Q. Do you think the Akaka bill has a better chance of passing now that the Democrats control both the U.S. House and Senate?

A. I think it still has a difficult road regardless of whether we have a Democratic majority in the House and the Senate. And the reason I say that is Sen. (Jon) Kyl is still there, and it only takes one Senator to put a hold on something. So that is still a very real possibility. And the president had prepared a veto for it before and that is probably a very big possibility.

So while people are hopeful that it can go through, it still has very serious roadblocks it has to go through.

Having said that, I would still like to see the bill streamlined so that it has fewer of the impediments that were put there artificially I think for purposes of simply getting it through.

Q. What was your reaction to a recent study by Kamehameha Schools that concluded Native Hawaiian students performed better when they attended Hawaiian-focused charter schools rather than standard public schools?

A. I've read the study, and I believe it's accurate. I think it reflects what is actually happening in those charter schools.

One of the things that is so great about charter schools and immersion schools is that they have a component of parental participation that doesn't exist in the public schools.

And that parental participation makes all the difference in the world in the development of a child — parental participation plus the creative ways in which the charter schools work. They think out of the box. They go into the 'aina to do their work. They relate things to reality. It's more than just straight book learning. These students not only do well in school, they do progressively better and better. It follows through to their higher education.

Q. How did you become involved in the Native Hawaiian rights movement?

A. In 1993, I was deputy attorney general for the State of Hawai'i when they had that massive 10,000 gathering of Hawaiians at the 'Iolani Palace, and my office was right across the street. Up until that point I had been relatively uninvolved in the issue of Hawaiian sovereignty.

I walked over from my office to the palace ... and I saw these thousands of Hawaiians. I knew many of them had came from all the outlying areas — the North Shore, the Wai'anae area — and a lot of them weren't working people, and I thought here are these people who are putting themselves out there, and why am I not doing the same? Is it because I have too much to lose, that I don't want to make waves?

And I felt so ashamed of myself for not being one of them, to be speaking out as they were doing. And from that moment on I have taken a very, very deep interest in people and those issues.

Q. You've held many leadership positions in your career. What do you think it takes to be a good leader?

A. Without being facetious, I think it takes a lot of guts. Primarily because in a leadership position you are not always doing what is comfortable. You are not always doing what is the easy way.

And as a leader you frequently have to make hard choices, and you have to give guidance to whoever you are leading to help them to understand why there have to be hard choices.

I think this is the hardest part about being a leader. It's also the most wonderful part about being a leader because you are shaping people at the same time you are leading them.

Q. What has inspired your vision and passion over the years?

A. My family for one. My mother was a school teacher and my father a civil engineer. And both of them were very very avid supporters of the Hawaiian people in their respective roles.

Interestingly enough, the one thing they disagreed on in their entire lives is that my father was not in support of statehood but my mother was. It was interesting to listen to the discourse between the two of them. They did help to shape my life a great deal.

Q. Were there any other influences?

A. I had the privilege of working with Pinky Thompson for seven years. And I had the privilege with not just working with him but listening to his thought process.

He was a social worker by training. I used to write his speeches for him; that was my job.

In order to do that, we had to sit down, and I had to really get into his head to see how he was thinking in terms of the audience he wanted to address.

I learned a great deal of his own passion for the issues that he was dealing with, amongst them the education of our young people. He was instrumental in putting together the Kamehameha Early Education Program called KEEP. And this program has been emulated all over the United States.

Q. What is the genesis of the company you helped form, the Dawson Group Inc.?

A. The impetus behind that was my son, who discovered a new method of cleaning up contaminated soil. He discovered a new technology on the Mainland through friends and acquaintances, and he brought that technology down to Hawai'i.

From that he grew the company into what it became, and that is a very effective leader in cleaning up contaminated sites that had hazardous materials of one nature or another. And I must say that as a Hawaiian that always felt so good.

Q. What would your advice be to someone seeking to start a business?

A. Anyone who goes into business as we did needs to know that those early years are sheer hard work. You've got to be prepared to carry it on your back. You've got to be prepared for losses while you go through the learning curve.

My son Christopher has brought the Dawson Group to the point that last year almost $9 million worth of business, which I think is an absolutely remarkable achievement.

Q. Do you think the Western legal system can learn something from ho'oponopono, the Hawaiian system of dispute resolution?

A. Over the last three years, I have worked with the U.S. Institute of Environmental Conflict Resolution. It is an organization that primarily handles conflict resolution on large projects ... such as when they're going to build a nuclear facility in a community and they've got to work with the government and the community.

I have been able to teach and bring to the institute the principles of ho'oponopono, and the reception has been absolutely wonderful. These three elements are confession, apology and forgiveness. And the people attending the institute, which vary all the way from native practitioners to federal mediators, love this concept. It doesn't exist anywhere else.

The reason it is so important is that in our judicial system we're so used to thinking of winners and losers. With this type of dispute resolution, it is helping people do their own resolution, you don't have a court doing it for you. You are able to walk your way through it.

Reach Alan Yonan Jr. at ayonan@honoluluadvertiser.com.