 This is St. Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. I'm Marcia's joiner and we are navigating. We are going on a journey close to us, near and dear to us, but it's a path we haven't gone down. And that is today. We are going to visit with my dear friend, and of course you know I only talk to dear friends, Rowena Akana, trustee at large for OAH, Office of Hawaiian Affairs. And she is on the phone. So Aloha, Rowena, and welcome, welcome, welcome. We are so glad to talk to you. Well thank you Marcia. I'm glad to be on your show today. And I hope that I could share some things that would enlighten a lot of people about what the Office of Hawaiian Affairs is all about. Well let's start at the beginning. Now I was excited about the Kon Kon 1978, even though I'm not Hawaiian, I was just thrilled with what was going on. That whole, well from 72 on the renaissance of everything Hawaiian, the music, the literature, the coming out of the shadows of Hawaii. Because I remember in 1974, I guess it was, even at the university, Hawaiian was taught in the Foreign Language Department. And I took the one class of Hawaiian. It's like, oh my God, this is the University of Hawaiian, there's one class. So this 1978 Kon Kon, I was ecstatic. I was just so anxious to see what was to come out of the Kon Kon. And as you know, once it passed, this whole idea of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was in what came out of the Kon Kon. And then, let's begin there, the people that ran for Kon Kon. And what happened? How? You take us from there. Well, you know, the first election was quite an event. I mean, all of the Hawaiian community was excited. I really mean all. Every island was involved. The Hawaiian people saw Oha as we went around the islands trying to educate people on what the Office of Hawaiian Affairs was about. They saw it as a means to, after 100 years, to get some, you know, not retribution, but to get some of their lands and compensation for lands that were never paid for in the taking of 1893. And so Hawaiians are very hopeful that after 100 years finally, something was going to be done for Hawaiians. And there was so, you know, when a people are taken over and colonized, you don't just lose your language, which is what happened. They were forbidden to speak their language, write their language, but you take their soul, you take their spirit, you take from them everything that they knew. And so the healing, I think, is still taking place for many Hawaiians today. And so Oha was a great hope that there would be some, not just recognition of what had occurred in 1893 and then compounded in 1898 when we were annexed to the United States by resolution. There's only another, the only other state that that happened to was Texas. And all other states were voted into the union by the full Congress, but they could never get a vote for us to be annexed by the Congress. And so they have to do it by resolution. And this today is still a sore point with many Hawaiians because it showed that, you know, not only did the Hawaiians not want to be annexed, but even the Congress didn't want to annex us to the United States. But anyway, that aside, when Oha came about, Hawaiians finally thought, well, you know, somebody's going to pay attention down to what happened to us. And hopefully we can redress some of the wrongs that were done to us as a people. So it was great hope. And so in that first election, there were about 110 people, as I recall, running for nine seats. So it was very competitive. And I had just come back from Guam. My husband was air traffic controller, and we were on Guam for two years. So when we came back, a friend of mine, Rod Burgess, who was running for Oha, asked me to help in his campaign. And there, so I said, sure, why not? And so we went through this whole process of learning and educating ourselves about what really happened. When we went to high school here and all through our schooling years, we learned about American history, European history, even the history of Japan. But we never learned about our own history. We never learned about American Indians and what they went through and their colonization and all of that. So it was an education for me to learn about our own history. And in those days, those people conducting those educational workshops were John Wahey, John Van Dyke, who was at the law school at the university, and Judge Richardson, who was the first Hawaiian judge here. And so it was, you know, eye-opening for me. And so as we learned about our own history and why Oha was created, we had to then go out and educate the community on what Oha was about and what we were planning to do. So the Hawaiians had great hope for us. The problem was that, and my candidate did get in, he was one of the first trustees of Oha, and he served for 10 years. And in 1990, when I ran for Chovy Mahoy's seat, who was ill, my friend, Rod Burgess, lost his election and he never campaigned. So it was bittersweet. I got in and my friend didn't get back in. But for the first 10 years, you know, Oha struggled because even though they were supposed to get 20% of the seat is unrevened, the state never, the state had not separated out the income into the five purposes according to the Constitution, whereby Oha would get 20% of the seat is unrevened. And so Oha had a difficult time with the mandate they had to better conditions with Native Hawaiians. It takes in everything, health, education, just about everything. And so they had no money. So the state was just giving them peanuts. And so Hawaiians began to get disenchanted, you know, with Oha thinking, well, this is our great hope, nothing's happening. And we couldn't do anything because there was no money. And so when I got in in 1990, the previous board, my friend, Rod Burgess, who was an expert in land issues, had been negotiating with the John Wahey administration. John was the governor at that time. And they were coming into some resolution on giving the money, giving their fair share to Oha. So when I came in 1990, we continued those negotiations. And in 93, we settled for partial settlement with the Wahey administration and got about $129 million in back rents. And what we did at that time was invested in the stock market. And by the year 2000, we had earned about $400 million. So we did very well with our own investments. And we were able to do many, many things. Now you talked about the education at the University of Hawai'i. Oha paid for the first master's program there until the university picked it up. We paid for the first doctor's program there until the university picked it up. We paid for Hawaiian language schools. We bought the first Hawaiian language school in Hilo. Oha has done an awful lot to perpetuate the language. We have more language speakers now than we had in the last 100 years, I think. And it's wonderful to see our children speaking the language. It is. Oha has come a very long way. When I first got elected, we were getting $100 a meeting. We weren't even getting a salary. We had no health benefits. And we were really like the stepchildren of the state. And so we had to work for everything, our salaries, our benefits. And so today, the trustees forced out a salary. It's still less than the city council and less than the legislators make. I think we make about $52,000 or something a year. And we work all year round. It's not like the legislature with four months. So we're still struggling in that respect. Well, now that Oha, for anybody that's tuned in late, we are talking with Rowena Akana. She's trustee at large for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. But nowadays, all of the good things that you've done, and there are many. But in the news now, it's nothing but chaos and trouble. What's going on? What is this about? How does it just completely, like I said, the good has just emerged someplace. What is this about? And it's very sad. It just makes me so very angry because I'm the only one left on the board that not only has the historical memory of Oha, but worked for everything that we have. We have a lot of young people working at Oha now coming right out of the university or whatever. They don't know the history. They get much bigger salaries than I get for sure. And they think Oha began with them. Attitude is lacking at Oha anyway. But that aside, a few bad apples can really rot the whole barrel. And I have to say that this is not just my opinion. This administrator that we have has gone rogue. Who is the administrator? His name is, I forget his English name, he calls himself Kamanao Krab. Anyway, he's done so many things that trustees never knew about. And we've tried to rein him in and it just gets worse. How can he do something that you don't know about? That makes no sense to me. Well, you'd have to look at his contract and the person who signed his contract and the lawyer who signed his contract. When you have a nine-member board, you're like the city council. You have to have five votes to do anything. And our problem is that in the state statute, in fact, let's go back to the year that I got in in 1990. Well, in that year in the legislative session, I got in in November in that legislative year, the administrator at that time at Oha had the legislature change the statute so that the hiring and firing no longer came under trustees and that to fire the administrator, you needed six votes, the supermajority. To hire you needed five, to fire you needed six. This has caused us great, a great, great problem because we've wanted to terminate this person for the last year and a half. And we're unable to get that six-vote according to the contract. And so, and according to the state statute, so we're bound by some laws and then the person who wrote this egregious contract tied us up so, so bad that this person could almost commit murder and we can't do anything. And so, anyway, you know, that's the inside thing that we're fighting internally but the overspending, the egregious contracts written with no deliverables and sponsorships that trustees didn't know anything about and every year we were realigning our budgets and good employees leaving and it's like a cancer within our organization and trustees are really taking a hit for a lot of the things that are going on internally that we have no control legally over because of the law that says we cannot hire or fire. Oh my goodness. So when we need to take a break and when we come back I wanted to talk about some other issues that are in the news and so we'll be, don't go away, we'll be back in exactly one minute. This is Think Tech Hawaii, Raising Public Awareness. Welcome to Hawaii. This is Prince Dykes, your host of The Prince of Investing. Coming to you guys each and every Tuesday at 11 a.m. right here on Think Tech Hawaii. Don't forget to come by and check out some of the great information on stocks, investments, your money, all the other great stuff and I'll be your host. See you Tuesday. Aloha. I'm Marcia Joyner and we are navigating the journey and today is a special journey. We are visiting with Rowena Akana, trustee at large for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. So boy, this has been really wonderful. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And as my audience knows, I only talk to my dear friends. So this is a friend for, gosh, I don't know how long. Anyway. At least 30 years. At least 30 years. Yeah. So you were talking about all of these, the kinds of stuff that we hear just a little bit, you know, the news is 30 seconds. But what we heard was about spending on grants and scholarships and whatever a limited liability, what is a limited liability company and how does OHA have limited liability companies? What's, what's that about? Well, we have, we had five and only three are active. And we're looking at making two of the three inactive because a lot of the things that have occurred to us since our audit. And we've never audited the LLCs and this is what we want to do now is order the order and audit on the LLCs because under the LLCs, you have your own board members and the trustees don't know exactly what's going on unless we have an audit. And the reporting to us has been very sketchy. And so we're getting the trustees, believe it or not, are getting such a pushback when I was the chair last year. I wanted to pass this action to audit the LLCs and it's taken one year before we finally got the, the, the action passed. And then it's taken another four months to hire a contractor and then the contractor was talked out of the contract by an attorney who said, we don't know if you want to take this contract now because we're being investigated. I mean, it's like we're being sabotaged from all ends. And it's because of intercorruption. You know, I really believe that some of our people who have worked for us have been involved in contracts that perhaps not only didn't complete their deliverables and they were paid or that the grant did not come through OHOP but went directly through our LLCs, it's a very complicated situation. And there are only a couple of people who are responsible for that and that's our administrator and these LLC managers. Now, what exactly is an LLC? What is that? Well, it's a limited liability corporation, meaning that, you know, the liability only extends to the worth of whatever that company is worth. So OHOP has other companies? Is that it? Do they belong to you? The limited liability companies. Do they belong to you? Yes. Yes, they do. What do they do? We started with Ymail because we bought Ymail Valley. That was the first LLC. We have to do that because of the liability. OHOP, you know, can have deep pockets because of the money that we have. And so when we bought Ymail Valley, you know, people visit that every day. In fact, we had one drowning there already, you know, in the waterfalls. And so when you have an entity like that, where you have tours, you have swimming, all kinds of things can happen. People can slip and fall. They could get hurt. You don't know what can come of any accident. And so not to hold the trust liable, we have to form an LLC to make it separate from OHOP because of that kind of liability. And now the other two, we had a poi factory, and that's another gray area now that's probably being investigated and how they got transferred. But anyway, we no longer have that. And then there's another LLC that that takes care of federal grants. And with that LLC, it's called the PTAC grant. We give grants out to people for technical assistance and so on. And they don't have to be Hawaiian because it's a federal grant. It's for everybody. And we administer that through the LLCs. Why that has to be an LLC is a wonder to me. And I've said over and over, we need to crash that LLC and bring that PTAC grant back to OHOP and run it on our grants program. But these kinds of things. Now, those other LLCs were created by Mr. Stender, who's no longer at OHOP. And the former administrator. Who was the former administrator? We inherited. Who was the former administrator? Clyde Namur. Oh. So he created the first ones. And now we have some more. Well, the whole board created the first one. Well, I was one of... We all agreed. Yeah, I worked with the stewards on Waimea. Yeah, we all created that because we needed to have some protection for the trust. But the others, with exception of the point factory, the other three were totally unnecessary. In any case, you know, we find ourselves in these situations with people that we have hired who we trusted. And we hope that we're working for the best interest of our agency and our people. And when they make mistakes or they do something that is not right, the trustees, of course, it goes right to us. And that's what we're facing now. A lot of the things that have occurred between our agency and the LLCs. And then, of course, we had a very bad audit, a state audit. And in the audit, the auditor calls out the administrator for many things that he did improperly. And so we're facing all of these things now. And people are just, you know, the easy target is to just blame the trustees. But it's not so easy to get rid of the problem. People have no idea how difficult, you know, how difficult getting rid of this problem is. So when you asked for the audit, did you ask for the audit? Or how did that come about? Yes, for the audit on the LLCs. Yes. Because we needed to know what was going on within the LLCs. But is there a general audit for everything? Or just the LLCs? Is there another audit? Well, no. The state completed its audit on OHA. Well, actually, we got the results this year. They did it last year. And we got the results, I think, in February. And it was a scathing audit, one of the worst I've seen since I've been at OHA. And in it, they really call out the administrator here for all the things. If that's the case, why is it so difficult to get rid of him if both audits or all of the audits call him out? How come it's so difficult to get rid of him? I mean, because we need six votes and we have a couple of trustees, for whatever their personal reasons are, will not fire him. Oh. So to me, it's a breach of their fiduciary duty. You know, so what do we do? Do we sue our fellow trustees? Oh, that's awful. Well, now, during the... When they don't take their fiduciary duty seriously enough that they would jeopardize an agency for the betterment of our people, when they put themselves ahead of that, I cannot even fathom. It just gets me so upset. I take my nerve pills before I go into a meeting. Of course you do. Of course you do. My happy pills. I take my happy pills before I go into a meeting with these people. Oh. It's the most frustrating thing. Are you going to run again? You know, I was going to retire this year. But OHA is in such disarray that I don't feel like I can. And I feel like this is part of my baby, part of my heart, part of, you know, what I've worked for for so long. And I'm the only one there left that knows the struggles of how we got where we are. And I refuse to let this monster and these other irresponsible people get away with this. I guess I'm just, you know, if the ship goes down, I'm going with it. I'm just stubborn enough to want to stay in the fight. Well, you know, with the Marimona, I was amazed at how many people had ads running for OHA. It was amazing. They see it as an opportunity. You know, these people are like vultures. When OHA had no salary, where were they? But now they see that OHA is in trouble. They want to jump in and remove trustees. And some of us have done a damn good job. Do you think they understand all the things you've told us? Do you think they understand the depth of this, the beginnings and where we are? Are all the trustees up for re-election or just a few? No. Hulu Lindsay from Maui. And she's a good trustee. Hulu Lindsay from Maui and I. And of course, Peter O'Pole. I don't think he's going to run again. He has the Oahu seat. And that's, I think, after Keaina is running for that seat. It seemed to me everybody that I saw was from OHA. I mean from Oahu. I mean all the people that they have. I mean all the people that declare that they're running. All of them live here. Right. Yeah, but you can run from Oahu for an at-large seat, which is what I have. And so John Wahey and I are running for the at-large seat. John Jr. And Leah Huisa. Now Leah Huisa doesn't come to our meetings hardly. And she doesn't know about Hawaiian issues. I think she got in because of her name recognition. But you know, John's a good trustee. Hulu is a good trustee. And I'd like to think that the people who have followed me through the years know that I'm a hard-working trustee. And I'm hoping that the three of us will get back in. Well, I hope so. The people. I really hope you can. And we need to close now. But you will come back and let's continue this conversation. It's too good not to have you back and talk some more. Will you please? Sure. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you so much. This has been a great conversation, a great education. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. Aloha. Okay. Take care. Aloha.