Development in the Pacific If you come into a community and you’re developing geothermal energy, you’re making money! You have a business opportunity and you have a product that is energy, so what do you owe that community? Number one, you owe them a share of the revenue every year. developing geothermal energy, you’re making money! You have a business opportunity and you have a product that is energy, so what do you owe that community? Number one, you owe them a share of the revenue every year.” The model is gaining traction; the Office of Hawaiian Affairs adopted it last year. Additionally, the Hawaiian state legislature has introduced legislation requiring that there be an economic and social benefit whenever state resources and lands are being developed. The model is also being considered by the State of Hawaii Department of Hawaiian Homelands. Though based in Hawaii, IDG has worked on projects across the Pacific, including several geothermal projects with Ma-ori in New Zealand. “We have totally shifted the paradigm. When we were first working with Ma-ori 10 or 12 years ago, we were negotiating with folks who were developing geothermal, and they had a great deal of power. When we’d sit down to negotiate with the Ma-ori, [the developers] would just kind of laugh and dismiss us and say, ‘you know, we don’t really do business that way. We recognize that Ma-oris have this land, but what are they doing with it? They have sheep on it. It’s our money, our know-how, our technology… so we’re gonna give them a long-term lease and we’ll be paying them rental at the value of sheep-grazing.’ Well, we had to sort of turn that around on them and point out to them that it’s Ma-ori who own the land. They own not only the surface with sheep on it, but they also own the subsurface resource rights. We had to point out that the actual evaluation of energy in the Pacific market, and in the global market, as set by Wall Street, is not the price of sheep. When you talk that kind of talk with somebody like Chevron, they very much change their approach.” IDG is uniquely positioned as its management team is made up of Native Hawaiian professionals and entrepreneurs who know and understand the global energy market. They bring an extensive network of business contacts that span the financial markets of the US, as well as Asia and the South Pacific, but are first and foremost sensitive to the needs of Indigenous Peoples and devoted to the economic advancement of the communities they serve. Trask maintains a global focus while continuing to work as a tireless advocate for policy change in Hawaii. In addition to her work with the Ma-ori, she is working on renewable energy initiatives in Indian country that include wind, solar,
and geothermal; she serves as a member of the International Indigenous Caucus on Biodiversity; and is encouraging UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee to respect Indigenous people’s rights when recognizing new World Heritage sites, among many other initiatives. For Trask, the tasks at hand—and the urgency of accomplishing them—are clear. “All over the world we have a pressing crisis as a result of climate change…and we don’t have time to waste bickering and fighting. If you look at the Indigenous territories all over the world, you’ll see that there’s vast renewable energy resources available. So we need to move rapidly to have states, the World Bank, and others working in this area take a look at other models. “The Declaration says that we have a right to give our Free, Prior and Informed Consent. Well, that tells me we have to be at the negotiating table, we have to request disclosure, we have to ensure that consultation is meaningful. The challenge to implementing the Declaration is that we have to step into the driver’s seat. We have to say, based on protocols, what this means to have culturally appropriate development.” To learn more about the work of the Innovations Development Group and the Native-to-Native model, visit idghawaii.com.
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Cultural Survival Quarterly
December 2012 • 7