Aloha mai kākou,
I was recently blessed with the extraordinary opportunity, as an Omidyar Fellow, to shape a deeply personal and powerful Individual Impact Experience. I journeyed to Palau and Aotearoa, traveling with a singular purpose – to understand how our Pacific cousins have built and sustained successful models of Indigenous self-governance.
I spent a week in Palau, engaged in conversations with traditional leaders. Their wisdom was profoundly rooted in genealogical memory and lived resilience. Each night I transcribed our talks, sorting through their insight to discover what I could carry home to transform the work and kuleana of OHA.
Palau’s struggle to retain its ancestral lands, protect its language, and practice its customs is familiar. Yet what struck me most was how vigorously their traditional leaders assert their ea (sovereignty). Their system of co-governance, balancing Indigenous leadership with western political frameworks, proves that both forms of governance can exist in tandem.
In Aotearoa I was welcomed by the leaders of Kiingitanga and Waikato-Tainui. The Māori story of colonization, resistance, survival and revival resonates profoundly with our own.
The Kiingitanga is a powerful cultural force, moving resolutely toward the vision of a unified Māori nation. Waikato-Tainui has leveraged a $150 million settlement into a $2 billion economic powerhouse, one that fuels not only tribal prosperity but the assertion of political sovereignty.
This is economic ea, not for wealth’s sake, but as a platform for justice, dignity, and self-rule.
Ea is not lost in Hawaiʻi, it is very much alive across the pae ʻāina. From Hāʻena to Kāʻū, communities are leading with ancestral intelligence, reviving language, stewarding ʻāina, and reasserting our right to govern ourselves.
We have an opportunity to build regional self-governance rooted in each moku; responsive to local needs, and reflective of our collective ea. OHA has a critical role to play in supporting and resourcing this growth, not as the authority, but as an advocate and provider of infrastructure, funding, and legal support to empower communities charting their own course.
In both Palau and Aotearoa, formalized Indigenous governance structures directly inform and shape local decision-making, natural resource management, and education. Their governance has a physical presence: in Palau, bai (traditional meeting houses) are the sacred spaces for decision-making among chiefs; in Aotearoa, marae function as the epicenter of tribal life and governance.
These spaces are not symbolic, they are essential. They codify the authority of Indigenous governance. We must build our own hale hālāwai (meeting houses) in each moku to ground our ea in place and practice.
In both Palau and Aotearoa there is a fierce reclamation of land and language. And, importantly, their people vote. In both nations, Indigenous communities are powerful voting blocs. They organize, mobilize, and assert their presence within national political systems, not to assimilate, but to influence laws and policies.
In Hawaiʻi we have everything we need to grow our ea. It begins by believing that our self-governance is not a distant memory, but the work of the present.
Me ka haʻahaʻa,
Stacy Kealohalani Ferreira
Ka Pouhana | Chief Executive Officer
