Focus – At Low Tide

During the past several years and particularly during the last several weeks as the legislative season moves towards its closing, it has become more and more apparent that public and private policy makers have increasingly ignored the Hawaiian culture and concerns when reaching their decisions impacting present and future components of our community. The mandated historical preservation processes, traditional water resource management, and cultural protocol relating to land use have generally been ignored by many agencies and departments of the federal, state/counties, and a cultural sensitivity to the impact of decisions on historical and contemporary Hawaiian places and practices has been clearly absent. Two or three specific issues might illustrate this principle.

According to credible sources, the U.S. Navy has indicated that they will turn over five hundred acres of their Kalaeloa lands to a commercial private sector developer for the building of private residences. No mention of community input, no mention of the historical or cultural importance of this land to the Hawaiian people, no recognition and provision for the critical water resources beneath this land, no consultation with the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, and a seeming lack of interest in the opinions of Hawaiians and non-Hawaiian community members have characterized this egregious and insensitive decision. I know that “to the victor belong the spoils” is the catch phrase in the exercise of military and political power, but in the past it has been a bit more subtle. It seems the velvet glove has come off.

It is interesting that most tourists come to Hawai‘i in great part because of the presence and power of the Hawaiian culture.

Just recently we also learned of the dismissal of the Hawaiian Cultural Director of the Hawai‘i Tourism Authority, after ten years of being a voice for the host culture in the organization that represents and promotes the largest industry in the state after military spending. It is interesting that most tourists come to Hawai‘i in great part because of the presence and power of the Hawaiian culture. It seems that authentic Hawaiian culture, traditions, and values are being abandoned by industry promoters in favor of slick generic beach promotion and Disney plastic tikis and cartoon caricatures. Pohō.

Another point of irritation in this vein is the fact that the Hawaiian culture is the only major ethnic group lacking a cultural center to celebrate its rich history and presence in our community. The Filipinos, the Okinawans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the Koreans, and others have their stand-alone centers. In a curious proposal, the HTA is offering to put a Hawaiian Cultural Center on the roof of the Convention Center. I suspect this is done to pay for the repair of major issues they have had with the roof and in hopes of financially saving that debt-ridden facility. Shame on them. How about OHA stepping forward and putting a real testimony to the Hawaiian culture, music and dance on their Kaka‘ako property? In a pono world, Hawaiian culture should be a priority for Hawaiian cultural organizations.

There are many more examples of this blatant disregard by our policy makers for issues of importance to the Hawaiian community, but I will close with another example of this widening disregard. The current legislature and state administration have been lukewarm, at best, in working to provide the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands (DHHL) with the resources needed to process applications for housing and land leases. This is despite the ruling of the Hawai‘i Supreme court that highlights this failure of the state to uphold its commitment to fund these administrative activities, a major part of the constitutional agreements included in Hawai‘i’s admission as a state in 1959 (see Nelson case). For eight decades, the continuing failure to fund the process of leasing by the department has, in part, led to the decades-long waitlist for DHHL leases. Today there are over twenty-thousand on the waitlist, and DHHL has struggled to get the resources to manage an efficient processing program. Many Hawaiians die while on the waitlist and thousands are kept from having a piece of their ‘aina. Let’s see what emerges. I tend to believe that this administration and legislature will again affirm its lack of serious interest in fulfilling the state’s obligations to the Hawaiian community, which would allow more Hawaiians home ownership.

How can we claim to be the land of aloha when aloha is absent from the heart of those who are shaping the present and future of our community??

I trust that the Hawaiian leadership and friends of the Hawaiian culture will begin to stand up in the face of this dismissal of the Hawaiian people by the political and economic power brokers in our community. This dismissal is mean spirited, exploitive, and lacks the amazing values and perspectives that our kūpuna call us to model. How can we claim to be the land of aloha when aloha is absent from the heart of those who are shaping the present and future of our community?? It is important that Hawaiians resist the “culture of shame” that drives a consistent dismissal of our culture and our place in our homeland. To put a positive face on a negative reality, perhaps it is time for our Hawaiian leaders to model clearly the power and healing nature of servant leadership. The contrast to the present behavior of our political leaders may lead to a true return to our cultural values in our public policy debate. Perhaps the time of ahonui (patience) is pau and kū pono (stand for righteousness) should be the lens we use to view those who govern us.

In a recent blog, I wrote about The Three “P’s” of Transformational Change: passion, pono, and perseverance. All three are integral in pursuing sustainable positive change in our communities and in facing the social challenges of poverty, social dysfunction, and institutional inertia. In response to the three P’s, I’ve had a lot of questions about how one practically implements transformational change within these concepts. Passion, pono, and perseverance are recognized elements, but what are the practical steps we need to take in order to turn these concepts into measurable, “kick the tires,” positive results in our community’s changed reality? Allow me to suggest three “F’s” to help us along the transformational change path.

The three disciplines of FOCUS, FOLLOW THROUGH, and FINISH are applicable to all of our activities. They become particularly important, however, as we approach the challenge of implementing significant and substantive change that shakes the status quo. If we intend to introduce transformational change, we need to make sure we clearly understand what the first step of focus means in the process.

To focus on change, we must be sure we understand and precisely outline our goal. When will we know we have reached our goal? We will only know this if we have fully defined and focused our attention on what we propose to change and what the characteristics of this changed reality are. We often cannot control all of the variables of change, but we need to begin the process by defining our objective as much as possible in the process. We need the crucial element of focus. If our initial focus is clear, we can use it along the journey as a benchmark for any changes that need to be added to the goal.

The second element of success in implementing change is the simple, yet often very difficult, phase of follow through. Once we have done the job of defining and understanding the measures of our focus, we are confronted with the challenge of putting into place the actions necessary to move towards our goal.

We are often lulled into thinking that a clear and compelling definition of our focus is sufficient. We often shy away from the nuts and bolts of putting into place the pieces that make transformational change actually happen.

Inertia and the intrusion of other urgencies conspire to blur this phase of engineered change and we are left wondering what happened when our focus is lost. All of this calls us to a heightened awareness of the implementation phase of change, the follow through. We may find that as our plans are implemented and put to the test of reality that our goals may need to be modified. As mentioned above, a clear initial focus can be used as a benchmark when modifying these goals. In other words, although focus and follow through are often separated in our minds, they are in fact very much tied together in practice.

There is a lot more that can be said of follow through but the third element of change, the finish, should always be kept in the forefront of our implementation activities. We need to press on towards our focal point and make sure we achieve the goals we have set. So often we are tempted to leave the battlefield of transformational change with the change half done or done in such a manner that our original focus is lost or marred. This is the point at which we may need others to help keep us accountable to the goals we have set. They need to press us into completing what we began in the focus phase and implemented (and perhaps modified) in the follow through phase by finishing the process.

Lots of relatively simple concepts to this process, but at heart it is a complex web of activities and attitudes that can have great power in driving change in our relationships and our communities. I’ve also found this three step mantra to be a powerful challenge for the youth of our community or for all of those who are committed to moving the personal, professional, or public agendas of their lives. Try it. You’ll like it and blossom using it.

At Low Tide

Tag: Focus

Welcome to the Age of the Dismissal of the Host Culture

The 3 “F’s” of Transformational Change