Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 25, Number 6, 1 June 2008 — OHA's focus for the near future [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

OHA's focus for the near future

Aloha Kākou, Mahalo to all of you who helped support OHA in the past legislative session and our efforts to secure the bettennent of Hawaiians via a deliberate, careful and professional applieahon of legal standards to recover a long overdue debt from the Legislature. We exerted our best over a fouryear period of meetings, research and negotiations but that was not enough to get the Legislature to pay their debt. Now that that is lost, we need to drop back and figure out how we ean overcome the chosen few. Is it in the ballot box? Is it in the conununity? Is it in a more effective educational effort? I'm open to suggestions. Thirty-one years and counting next year and the last with a governor who has been the most supportive of Hawaiian issues probably ever. Too bad we have a Senate that's been the worst to support Hawaiian issues probably ever. And that is enough for politics until next year. On to our Hawaiian trust. So what now for OHA? Well, we began our annual island board meetings in May and will be going to eaeh island again the remainder of the year. Come to our eommunity meetings and share yourmana'o. In addition to that, other meetings will be going on by OHA staff as well as individual Trustees. We will also focus on federal recognition again and hope to secure for ourselves a foothold in the legal arena that ean be secured with the creation of a nation within the nation to look after our people and bring some sense of satisfaction and justice to them for the illegal overthrow. Then will we be able to negotiate the ceded lands issues and claims whieh remain donnant until an entity ean speak for our people. The Akaka Bill is absolute-

ly necessary since an independent country is merely idealistic, not realistic. Not even the Hawaiian people would support that, let alone the non-Hawaiian populaee. And so I eonhnue to oppose the TwiggSmith and Grassroots litigants and supporters as well as the numerous splinter kingdoms and governments floating around with their followers many of whom would rather sacrifice selflessness for selfishness, finality for frivolity, and certainty for uncertainty. Affordable housing is still an important objective of OHA and as with all our programs we look for ways OHA ean help. We lost $13 million in the Legislature along with a promise of huge future revenues for our people. Now we must work with no promise of additional ineome and we need to innovate and create, whieh itself brings criticism from the vocally ignorant. One wonders why we pay attorneys to provide legal advice when there are so many out there who know better and are more than willing to give the press their free legal advice. Because they usually have no basis for their objections we shouldn't be concerned, but the state Senate listens to them and not us. Go figure. Grants are ongoing but with the loss of ceded lands revenues in the Senate, expect cuts. Hawaiian heahh, education and employment are continuing challenges and I hope to see some progress in the area of drug prevention and treatment as well as elderly issues. With education, the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) initiative in my opinion needs more attention from OHA and continuing efforts to provide scholarships to as many as possible. Hawaiian businesses are one response to unemployment and Native Hawaiian Chambers are a means of improving Hawaiian involvement in the business conununity. With O'ahu and Maui already on board, perhaps we ean see Hawai'i Island and Kaua'i starting this year. E holomua kākou. C

Boyd P. Mūssman TrustEE, Maui