Rowena Akana, newly elected to chair the Office of Hawaiian Affairs Board of Trustees, is no stranger to conflict in her 26 years on the board for the agency that manages the Native Hawaiian Trust Fund.

In her early years there were some flash points around programs and leadership issues — she actually chaired the board previously in 2000, succeeding former Sen. Clayton Hee — and those have not abated.

Not long before she took the helm on a 5-4 vote, Akana published a blog post vigorously protesting a policy to guard what statements trustees could make publicly. Now she’s got the gavel, and although she hopes for peace, she doesn’t mince words.

“I don’t go out looking for fights,” she said. “In the end, everybody has karma and it just sort of comes back. So I don’t waste time with that. There’s too much positive work to do, rather than working on negativity.”

Her academic background was in education and she did some substitute teaching before taking a staff position at the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands — and before the hiatus to have two daughters (and three grandchildren).

Akana, who also has some experience singing jazz, later ended up working on the air in radio before a friend ran for OHA and piqued her own interest in politics.

Among those whose vote she won was a new trustee, Keli‘i Akina, a longstanding critic of OHA and opponent of the agency’s federal recognition push. That goal Akana still supports, citing the transfer of the Hawaiian trusts to the state in 1959.

“The mandate from the feds was to create something for the Hawaiian people, which they did,” she said.

“We’ve been trying to educate him (Akina) on why some things are the way they are. What we’re doing here is still that mandate.”

QUESTION: What was your reaction when there was a bit of a walkout after you were elected to the chair?

ANSWER: Well, you know, I didn’t expect the walkout but I expected them to object vehemently.

Q: Because?

A: Because they’ve been in the power group for quite a while. And (Trustee) Colette Machado has been with the power group for the last 14 years. So, people don’t like to give up the certain perks that power has.

And I have been an adversary, in some respects, to some of the things the board has done.

I think part of it is fear. Fear of what I might do, in terms of turning over things and perhaps reversing some things …

Q: Should the beneficiaries expect to see a lot of 5-4 vote splits?

A: Well, I hope not. We knew in the beginning we’d get resistance, we know that. But I hope that over time this will change, because my motivation is simply to do the best we can for our beneficiaries.

And that means perhaps refocusing some of the things that we’ve done in other areas. For instance, we’ve paid no attention to real health care, or health results. We’re into research about statistics, but OHA cannot put its finger on what we have done, where we could say, “We are responsible for this significant change.”

Many years ago, we did things like, when Molokai didn’t have dialysis machines, people had to fly here to Honolulu to get on a dialysis machine, very expensive. So we invested in five machines to be put in the hospital there, so our beneficiaries wouldn’t have to come over to Honolulu to get this kind of treatment.

So in my view, OHA needs to get back to some of the basic needs that people have, which we have not done in 14 years.

Q: Can you give an example of what OHA has done in recent years that you think is a diversion or distraction?

A: Well, I think one of the things that I believe hurt us was about 14 years ago when that chair decided that we would focus on advocacy. And in her view, advocacy was just giving monies to other organizations to do what we were doing.

In other words, farming out a lot of contracts to people to accomplish some of the things that were on our wish list. And in doing so, we lost track of the real motivation behind why we were interested in helping our beneficiaries with housing and health and education and so on.

Q: For example?

A: For instance, back then we had a housing division, and we partnered with Self-Help Housing and Catholic Charities, with other institutions to build self-help housing. And we did many of those, and it was successful.

When I was the programs chair, I got Fannie Mae to commit about $150 million to help us with our Hawaiians who were on the waiting list, waiting to get onto Hawaiian Homes, where they couldn’t qualify. So they needed to get their credit up.

They helped us with down payments and they also helped us with an educational program where we hired contractors to come in and group these different people in groups so that the ones who were ready to qualify could move up to the loan application phase. …

All of that was canceled. All of that was thrown out. And to me, that was a huge mistake. The need for housing now is greater than it was before.

Q: So instead, the money went where?

A: That’s a good question, isn’t it? We went from a $14 million to a $23 million budget, and we were doing three times the work that we’re doing now. And we’re at $50 million, and it’s mostly administrative costs.

Q: The news is that you think it’s top-heavy.

A: Oh, very top-heavy.

Q: What are you going to do about that?

A: I’ve been in discussion with my team, with the other trustees. We have a plan. We’re not going to go firing everybody.

But we are going to do an assessment of all of the divisions and look at what we’ve been doing, how successful that has been. And certainly, look at how OHA is structured now, because it’s way out of line.

We need to look at that structure and look at what will serve our needs — and we’ll probably hire a professional. …

Q: Staff is paid out of general funds?

A: No. Trust funds. … The Legislature only gives us $3 million … we match funds with the Legislature on (funding for) the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., for lawsuits. And then we match funds with them for (the economic training nonprofit) Alu Like, where they do services. …

We have a little bit that goes to secretaries, which has not changed for a long time. …

Q: So you want an assessment of who’s doing what?

A: Yes, yes, because I know that we could do more with less.

Q: If you’re not going to be firing people, you’re going to be trying to get more work out of people?

A: That’s going to be dependent on what the assessment says, and where we can improve, and what we should be doing to meet our mission. Some staff will be redirected to other areas than where they’ve been.

And, you know, ultimately perhaps some people will not be here because maybe we’re not going to focus on the area that they’re in right now. We don’t know at this point. …

Q: About federal recognition: You’re still in favor of that pursuit?

A: The concept of recognition is very important to all Hawaiians. What we’ve disagreed on, I think, is the process.

While there is a group that wants to secede, it’s not realistic. It’s just not. The majority of Hawaiians — I know, because we’ve done a plebescite — the majority of Hawaiians want to be Americans, and they don’t want to secede from the United States. It’s not the goal.

The goal is to get that recognition to save us from being attacked as racist, attacking our trusts, attacking Hawaiian Homes, OHA. We just want to function as a native people, within the United States, and try to do the best job we can for our people.