Esther Kia‘aina, the youngest of seven children, was born in Guam, where her father was a civilian employee of the U.S. Navy. So her appointment as the assistant secretary for insular affairs — the part of the Department of the Interior that deals with the U.S. territories, including Guam — feels a bit like a homecoming, a chance to give back.
But more of her professional career has been spent on issues of Native Hawaiian sovereignty. When she began her nine-year stint as an aide to U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, she said, the official congressional position on any obligation to Hawaiians was: There isn’t any.
A few years later, the Apology Resolution passed, and then the long battle for the passage of the Akaka Bill was fought. There are still fights over the notion of federal recognition and the "nation within a nation" concept of sovereignty for Hawaiians, here on the home front more than elsewhere.
Kia‘aina, 51, had just been nominated to her current job and was dispatched to the islands this summer to represent Interior in its proposal to consider an administrative route to federal recognition. The pushback from opponents here was fierce, and Kia‘aina took her share of the flak.
There’s not much she can say about the status of the proposal, but she emphasized her own familial ties to the issue. Kia‘aina’s great-great-granduncle was the secretary to Queen Liliuokalani at the time of annexation and was thrown into prison by the Republic of Hawaii after delivering the protest documents to President William McKinley.
But now the focus of her work is on the needs of other island communities. Besides the territories, Insular Affairs handles all the distribution of funds given to the Freely Associated States, including the Federated States of Micronesia, under the current Compact of Free Association.
The challenge, she said, is to make the best use possible of the limited funds, not only for the compact itself but the impact aid that comes to Hawaii, Guam and elsewhere.
A one-stop center to give social services and the correct information to the migrants would help all of Hawaii, she said. Some of those who join homeless encampments, she said, wrongly believe this will help them get public housing. They could learn the facts through a collaborative federal-state-county center, she added.
"I believe that by showing a serious commitment that we care, devoting the resources and providing the tools necessary for them to become more independent and self sufficient will go a long way," Kia‘aina said. "No longer can people be using not knowing the law as an excuse for camping out in Kakaako."
QUESTION: What priorities have you been dealing with in the Pacific islands recently?
ANSWER: My priority when I started was to solidify the staff and make sure that everything was operating smoothly. … You need to know what’s going on on the ground with regard to funding going out. … Our budget is $659 million, so it’s a pretty significant program. …
Our job is to solidify and strengthen the underlying federal relationship with these areas, and that’s the totality of their society.
Q: Yes, they really rely on it, right?
A: Yeah. Everyone keeps saying, “Esther, what’s your priority?” I smile and I said, “I’m not here to rock the boat and to create my own priorities. First and foremost, I need to advance the mission of the office.
And what is that? It is to foster economic opportunities. It’s to promote government efficiency among the governments. And lastly, it’s to improve the quality of life of all of their people. Not just health and education. It can include management of your natural resources.
And I said, “That in itself is a tall order.” Of course, on the policy front, when I’m going out there, I have everything, all of our divisions, help on that front. If we don’t have a close relationship with the governors, it’s not helpful, right?
So when people say, “Government efficiency is so boring,” I’m like, if you don’t have government efficiency, you have audits. You have Inspector General reports. And you have the threat of federal funding being withdrawn, which is all of the hospitals right now.
Q: All of the hospitals?
A: All of the hospitals — Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Northern Marianas and Guam. Guam, they just finished an Inspector General report.
What I tell people is failure to solidify that aspect of the relationship does not bode well for our ability to work with the private sector and the government to promote economic opportunities and, hence, improve the quality of life for people. They all are in tandem. …
Q: You deal only with the territories, not those under the Compact of Free Association, like the Federated States of Micronesia?
A: With regard to the totality, it’s the territories. But the compact funds …
Q: They come through your office?
A: In fact, this office here (in Hono-lulu) … its role primarily is to oversee all that $220 million. It’s a small office here, we have three staff. They go out to the FAS (Freely Associated States) to work with them (on) the expenditure of the funds. The priority for these funds should be for health and education.
We don’t release any funds unless it is going where we determined. And that is a lesson learned by the United States because the first compact didn’t yield the outcomes that it wanted, which was to promote self sufficiency among these governments to be able to run on their own.
Q: And the current compact, is it having any different outcome?
A: Well, let me just say, overall my strategy (is): You can’t look at compact impact and the issue of increasing funds to the affected jurisdictions — like Guam and Hawaii, primarily — without looking at the totality of the issue.
And one element of that is fiscal accountability of the funds being expended by the FAS governments. There are challenges. So that has to be a priority of mine.
Q: When you say “challenges,” you mean their accountability?
A: Yes, and in the spending of the funds. It’s because the national and state governments of the FSM are very complicated. And as a result of that, sometimes an arrangement could be made to determine that these funds will be distributed for schools, and it doesn’t get implemented. …
What is our objective? It’s to decrease the dependency on public services. You can’t decrease that if they don’t have the educational skill set to either get minimum-wage jobs or highly skilled jobs. You need to get education, you need to get job training.
Q: What do you have in mind for the one-stop centers you want to start here?
I’ve been told by educators here in Hawaii that the problem is not the 10-year-old who was never sent to school, and put in a grade … when they’re just at first-grade level. The problem is the parents themselves who can’t read or speak English. So the cycle continues, because they don’t get the support services.
What this one-stop center would do is have these wrap-around services, the contemplation of a family-based education, where it wouldn’t just be for the preschoolers coming in, the parents will be there as well. It has worked in Hawaii. …
My approach is to ensure that it is not just the burden of Hawaii or the FAS community. We will be full partners, the federal government.
But I’m trying to encourage the (Micronesian) governments that just because they live here, they’re still your people. And there’s no reason some of your compact funds couldn’t help us.
Because I am exerting my energy right now to prioritize them right now as a community because they deserve an environment free of discrimination. As you know, they face high discrimination here.
Q: There’s a lot of frustration …
A: By the public. At least in my capacity, I am saying I acknowledge it. … Let’s sit down and look at the big picture.
(No. 1) Fiscal accountability. No. 2: How can we better leverage current resources? No. 3: We are looking at innovative ways … that would have a negligible impact on the federal government. One would have to do with exploring waiving matching requirements for federal funds. …
Sen. (Mazie) Hirono and others have taken the lead with regard to re-eligibility of certain federal programs, including Medicaid. … Regrettably, because it was part of the (Senate) immigration bill, it fell. We need to figure out a way to get it through without linking — you know how Congress works.
Q: Yes, um, well … ?
A: So my approach is to do all three. Clearly the easiest one, the low-hanging fruit, is trying to decrease and to make FAS citizens have an equal shot at being productive citizens. Which is, giving them the tools to help themselves. They’re falling through the cracks right now. …
And regrettably, the current social services are not as adequate as they need to be. So what I’m saying is, if we are pouring lots of resources in for homelessness, for example, let’s all strategically target it, so when we use federal, state and county funds, let’s use it all together. Why do we have it all over the place?
Q: Hasn’t there been a lot of talk about pooling resources and coordinating things?
A: And then nothing happens. That’s why I’m not going to let up. It will be a deliverable. …
Q: What update do you have about the reason for your last visit: the hearings on Native Hawaiian recognition?
A: I can’t. I’m part of the team, but there are other people working on it.
Q: So it is being worked on?
A: Oh, it is. There are 5,100 comments. …
Q: Those were emotional hearings. How did you come away from that?
A: It impacted me, of course. Not only personally. I spent the last 25 years of my life dedicated to laying the groundwork for this discussion. …
I got challenged a lot. People don’t understand how important this is to me. We all have different ways of achieving justice. …
I believe that (my ancestor) and the queen, they do what’s right for their people. And people are getting fixated sometimes on certain acts that need to occur to achieve justice when there are various forms.
