On Friday, August 6, 2010, Annelle Amaral was the guest on the “First Friday” live call-in program on ‘Olelo Community Television, Channel 53. The taped program will run on subsequent Fridays for the month of August. The program is also available online on-demand: http://olelo.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=30&clip_id=15103
Annelle Amaral is the Native Hawaiian liaison for the Army Garrison Hawai’i. In 2008, she was awarded a contract (W912CN-08-C-0051) to perform the duties of the Army’s Native Hawaiian liaison in Hawai’i. The original contract and its eight modifications are worth $742,392 until August 15, 2010. Below is a partial transcript fo the First Friday program.
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First Friday 8/6/2010 – Guest: Annelle Amaral
Mililani Trask:
. . . Tonight we are going to be talking a look at a topic that has become controversial in the community because some people feel that there shouldn’t be a native Hawaiian covenant with the US Army. In part it is controversial because there’s not much known about what the covenant is, how it came about, and who the people are who are involved, and what the goal of this covenant really is. Tonight we’ll be taking a look at that . . .
Mililani:
. . . Joining us tonight to take a look at our main show which is focusing on the native Hawaiian covenant with the Army. Joining us tonight is Annelle Amaral someone who I have worked with for many years, someone who has been involved in many ways with the Hawaiian community. She was among the first women to become a fully vested police officer in the state of Hawaii. When she was a police officer she created the rape prevention education program which eventually covered all islands and reached 40,000 citizens. She was appointed to head up the affirmative action office by ex-governor George Ariyoshi she did a lot of grievances and mediation during that time. She went to the legislature in 1988 she served there until 1996 in the house of reps and was the majority floor leader when she left in 1996. She is a Hawaiian and in recent years she also had acted as a facilitator for some real difficult issues involving US government agencies private sector as well as the military. These issues such as the Superferry, Mauna Kea, and of course the Makua valley problems, and a number of other things. But let’s welcome to the show Annelle Amaral. And ask you Annelle to start by telling us a little bit about yourself and your background here in Hawaii.
Annelle Amaral:
Aloha and thank you for having me here, I appreciate it. Let’s see, what can I tell you about myself? I was born on the island of Hawaii raised here on Oahu. I’m a graduate of Star of the Sea High School, that’s a nice Catholic all girls school, not KS by the way. I also graduated from the University of Dayton. I have a BA in journalism, though I never worked in the field of journalism. You’ve given my background of work and what I found after sitting through far too many hearings at the legislature, and finding very little resolution there, I found myself drawn to the field of facilitation. Feeling as if, if people could just hear one another if they could just quiet the voices in their heads and listen to one another we actually would find ourselves agreeing more often than not, and though I after the leg became more and more involved with facilitation as a private business. It is to that end by the way that I end up here now as a contractor with the US Army. It was Peter Adler who was putting together a team of facilitators when the Stryker hearings first began back in I think was 2001. And he asked if I would join his team and I did.
There were about 7 of us then. It turned out I ended up being the last facilitator standing and ended up facilitating almost all the Stryker hearings and facilitating almost all of the Makua meetings. The last facilitation I did for Stryker was at Kawananakoa School and at the end of the day when everyone was headed home it turned into sort of a bad scene with one young lady screaming at me and with a group gathered around me and sort of shoving and pushing and a camera in my face to try to provoke me and I ended up being escorted to my car by the police. So I went to the then colonel, the garrison commander, the day after and told him it was time for him to look for another facilitator. That clearly I was no longer perceived as neutral and I could no longer function in this capacity. At that point, Col Margotta asked if I would consider another job, another task, and we talked about how hard the situation was becoming between Hawaiians and the Army and that clearly there had to be another way, another path. So he said to me, would you be willing to help us write a native Hawaiian community plan for the Army? And my response was I am not crazy. There is no way I’m going to write a native Hawaiian plan I said what I will do is I will help bring together Hawaiian leaders that could advise you and I would be happy to staff that effort and together we would write the plan, and if he was interested in that. And so that, actually, was the beginning of what ended up being the Native Hawaiian Advisory Council which is a group of people that come with either some substantive experience in broad subject matter areas like education, or economic development, or business, or people that come with a large constituency that have worked on Hawaiian issues like membership org like the Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs and there’s another group, whose name slips my mind, but they represent cultural practitioners, Aha Kiole, and so we invited them to come and to work together to draft up a plan. The end result of what essentially is about a year and a half of work is the signing of a covenant that essentially sort of mirrors the family covenant with the Army . . . we recognize, we are committed to, that’s sort of the way the family covenant goes.
Mililani:
You know Annelle, back in March, KITV news had done coverage of this and they had quoted you saying the relationship between native Hawaiians and the Army has become increasingly hostile as the years have progressed and I think that that’s probably a good place to begin because as you had pointed out, the Stryker hearings were terrible and you know that from coming up to Hilo. There was strong opposition to Stryker and I’m not surprised that you had to be escorted to your car because the issues that Hawaiians have with the military have gone on for years starting from the overthrow and they really haven’t ever been addressed. I’d like to ask you Manu if you’d maybe look at some of these issues and then we can come back, because some of these issues such as the situation with Pohakuloa, Stryker, Makua we can then focus in on but there’s a background of history that really is a terrible history.
Manu Kaiama:
Yeah I would assume that that’s something that you looked at within your group because unfortunately the American military truly has a less than glorious history in the islands. We have to begin with the military’s involvement in the illegal overthrow of our queen . . . with the excuse of protecting American interests . . . theft of crown and government land . . . not looking back at 1893, let’s roll it forward . . .161 military installations in Hawaii . . . 7 superfund sites . . . military makes up top polluters . . . Kahoʻolawe . . . Stryker Brigade . . . most recent EIS seriously flawed . . . Makua . . . Schofield Barracks . . . Depleted Uranium . . .
Mililani:
I think Depleted Uranium is also a big one, I think we’ve talked about it for the Big Island, but you can see that a lot of the history and a lot of the problems relate specifically to military use and toxicity . . . I wanted to go back Annelle to the community plan of action, you had brought some people together. When I looked at the plan of action, it seemed that there was a framework to actually address some of these horrible things that Manu has raised I mean the actual language, the preambular section, here it says the military is recognizing here, “our training programs require access to lands for the purpose of conducting activities that we realize may impact the environment, social and cultural conditions. It is our responsibility to prevent pollution, minimize adverse impacts to land, and to conserve protect and preserve our natural and cultural resources. So in this action plan there actually is this recognition and there is this commitment and there is also a statement that we are going to be sensitive to the relationship with native Hawaiian peoples. Now this is strong words in a community plan of action how are the Native Hawaiian Adv council people who were working on this and who are working on this now. What is their actual role in ensuring that these commitments come about? We have some Hawaiians, actually we have a list that’s going to be showing provided to us by Annelle, some folks on the list are Hawaiian and they are members of the NHAC other signatories actually are folks signing for the military. But those Hawaiians that are the Native Hawaiian Advisory group worked on this plan and are aware of this commitment, what is their role? What are they doing?
Annelle:
The first thing that we’ve accomplished is that we have come to agreement on this language that we are talking about right now, this preamble, this one goal, this covenant, this promise, this sacred promise that we’ve made to one another. The next thing that we will do is start to work on steps to begin to address that. Now I will tell you that we have not yet come up with specific steps as it relates to this language that you just read out. We meet on a quarterly basis, the signing was in March, the meeting after that was in May, and actually that was a short meeting because our garrison commander left and we were being introduced to the new garrison commander. So the next meeting we’ll have in August. Our commitment is now that we’ve finished the business of putting together this broad language together we will begin to work on specific issues and identify the steps forward. Actually, the first meeting that we’re going to have in August what is on the table is a discussion first about economic opportunities. So that is in that meeting in august. But the work ahead is in these three documents that we were discussing.
Mililani:
You know Annelle, one of the things that you just bring up now, is looking for economic opportunities, and one of the big criticisms that has come out is that when this group came together, it was flawed because many of them were actually subcontractors from the military and that they were actually there they were receiving money from the military and the example was of course the Danners, Jade and Robin Danner who have military contracts for digitizing military data but the point was that are these really, these members of the NHAC, are they really independent can they really be honest if they in fact are receiving contracts from the US military and one of the purposes in the preamble is to create opportunities for mutual enrichment. That can have a cultural interpretation but clearly that has an interpretation in terms of the contract money that they’re getting from the US government.
Annelle:
I think you have to admit that the Council on Native Hawaiian Advancement does a little more than just digitizing some documents with department of defense some more than that. They are not entirely supported with that one contract. And it is true that also on our council sits Bruce Kepler, who is an attorney with an organization that gets department of defense money. My hope is, quite frankly, that we will be able to create an educational program to help more native Hawaiians who own their own businesses to be able to compete for these contracts and other contracts that are available right now for NHOs (Native Hawaiian Organizations). Right now we only have 15 native Hawaiian organizations, we get millions of dollars of contracts that go unclaimed by native Hawaiians because we’re not qualified, and instead, those contracts are picked up by native Alaskans and Native Americans.
Mililani:
Well the thing is what is really the purpose of the effort? Is the purpose of the effort to address the commitments . . . in the covenant or is it really just a cover so people who are getting these contracts can say that they are going to be a part of the advisory council, but to the extent that they are, what are they doing outside of that to address some of these environmental, social and cultural conditions . . . the long litany of which Manu just read?
Annelle:
Well Jade Danner is a member of our council and helped to craft this language as did all the other members of the council. So it would seem to me that all of us are part of producing a larger effort than simply economic development. Economic development is one piece of it, and as I said, we’re going to be discussing that in August. We haven’t started the discussion yet, but we will start and this is not an economic development council it is a council that deals with all facets of our life – employment and enrichment and sustainability of us as individuals is I think one good goal to go towards, but there are other aspects that we’ll be working on.
Manu:
Do the council members paid for their membership, for participating?
Annelle:
No, they’re all volunteers.
Mililani:
I don’t know if you took a look at who the members of the council are – they are Peter Apo, Jade Danner, Chris Dawson, Neil Hannahs, Alan Hoe, Rev. Bill Kaina, Charles William Kapua, Jalna Keala, Bruss Kepler, Leimomi Kahn, Deejay Mailer, Kaleo Patterson and William Richards those are the Hawaiians that signed the covenant, but they also together comprise what we are calling the Native Hawaiian Advisory Council. Annelle, are these people here representing Hawaiian organizations? Are they representing the Bishop Estate? In what capacity are these people serving?
Annelle:
These people, Mililani, were invited because of the whole body of work that they as individuals have done in the Hawaiian community. The wisdom, the knowledge of all of their work when it’s brought to the table is amazingly powerful. But they do not come to the table representing their businesses or where they work, they come to the table as Hawaiians who love things Hawaiian and who want to help create some positive solutions. No, they don’t come representing their organizations.
Mililani:
When I looked at the materials you had sent me, it seemed that they were clearly identified because they were people who were high profile and because they would be viewed as Hawaiian leadership. Also when I look at some of the press releases that are coming out from the military itself they’re identified in this way. Here’s a press release: ʻNative Hawaiians and Army talk about ʻIwi Kupuna.ʻ This was the recent July NAGPRA event that you had . . . and this was released by the US Army Garrison Hawaii Public Affairs Department, it says, “among those attending were reps of native Hawaiian organizations, later it goes through identifying Bishop Estate, Kamehameha Schools, but the military itself is saying reps of NHOs, and you’re saying they really are not . . .
Annelle:
This is the workshop that we had though. So, the workshop we had on NAGPRA at the end of July, what we intended there was to invite individuals from different native Hawaiian organizations to hear what NAGPRA defines as claimants, to understand the law, and to make informed choices as to whether or not they or their organizations qualifies as claimants for the ʻiwi kupuna found at Schofield BAX. So in that press release, when we talk about organizations, those people were invited to that training were invited because of the organizations they belong to that’s different from the NHAC.
Mililani:
Do these organizations provide funding, did the Bishop Estate or Kamehameha Schools ever provide funding for this effort.
Annelle:
No. The work that we do, the work that I do is funded by the Army
Manu:
You know there are so many things for me . . . when I look at this sheet for the NHAC and they are characterized as native Hawaiian leaders, I think that’s a loose interpretation because when I look at the names, and I know many of these people, I have aloha for many of them, but I don’t know what group of n Hawaiians they have led so I guess ʻleadersʻ meaning not that they lead native Hawaiians but they are native Hawaiians and maybe in a leadership position in their job or in their community.
Annelle:
These people have not led native Hawaiians? Rev. Kaina has not led native Hawaiians?
Manu:
I’m not saying all of them, but I wouldn’t consider all of them for example Peter Apo as a native Hawaiian leader.
Annelle:
Ok, he’s a former legislator, he’s led somebody.
Manu:
So that’s my point, the use of the term ʻNative Hawaiian leaderʻ is a little bit misleading or confusing. Because . . . when you have something like a huge media blast: US Army Hawaii Covenant with Native Hawaiiansʻ not with ʻsome Hawaiians in leadership positionsʻ but with ʻnative Hawaiians’ . . . it’s putting out to the general public that look, we are on this road, and native Hawaiians are on that waʻa also. It almost marginalizes those of us who have legitimate claims against the military for some of the wrongs that have been committed. So, my point is this kind of looks to me like an illusion of inclusion type deal . . . we are going to put this forward, we are going to have a big celebration, have a covenant signing and have a bunch of people willing to sign it, because I noticed that there were many people who could have tried to be involved in this, but the invitation wasn’t extended to them. And what we’re doing is we are making an illusion to the general public that things are going in a positive direction with the military and the Hawaiians and you read the covenant and I just don’t understand what the native Hawaiians are getting out of this. The Army is going to consider our culture and historical experience. I see the Army as being the recipient of everything here, and us, nothing that can even be quantified. And that goes even further for the things that you’ve been sponsoring. Like teaching the military wives hula or moʻolelo or oli …
Mililani:
It’s not things that get to the issue I think. But you know Manu, if I could just ask you, you’re a lineal descendent of Makua. I think maybe if we looked at an actual problem, the situation at Makua, the situation with Depleted Uranium on the Big Island, where there’s great concern. Initially Army said that there was no DU, but now we have the testing, we know there is. There was hope that when this covenant would be signed, there would then be a follow up and a way to address it. And I think that some of the folks in Makua were hoping that would come about as well, because there was an event in Makua. (To Manu) But yourself, as a lineal descendant, what issues do you raise, and how can these issues be addressed by either the military or yourself (Annelle), or possibly this Native Hawaiian community leaders group.
Manu:
Well, they do not speak for me so I can’t even answer that question.
Mililani:
No I mean as a lineal descendent at Makua.
Manu:
No, but you’re saying how can we work with them. So I don’t want them speaking for me. I find it very mahaʻoi that they went and signed this as native Hawaiians and they’re talking about many sensitive issues that Hawaiians do not want to be delegated to the sidelines on this because they are really, really important issues. So I don’t really have an answer for that . . . maybe in your plan Annelle, you guys have an answer of rolling it out to the people who have really been affected by the military and their misuse of the land, and maybe reaching out to lineal descendants, I don’t know. So is that a plan?
Annelle:
We don’t deal specifically with those issues, with any specific issue, quite frankly. The intention of the work of the council is to deal with the large issues that impact the lives of native Hawaiians and in a way that the Army may have some influence. So when it comes to Makua, I think that the division, the cultural resources deals directly with the issues around Makua, as does natural resources. The people in training, and so there are specific people who deal with the Makua issue. The council does not deal with that, neither do we deal with Depleted Uranium . . .
Mililani:
I think that’s the point.
Annelle:
It’s not within our skill range to deal with those specific issues.
Mililani:
But I think that’s the point, when you have a community plan of action, a preamble, and it says here . . . we realize that these things may impact the environment, social and cultural conditions. It’s our responsibility to prevent pollution, to minimize these adverse impacts. So, when we begin the native community plan of action, then we have this covenant, you would expect that there would be some responsible action on the part of the military to address this. When I went back and did the research for Makua, the military released these statements that say: ʻthe native Hawaiian community leaders day at the Makua Military Reserve was a Key part of releasing the military reserve EIS record of decision. This was done quote to counter negative media and native Hawaiian opposition when the record of decision was released. The strategic communications plan called for a community leader and media day consisting of noted native Hawaiian businesses, education and community leaders and all newspaper and TV stations. Native Hawaiian leaders were solicited from throughout the community. So what really happened was Native Hawaiian Community Leaders Day was sponsored but it was a cover for bringing out this EIS and the record of decision, and at the end, what happened was that the Army announced that they were planning to resume training with live ammunition at Makua on August 31st. I think that the point that Manu is making is a good one. In that we have issues, we have a covenant, we have a plan, we say we’re going to address it, but what actually happens is there’s a native community leadership day to cover a military announcement that they we’re going to resume bombing, and it comes up looking like Hawaiians are endorsing it because these leaders are there. So how is that actually addressing the concerns of lineal descendents and others in Makua who are saying that they don’t want any more live fire and actually you were informing us that everything had fallen apart after this and it was back in court.
Well, alright, so, back the truck up . . . the article that you are reading is 2009; the signing of the covenant is 2010. The leadership day is a day to announce the record of decision, and what the garrison commander does in that meeting where certain Hawaiians were invited, not all Hawaiians, but some Hawaiians were brought, was for the purpose of the garrison commander to make an announcement about the use of Makua for training. Live fire training has in fact, till now, till August 6th not taken place at Makua . . .
Mililani:
Why? Why hasn’t it taken place?
Annelle:
Well, as I’ve later read is there are different types of training strategies I think that are being planned for Makua, as well as for Pohakuloa. And that’s the bringing out with these commanders, bringing out their strategies for training. In part, the use of live fire has, I think, not taken place because there are still a couple of issues still pending in the court. One of them had to do with a shellfish study, and another had to do with cultural sites, so those are the two issues that I think are still pending in the courts, and that’s I think why live fire has not resumed live fire training. But when they are talking about the live fire training, they really are talking about a different kind of training in Makua than what you’ve seen in the past. That was the purpose of this prolonged explanation by the garrison commander in 2009. Given the situation in Afghanistan, the different way they would be using the land for training. Let me be real clear, the Army only has only one mission, and the only mission of the Army is to protect and defend this nation. And those that work for the Army only have one purpose, and that one purpose is to assure that the mission of the Army is carried out and that soldiers are trained properly to be able to carry it out. I mean, it’s that simple.
Mililani:
I think that puts things down pretty clearly, in that this is Hawaii, this is our land. We know that the mission of the military is basically for the making of war, and to defend a country, but it may not be ours. It’s the US and they are an occupying force. The thing is that if you’re . . .
Annelle (interrupting):
Well, you and I disagree there because I see myself as American
Mililani:
…We still haven’t had reparations for the overthrow, we’ve had an apology. The US has admitted to the illegality of the overthrow. The US admitted to the illegality of the military occupation, but we’ve never seen the reparations, we’ve never seen the restitution. We have military bombing at Makua, it hasn’t been cleaned up. We have DU up on Pohakuloa, and that’s a problem . . .
Annelle (interrupting):
And isn’t the Akaka Bill one of those steps toward getting reconciliation and reparations?
Mililani: The Akaka Bill? The Akaka Bill is not on this show, what’s on this show is the covenant and how it’s supposed to be addressing these issues.
*Questions
Mililani: . . . You know we’re obviously . . . were coming to the end of our program now, we didn’t get to half of our questions . . . we may have to revisit this. In fact, the American Friends Service Committee has called in saying that their research shows that this contract is worth $742.000 is that correct and will they have a chance to make some response . . .
Yes AFSC, we will bring you on to respond to this show. And Annelle is it true that you have a contract for 3 years worth $750,000?
Annelle:
I . . . if they say it’s true it must be true . . .
