting, Mufi Hanamid, et cetera. So I grew up during a time when Hawaiian sovereignty was something that everyone was talking about, and I decided that I wanted to be involved deeply in how the conversation was going. I had concerns about some of the things that were being said, and I thought I need to be involved. Okay, so did that begin your, I guess, entry into the political realm? It did, yeah, it really did. Okay, and that has persisted, as we know, again, congratulations you ran for State House last year. It's persisted, yes. Yeah, which is good. Okay, now tell us about Hapa, the Hawaiian Alliance for Progressive Action. What is that? Okay, so it's a relatively new organization, but it's incredibly effective, established by Gary Husser and some other progressives. It's essentially a coalition bringing together and helping to provide a kind of a gathering place for a lot of progressive organizations to come together and organize together. And so we've done, for instance, the Kuliana Academy, which has trained some wonderful leaders to take new roles in our staying and local politics. We convened the People's Congress in the last fall or last winter. And we also have, in fact, just last weekend, we brought together a group of activists and leaders on the island of Kaua'i, people who are farmers and fishermen, policy makers, talking about the very concrete, I should say, non-concrete things that need to be done on the island of Kaua'i around water and land use. So we're very engaged in the community. And in the environment and in culture. Absolutely, yeah. Okay, because they all kind of have to tie together. Sure, I mean culture is the way we look at things, right? It's the lens through which we see everything around us. Absolutely. Right, right, and that culture gets shifted and adjusted based on our neighbor cultures, based on who our neighbors literally are, not just the countries nearest us, but also the person who lives next to us. Sure. And how many of us are multicultural. Right. As well. And that's another issue that comes in, how that stuff gets addressed, specifically, again, trying to stick with Native Hawaiian theme. It is interesting. I don't have the exact percentage of Native Hawaiians population-wise. Maybe you have the number. It's about 500,000. About 500. About 500, roughly. From my understanding, the Filipino community is the largest single community represented within Hawai'i. Yeah, I should say, I'm sorry, 500,000 Hawaiians worldwide. Worldwide, yeah. Okay, yeah, because we only have 1.2 million people in Hawai'i. Okay, but that's one of the issues and concerns we have here in Hawai'i, as far as, okay, Native Hawaiian writes sovereignty. So let's dig into sovereignty a little bit more. Give me a summary, if you would, of your experience at the very least, and some background with some sovereignty issues that are happening even today. Sure. Well, I'm going to avoid recapitulating the entire. Yeah, we're not going to start with 1893 and go forward. But I'll sort of give a framework for context. The discussion right now runs between two polls, I would say. One poll is let's continue with politics as usual and the prevailing political economy of Hawai'i, which is overwhelmingly tourist-based and construction-based, military-based, and try to address Native Hawaiian land and sovereignty claims within that structure of. Self-governance within the structure. Right, within the structure of American, you know, of what I would call American imperialism and militarism, et cetera. The other way to do it, which is the frame that I prefer personally, is to flip it and to say, okay, the Hawaiian problem, the Hawaiian question, is really just the flip side of the question about Americanism and militarism in Hawai'i. And so I would prefer to address that as the issue, as the problem, and to look at how do we reconstitute our sense of what Hawai'i is and what Hawai'i can be within the framework of a multicultural, progressive, inclusive society that is grounded on, you know, a very long, multi-thousand-year history of Hawaiian culture in Hawai'i and that has been enriched by all of the other cultures and ethnicities that have come to make Hawai'i their home. So I would look at it in terms of how do we create a more progressive and inclusive society grounded in a Hawaiian sense of place and being? So it's more of like a, from what direction you're coming. Are you coming from American or are you coming from Hawaiian? Right. So if this is Hawai'i first, America second, is that... In the age of Trump, I'm trying to avoid the use of the word first. Okay. However, I do believe that... Probably a good idea. I do believe that, like when people say they were in mainland, I like to pause and say, you know, I think that here for the people of Hawai'i and all of the kids of Hawai'i and the kupuna of Hawai'i, Hawai'i should be our mainland. Yes. And we should treat it as if it is our home. I don't think we should actually treat it as if it's paradise. I prefer to think of it as homeland. You know, if this is our home, we should do certain things. We should make sure that the people are healthy. We should make sure that the land is healthy, that the water is flowing and that the people are able to succeed in our home. Or even have access to the lands and to the water. Because there are land and water rights that are at our challenges now. Sure. That have been challenges for decades, actually. Yeah. I mean, if you look at like the issue of Red Hill, for instance. Yes. The Red Hill tanks, right? They're underground. There's like 20 storage tanks. Huge storage tanks. Right. Huge storage tanks. Yeah. There's been releases of fuel into the aquifer. Mm-hmm. And there's a concern that if there were more releases that it would affect the drinking water, not just to the people right around Red Hill, but really, I don't know, 800,000 people who live along all of South Oahu. Exactly. And that is because it's recognizing there are, I believe there are two aquifers that supply fresh water for Oahu. It's actually more than two, I think. But it is... Well, there's the one primary that handles really, as you mentioned, the whole Southern... Where everybody lives. Where a majority of the people live. Exactly. So you can't talk about... Yeah. And that's a big concern, actually. I don't want to... That could be a show into itself, actually. That is a big concern. So tell me about the Hawaiian side. Well, I would think of it not just as a Hawaiian side, but really the way that we as the people of Hawaii, the locals, the residents, whatever term... We should probably find a new word, actually, to describe this idea. But the people of Hawaii should look at that problem, at least the way that I look at it, is that this is something that's going to affect everybody. We need to address this, not because it's a Hawaiian issue, or because it's an environmental issue, but because this is something that's going to affect all of us. Absolutely. So we need to close down those tanks, get the oil out of our ground, and out of our water. Yeah. Well, as much as can be. Yeah. Because I know that ends up being a larger issue. How do you dig it all up to get it all out? And what are those impacts then? Right. It becomes... But I know that's, again, that could be a whole show in itself, the whole Red Hill thing, but... Okay. So, again, now, that brings me just back to that main thought again. It's about not just direction of where you're coming from, but it's how you're perceiving it, how you're beginning your conversation, how you're recognizing we are... We live in Hawaii. We need to think about the people of Hawaii. And, yes, there's Native Hawaiians, but there's many other groups and cultures. What happens environmentally impacts everyone who's here. Yeah, absolutely. And so therefore, you're looking at the perspective I'm asking. I'm summarizing, and please correct me. You're looking at the perspective of what is Hawaiian to be representative of a thought process and of an inclusiveness in that regard. I suppose, I mean, I guess the way that I would say it is that I think that there's a lot of ways in which the Hawaiian interest is actually the same interest as the local Japanese interest and the local Chinese interest. That's because we're here... The local Filipino interest, right? Because we're all here. We're the people who are here. We're going to be doing business together, going to church together, driving on the same roads together, hopefully riding on the same rail together. Eventually. Having families together. We're one people in a lot of ways. We have different ways of entering into Hawaii. Different ways that we become part of this place. Different things that brought us here. But at the end of the day, we're all here together, so we need to work together to make sure that this place is successful. Now, that, I believe a lot of people would like to hear that idea, as opposed to, I think, the other side of some of the sovereignty statements that have been made, which is, all of you non-Native Hawaiians need to leave the islands, need to go away. I hear that sometimes, too. And you understand it. When you look at the history of it again, not re-litigating the whole thing, but when you look at it and you understand it from a perspective of what happened historically. So what is your thought process with regards to we're all here now, let's move forward together, versus, you know what, most of you shouldn't be here anyway. Which I think is one of the, I don't know how large or small that faction is, but one of the, I guess, desires from some of the people, some of the Native Hawaiians, some of them are actually not Native Hawaiians, but still believe that this should be true, as I've learned. So how would you, what's your thought on those? I would say that in every ethnic group, there are essentially people who are, they don't want to get along. And you see that in the Hawaiian community, you see that in the African-American community, there's racist everywhere. And I think we need to call it what it is. There's historical reasons for those perspectives. There's political reasons for those perspectives, but I don't think that that's a very productive politics, and it's not going to help us move forward. Yeah, no, I think that that's, your point is very valuable, as far as it's not productive policy for what we're doing today and how we're moving forward. Yeah, and the thing is, I think it, I mean, I can only speak for myself, right? And I can tell you my personal vantage point, which is growing up in a family where really the predominant identity was that we were Catholic, and it wasn't that we were Hawaiian or Filipino or part English or part Irish, et cetera. And it was really that we were a Catholic family. That was our main thing that we did as a family. We just happened to be Hawaiian and Filipino and Irish and all these other things. I... It's a different base. Yeah, it's a different base. And I've always had the perspective that I wanted to live under the same set of laws and within the same community as, like, my mom and her family, which is a local Filipino family, and I have a Caucasian wife and I have mixed children. But we all, you know, we all do hula, and we all learn olelo, and we all believe that the land itself is sacred. And I think that's a belief that, in spite of Mayor Aurekawa on Maui, I think that's actually something that a lot of people get behind. I think there's truth in that. Throughout Hawaii, at least, you know, from what I've heard here or there, but also I think there's truth in that, not just nationally, but globally when it comes to that, but it's about how we do that. So we have to take a quick break. Okay. So we're already there. And then we'll jump back. So again, thank you for joining us. Thank Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers and Reformers, Politics in Hawaii series. Thank you to my guest today, Mr. Ikegahase. We'll see you in one minute. Thank you. Hi, and thanks for watching Think Tech Hawaii. My name is Justine Espiritu, and I host the Hawaii Food and Farmer series with my co-host, Matthew Johnson of Awaku Fresh. Every week, we bring on farmers as well as all the other individuals and organizations that help support a thriving, sustainable food system. In fact, it's interesting to learn what others are doing, so you don't have to be a Hawaii resident or producing food on Hawaii to be featured on the show, like today's guest, Wyatt Bryson of Jewels of the Forest and Michael Lab Solutions. Aloha. Thank you. It's been a pleasure being on the show. I love seeing what you guys do, and I really support your mission. And it's really nice being back in Hawaii. And thank you again. It's an honor. So you can see guests like Wyatt every Thursday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. Thank you. Welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers and Reformers, Politics in Hawaii series. Again, my host, I'm the host, Ikegahase. My guest today is Mr. Ikegahase. We are talking about as many issues as we can talk about with regards to Native Hawaiian concerns and going forward from today. So again, thanks for joining us. So we were just talking off air a little bit about some of the challenges that come up with regards to blood quantum and people talking to other people about whether they should be here. You had a comment. I wanted to jump in. Which is that I think a lot of Hawaiians enter into conversations with non-Hawaiians or with themselves with the belief that Hawaiians are sort of on the losing side of history. And I think that that's wrong. And I have a couple of reasons for thinking that. One is that compared to the situation of most other Native peoples, both on the U.S. continent in places like Africa, et cetera, we're doing incredibly well. We have very powerful institutions. We have a lot of land actually controlled by institutions like Kamehameha Schools or the Queen's Trust. There's a large number of Hawaiians who are strongly middle class and are very successful in their professions, in their businesses. We have, I think, the largest indigenous language archive in the world through our newspapers and the work of people like Pua Ketnogami who have helped to bring us along into looking at those archives. I think I'd like to jump in and say that actually is a perfect transition to the next segment I want to talk about, which is if we're looking at it from that perspective, and I can agree with the points that you're making and several others, that actually Native Hawaiians are actually doing fairly well as far as the culture. There's a number of reasons for that, I suppose, as well. But doing well in what measure? In what way are we going to measure that? And one thing I want to talk about now is education. So I was able to attend an event last night at Kamehameha Schools where my son goes where, and we were talking earlier about this, where we learned the school is taking a new approach and they want new outcomes for the kids going to Kamehameha Schools. It all sounds wonderful, it all sounds great. But some of the statistics that we got last night was perhaps at this moment or at any given time they refer to being approximately 152,000 Native Hawaiian kids between the age of 0 and 24. Of those kids, we traditionally see year after year about 52% of those Native Hawaiian kids are prepared for kindergarten. In other words, 48% are not prepared. 48% are not prepared for kindergarten. And they're not talking about Kamehameha Schools' kindergarten. They're not talking about public schools. They're not separate. They're saying in general. All schools, charter schools, immersion schools, 48% are not prepared, 52% are. I mean the proponents of those numbers would really be, the larger percentage is really not charter schools or immersion schools. It's really standard DOE, right? Yes, absolutely. And that gets as they went further into those numbers as well in other categories. You see the stark difference between how the kids perform through Kamehameha Schools and some of their charter schools compared to public schools. One of the next statistics is 25% of Native Hawaiians graduate high school. So again, we're talking 152,000. 25% of them will graduate high school. And only 14% will graduate from a college. Now, that descending track there would probably be, to some degree, consistent maybe across multiple cultures in multiple areas, multiple parts of various countries maybe. As you see, okay, everybody starts here and then for various reasons things tail down. However, I find that to be an alarming number. Only 14% of Native Hawaiians are graduating from university, either a two-year or a four-year. Anyway, let me get your thought on that before I jump into the next thing. So as far as that sort of descending scale and only 14%. And so many jobs in Hawaii nowadays require a college degree. Exactly, we were talking earlier. The number that we were given last night was 65% of the jobs that are available in Hawaii require a college degree. So if 14% of Native Hawaiians are getting a college degree and 65% of the jobs require it, there's a gap, a significant gap. It's really fascinating, I think, is that if you were to rewind the clock a bit, in the 1840s, 1850s, Hawaii went from a zero literacy community, country, to being essentially having universal literacy in the span of like 20 years, an incredible feat. And we went to having, from there being no education system, no formal western recognized education system to one where essentially everyone is educated and we have a world-class education system. Now, you fast forward to, you know, to you talking story with folks at Kamehameha schools last night. We're now at the very bottom of actually the worst state in the United States, right? Which- For education. Right, in terms of education. The United States is also the very worst of the industrialized countries. So if you were to graph that, you're going from the very best on the planet to the very, very, very, very worst on the planet in, I don't know how many years that is. Not very many years. Not very many. 100 years. 106 years. Yeah, yeah, which- Right. And so- It says a lot. It says a lot. And I think we need to look at what happened in that time period. One thing I want to add though is you're right. There was a point where literacy rates among native Hawaiians was very high. And then all of a sudden- But that was also in native Hawaiian language. That was also in local language as well. Literacy was pretty high. And also in English. And in English. But then all of a sudden, in the schools and a number of other places, the native Hawaiian language was suddenly banned. Well, it's not quite that simple. Please- And I'm not a scholar in this. So we've got to bring in other folks who can really talk- Yeah, absolutely. But I look at the whole thing as how native Hawaiians have been- are being impacted. And what are the consequences we're seeing? I guess that's really where I'm at. What are the consequences that we're seeing? And what can we do from here now? Because it's not okay. Sure. So just real briefly, towards the end of the Kingdom period, the government made a decision to use English as a language for- of legal- legal jurisprudence of legal work. Partially because- The official legal language, yeah. Partially because English compared to Hawaiian is much simpler. Hawaiian is a very ornate poetic language where there are, you know, a lot of different meanings for a single word. But in English it's pretty kind of dry. You can get very specific in terms of the meaning, the semiotic meaning of a word. But, you know, I- so I think if you were to take that broad kind of 160 years and look at what's happened, part of that is the overthrow. It's the dispossession of Hawaiians from their own lands. The- the destruction or the replacing of a subsistence economy with an export-oriented monocrop economy. It's the idea that Hawaiians are not the mainland anymore, you know? So it's this- it's a broader story, I think, about people being kind of moved away from their own center. Marginalized and moved away. Yeah, in their own homeland. Right. So how- how do we fix this? I mean, I'm not saying you have all the solutions, but I would like to have the conversation. I would like to- I know I'm not beginning the conversation. I'm trying to advance that conversation. How do we begin to fix it? How do we change these education numbers? Because- So I would say that there's a lot of people who are actually working on this problem. Yeah. Right? There's- there's incredible scholars like Kūkāhākalao who has spent, I don't know, her career developing an indigenous model for Hawaiian education that she pioneered in the charter school movement and is now doing it independently. There's people like Clay Koakau who have been advancing the ideas about what education should look like in terms of sort of a- I would say sort of a pauloufrere approach, you know, looking at the humanity of the students. There's great charter schools and there's great teachers in the DOE as well and the commandment schools and the private schools who are working on this problem. So I don't want to- I don't want to be misperceived that there's a huge problem and there's no- No, I don't want that either. I agree. There's a lot of people who are trying to address it but in multiple levels, in multiple areas. I think we're not going to get to- we're not going to get back to the point where we have universal literacy and the world's best education system until we start to put Hawaii- until we start to treat Hawaii as our source in our center. You look at Finland, for instance. Finland is often trumpeted as- we can't use the word trumpeted. Not anymore. Not anymore. Something held up as a hold up for- for global education. I had the privilege of speaking with an individual who was part of the- the Finnish Ministry of Education, Pasi Solbury. And he told me, unfortunately, off the record, but I'm going to tell it to you now, he told me that the reason why- It's on the record now. I asked him, why did Finland decide to- to make this awesome education system? And he said, they were very worried about Russia. They were worried that Russia would invade again and take over Finland again. And they decided the best means of national defense was an educated populace. Now, I want you to juxtapose that against what we're doing with education in the United States and education in Hawaii. Historically, since the plantation era, education has been two-tier. It's been colonial in plantation. You have the Punahou and the- and Kamehameha to educate the Ali'i and the- and the- you know, the Lunas, essentially. The- the owners and the- of the plantation system. Right. And then you have the public schools, which were designed to create low-wage labor. Yeah. And I think we need to- we need to start treating our children as, you know, this is our best means of advancement for our entire society. I agree. I agree. That's why- that's why I wanted us to focus on education as a piece in this segment, because that- as- as- So- the Republican administration said last night, education is the civil rights issue of our- of our time. I don't know that- I think that it's even bigger than that, frankly. But- at least it's being recognized in that way. But, you know, you- imagine if we- if we were to really take education seriously. Yeah. The governor would not be- would not be pinching pennies when it comes to teachers- teacher salaries. Exactly. Exactly. If we were- if we were to give the- the appropriate representation towards the educators. Right. And towards the education. Right. As we recognize is the value going forward. We would have- 65% of the jobs- We would have had Air Conditioning and Maile- Long time ago. 20 years ago when we decided that it was a problem. Right. Right. Right. Right. For the first time. Exactly. So, across the board, education- so Finland as- as an example, as a reference point, as an example, education is one of the keys. And therefore, going back to what I learned last night and- and from this conversation is making sure that we all get back to recognizing how we can improve our educational system for all across the board and how we can make some of these numbers better for- for everyone as well. So, unfortunately, we're done. Okay. But I would love to have you come back and I- we'll take another issue and dig deeper in. So, thank you for joining us. This is Think Tech Hawaii's Movers, Shakers and Reformers. I'm your host, Carl Campania. Thank you once again to Ikai Kahase for joining us with the Hawaii Alliance- what is it? Hawaii Alliance of- For progressive action. For progressive action. Yeah. And we look forward to talking to you again next week and we'll see you soon. Thank you.