 Welcome back to Politics in Hawaii, the Dennis Isaki on Think Tech, Hawaii. Today we'll be speaking with Robin Danner, a Native Hawaiian leader on the island of Kauai, and has lived with Native Hawaiians, Native Americans on Indian reservations, and Arctic homelands in Alaska of the Inuit people. We'll be talking about Native Hawaiian advancement and the politics behind it. Robin is highly experienced in finance, investment, affordable housing, and economic development, as well as experience in federal government aid systems and advocacy. Cannot list all the organizations she's involved in, but it will take the whole 30 minutes, so we'll touch upon a few of them later. She continues to dedicate her life to the self-determination of Native people. To do this, she has shown her perseverance, dedication, and knows her way around the political system. Robin, can you tell us some of the things you've done and what are you doing and how politics are part of it? Well, good afternoon, Dennis. First, let me thank you for inviting me on your show. A pleasant surprise, always nerve-wracking, especially on the top of my favorite topic, Native Hawaiians. I'm here today in my more political or policy role as the elect Shaw Chairwoman, which is the Sovereign Counsel of Hawaiian Homestead Associations. It's a 34-year-old advocacy organization that unifies over 42 different homestead associations across the state. So I work with a lot of Native Hawaiian leaders on trust lands from Oahu to Big Island, Maui, Moloka, etc. And so I want to, if it's all right with you, give a shout-out to my fellow council members that are also elected on the Shaw Council, which is Sibyl Lopez from Molokai, Uncle Ron Kordani from Hului Island, Richard Sue from Oahu and Kekoa Inamoto from Maui, these are the five council folks. Plus our very own Kipukai Kuali'i chairs our policy committee. He keeps us straight and on the straight and narrow road of our policy. But to answer your questions, I don't know, their policy and politics, some people think they're the same. I don't believe they are. I think that communities role that one of the areas that we can be much, much better at is policy. Policymakers need good ideas, and that's really what policy is. Politics is the art of compromise and usually the domain of elected officials, whether in the legislative branch at the state or the congressional branch, the legislative branch at the federal level. So sometimes we confuse policy versus politics, and I try to teach our homestead leaders that we are better suited and we should help our policymakers know what good ideas actually look like for Native Hawaiians and for the whole state. In terms of accomplishments, wow, policy is fun. Politics is fun. I tend to like to watch politics and I like to engage in policy, which is to bring good ideas to administrations, to government bodies, to even funding partners across the country on where they should put their investments. So Dennis, to answer your question, I'd say some of the accomplishments of the Shah say 20 years ago, we got Native Hawaiians added to a bill called Nahazda, the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act. What did that do? We worked with Senator Inouye and Senator Akaka. That has funneled over $150 million over the last 20 years directly into the state of Hawaii, doing what? Paying for roads, for unions to build out infrastructure, things of that nature. So 20 years ago, I would probably say Nahazda and working to include Native Hawaiians in many national, federal Indian programs that are relevant, like community financing, et cetera. 10 years ago, I'd say some of the accomplishments with the Obama administration, probably the most notable, that will help Hawai'i citizens, but also Native Hawaiians in particular, is for the first time in 100 years, we have federal regulations on a 100-year-old federal law called the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, which created Hawaiian homelands. And it was a thrilling three years of work with President Obama and his administration to bring that into fruition. And then in the Biden and Trump administration, I'd... I understand you went all the way to President Obama himself to talk to him about it, and you're very successful with doing that. Yes. Walking up to the West Wing, I have to tell you, Dennis, what was in the back of my mind was, do I ask the President of the United States a softball question and get invited to the Christmas party? Or do I ask him the question that when I turn 80 years old, I don't have to wish that I had asked him? So obviously, I asked him the question that I really wanted him to take on, and it was nerve-wracking and exhilarating at the same time. Darn Straits, Barack Obama is an excellent politician, but I think when you engage directly with him, the guy is a policy wonk. He really is interested in solutions. You got the Hawaiian Homestead Community Development Corporation, you're involved with? That was for that. We founded the Homestead Community Development Corporation 12 years ago, right here on Kauai, and it's a statewide organization. Now it has offices on Kauai, on Oahu, also on Maui, and in Washington, D.C. and HCDC essentially is a 501c3 that takes the good ideas of Shaw and Homestead Association leaders, brings those ideas into the 501c3 and implements them on the ground. Whether that's affordable housing or job creation, community development, basically drafting business plans for every vision that those community leaders have, and then deploying that business plan with capitalization and know-how. That's HCDC, I think it's 12 years old, it'll continue to be an important corporation on Homesteads. What about the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement? That was a 20-year-old, I was still in Alaska at that time, wrote the business plan for the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, probably what I'm most known for as the founder of CNHA, which was to bring Native Hawaiians together around all disciplines, whether health or housing or education, etc., and to have an annual convening, an annual convention of Native Hawaiian nonprofits so that housing developers just sitting next to health care providers or sitting next to educators, so that Hawaiians could be in the same room talking about the things that we can agree on, and there's a lot that we agree on. Yeah, you mentioned you're up in Alaska, some of our friends up there up in Barrow in the Arctic Circle, so far pleased to be from warm Hawaii to an Arctic Circle, how was that? I was happy to get my allotment notice in 1996 from the Department of Hawaiian Homelands when I was up there that my name had come up on the list, but I loved every minute of the 20-25 years that I worked among the Inuit leaders, some really giants in the self-determination work and sovereignty work of Native peoples. I ended up being their tribal housing authority executive director building home ownership and rental housing. I ended up being their county, their municipal government director for housing, and of course my main career background, I spent well over a decade as the banker in a region five million acres large. So I really appreciated actually getting to work for a large municipal county government. It gave me from a capitalism, coming from banking, which is almost pure capitalism, it really helped me understand what it's like to be on the other side in a county government, and then working with the tribe, getting to work with the federal government. So I can't say enough about the people there. As you know, I think you know some of the leaders there because they are, many people might not know that they really mentored all of us here on Kauai when we started KIUC, right? A lot of their leaders came. Yeah, I got to know a lot of those leaders they mentioned, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, we've been taught for all this time. Bryce Brower, they were pioneers really in taking the co-op model where a community owns their utility, and in their case water also to deliver to their to their communities. And it was just a random cool connection, Dennis, that Utkalovic Inuit leaders would be coming back and forth to Kauai during those early years of forming the Kauai Island utility co-op. Okay, and Governor Abercrombie, was it Governor Abercrombie appointed you to the Native Hawaiian Rural Commission? He did. I don't know whether he regrets that. I hope not. He appointed myself and not a lehu. Governor Waihe'e is the chair. Le Kihoi is on that commission and that commission still exists today and its primary purpose is to establish a base role for Native Hawaiians that want to organize and have sovereignty similar to a state sovereignty, similar to a county sovereignty to represent and really attack the challenges with solutions from a Native Hawaiian perspective to advancing, not just the Hawaiian community but our state. So where is it going from here in the specifics? Well, one of the requests that I made to President Obama was around this issue and he did approve it. There were three things that I asked or two things, two things that I asked President Obama to contemplate. The first was the realization that our Hawaiian Homelands Act was passed in 1920, 1921, and normally when a federal law is passed of that magnitude, normally underneath the federal law, you start doing regulations to implement certain sections of the law so that it's consistent. But Prince Kuhio, as you might know, who was the champion of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, got it passed in 1921 and then passed away. He died in 1922. And so the champion for the Hawaiian Homelands Act was gone and no one thought to do the next step which was regulatory. And so that was my first ask to President Obama was for him to do something that had not been done in nine decades to begin the process of promulgating federal regulations over the state of Hawai'i, federal regulations over the state of Hawai'i, in the implementation of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act. He approved the first two regulations ever in nine decades and there's probably seven to ten more to be done, which we are advocating for now with the Biden administration. And the second thing that we asked or the Shah asked for was a regulatory process for those Hawaiians, particularly Homestead Hawaiians that have a lot to lose, but for a regulatory process for those Hawaiians that voluntarily want to develop a constitution and stand up a native only government. This is not same as per say a kingdom or independence, but it would be a native only government to engage on a government-to-government relationship with federal government. And so that took three years of public comments here in Hawai'i and also among tribes and among US citizens and in 2016 President Obama signed both of those, all three of the federal regulations that you just asked me about. Well, we know our friend Clifton He, former senator and Oha leader. Did you work with him on Hawaiian issues? Incredible. Hard to work with that guy, but he's probably one of the, what I loved about Senator He is you didn't have to guess where he was and that is such a blessing. Sometimes you didn't want to hear what he had to say, but what I appreciated about him as a policymaker, he was a straight shooter. He would tell you and have the great debates with you, you know, never personal and always a good dialogue, really what democracy was all about. And Senator He, champion of education, champion of monitored and proper development on Hawaiian homelands. He was a joy really to work with, even though you might leave his office and not sure whether you still had your limbs attached, but that guy deserves our respect, always will have my respect. He, like I said, that I think the most important thing I like is he understood his job was politics. Mine was not. My job was to give him good policy and to argue good policy with him so that we could come out with a good policymaking. I hope you're still making good decisions is on the parole board right now. Oh, did not know that. Did not know that. Okay, is a hard one. How about Senator Akaka and Akaka bill? What does it take on it? And well, it's in Washington. The Akaka bill, if you're talking about federal recognition. So I was on the original working group with many Hawaiians and national Indian leaders back in 2000 with the first discussion about federal recognition. The Akaka bill is no longer necessary because federal recognition is a standing by the federal government. And President Obama, one of my favorite things that he said to us, he said no citizen should be invisible to their government. And so one of the reasons and one of the regulations that he approved was a pathway for federal recognition or any native Hawaiian native Hawaiians that wanted to come together, put together a constitution, ratify it and apply for this government to government relationship. It may not be for everyone. I am a strong proponent of it. I certainly want it for my children and my grandchildren. That doesn't mean I want it for others. Each Hawaiian has to decide for themselves family by family. So Senator Akaka, beloved, I met Senator Akaka as a young tribal executive. I was actually building housing for Native Americans and my parents for school teachers in Indian country. So I first met Senator Akaka not here at home. I met him in Indian country. Okay, we're at the halfway point. What do we take a short break? Thanks for watching Think That Hawaii. Back to Think That Hawaii with Dennis Isaki and Robin Danner. Robin, we've spread it around HHL, Department of Hawaiian Homeland. Can you give us your thoughts? What a powerful agency this tiny, one of the smallest departments in state government could be but impact Native Hawaiians today and the state of Hawaii, the construction industry, the finance industry. Tremendous potential if we can get DHHL focused. The Shaw and our Shaw leaders are very much looking forward to 2022 because we know democracy is going to deliver to us a new governor and with a new governor could pretend a new administration at DHHL. And we're hopeful that we will get a governor and a DHHL administration that is far more connected to the brilliance, frankly, and the very deep expertise of Hawaiian Homestead Association leaders. They're like these wonderful gems that are sitting in the sidelines in the bleachers. And we're looking for a governor, Dennis, that recognizes the talent and the asset that Native Hawaiian Homestead leaders are themselves and to invite them down on the field to bring solutions to the challenges of that department. Probably the Shaw is one of the premier experts of not only the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act but also of the Department of Hawaiian Homelands. And we're really hopeful for 2022. Yeah, along the same lines. Speaking about sticking to the DHHL, what about the 50% blood quantum? So the 50% blood quantum is to get an original lease but the Shaw and many leaders from Molokai to Maui to Kauai worked for seven years to lower the blood quantum for air, for an air, for what we call successorship. That blood quantum is 25%, but for the last seven years we have done community organizing, discussion amongst ourselves, and then we came out with a policy position three years ago and got it passed at the state legislature to lower the blood quantum for successorship to 132nd, which would be roughly 3%. So that passed the Hawaii state legislature, want to thank the legislature for that. And now the second step to making that come to fruition is that the US Congress must review that amendment and hopefully they will approve it. And so July 9th of this year, 2021 is the 100 year anniversary and where the Shaw has requested that Congressman Kahele, Congressman Case, Senator Hirono, Senator Schatz introduce the Hawaiian Homeland Improvement Act and incorporate that the work at the state legislature incorporate that for adoption and consideration by the full Congress before the next, the midterm elections while the Democrats control the White House, they control the Senate, they control the House. So we would like to see the Hawaiian Homeland Improvement Act of 2021 introduced and passed, which includes the excellent work of the state legislature two years ago in adopting our blood quantum, reducing the blood quantum to 3% for successors. So they're still going to leave that 50% on the original last days? Well, I can tell you that 50%ers like myself, we know that Jonah Cujillo, Kalaniana Ole, the father of the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, he intended the blood quantum to be 132nd. It was the missionary children, the merchants of Hawaii 100 years ago that they wanted 100% and of course the Congress split the baby and that's how we ended up with a 50% blood quantum. What I can tell you is that before the 50% blood quantum can be lowered and Shaw and many of us are big proponents for that, but what we know has to happen first. We must quadruple the size of the land trust itself. We must make sure and get improvements at DHL to do three things really, really well and much better. One, DHL needs to move money better. They've got to have strengthened procurement skills to move the capital through their two contractors to build out subdivisions and whatnot. Number two, DHL needs to become a master at moving land, land to the waitlist. There are 28,000 on the waitlist and the third thing that we need DHL to get very, very good at is to move excellent, efficient, respectful partnerships with Homestead Association leaders that are elected all across the state and so Dennis I'm saying that we can that to lower the blood quantum we definitely want to do that but we're realistic about it. A, we need the state agency to quadruple the size of land. I mean if you think about it you're a surveyor. Can you imagine if your parents inherited to you a 203,000 acre inheritance and 100 years later you have the same 203,000 acres right? That's just silliness. It's one of the reasons why the Shaw has advocated at the legislature the last four years. This is our fifth year to issue DHL CIP funds to not only develop the infrastructure but also to acquire additional land and so I think it could happen in my lifetime. Perhaps I would hope that we can get DHL functioning on all pistons, all pistons firing so that we can get to that day of lowering the blood quantum for original lesseeds. Yeah, I think it's possibly in about 30 years ago the DHL had the accelerated program. We said we're just going to give you this land. We're not going to put the roads. They did a lot of those on the whole land throughout the state. I guess that didn't go too well and they didn't get only support for the roads and no roads so they couldn't build the houses. Well I want to and they did it again just 10-15 years ago the Lingal administration did it again, did the same exact thing. But again I think I'm hopeful that the next governor will bring the Mana'o and Ike of Hawaiian leaders themselves on homesteads that are experts because we have the answers and the solutions to that. Okay, what about the Office of Foreign Affairs? Oh, much better. I mean I'm really optimistic both about DHL and about especially DHL because there's an opportunity for a new governor in a new direction. So we're prepared at the Shaw all across the state to get behind a governor by by the well before the end of this year we're in a position to endorse. Oh, I am very optimistic also you've got new leadership in there but more importantly I really like the administration of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. I think that Sylvia Hussey is one smart lady. She may not have all the answers but she has ears and that is what's major. She is listening to the people. Okay, thanks, Straubin. Yeah, we got a lot more to cover but unfortunately we're running out of time. Got any closing remarks, Straubin? You know, Dennis on the topic of politics and policy for Native Hawaiians, I guess my closing remarks would be that the future is humongously bright and that one of the areas that we need to get better at as a state, our legislature, our elected leaders, even our county council people, we need to do a better job of becoming educated about the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, about the Hawaii Admissions Act, of which Hawaii became a state as a condition of these certain obligations to Native Hawaiians and it's in our own Hawaii Constitution. So I think the next five years we need to spend a lot of good time dialoguing with our policy makers to help them. That's our job. Our job is to help them and their job is to listen to constituents and to learn about something that should be very, very basic because it's in the Hawaii Constitution and that is that the state of Hawaii, the 50th state, is one state out of 34 in the country that has an indigenous population and that is a brilliant, huge opportunity that I believe has not been maximized to its fullest for the benefit of our indigenous people or for our entire state. And so my closing remarks would be that I am excited. Sybil, Uncle Ron, Uncle Richard, Auntie Kekoa, we're all excited to be working more directly with the state legislature and legislators to have dialogue about how simple it is to implement the tenets of the Hawaii Admissions Act for the benefit of Native Hawaiians, but also I cannot emphasize this enough, the benefit of every resident of Hawaii that we need to get better at embracing the fact that we are special as a state that has special opportunities because we have an indigenous population within it. Thank you, Rob. Mahalo. Thanks for spending time with us today. Mahalo to Think Tech and its personnel. Please join us two weeks from now for another episode on Think Tech Hawaii. If you like this and other shows, please consider a donation to Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha.