Outlet profile

Ka Wai Ola

Hawaiʻi state-agency publication (Native Hawaiian advocacy perspective)

Owned byPublished by the Office of Hawaiʻi Affairs (OHA), a semi-autonomous state agency governed by a nine-member Board of Trustees elected statewide by Hawaiʻi voters. (Correction: the agency is the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.)

FundingFunded through OHA's budget, which comes mainly from Public Land Trust revenue (income from former Hawaiian Kingdom crown and government lands), state appropriations, and returns on the OHA Native Hawaiian Trust Fund. It is not funded by advertising or subscriptions, and it is distributed free.

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

Ka Wai Ola was first published in February 1984, a few years after OHA was created at Hawaiʻi's 1978 Constitutional Convention. Its archive of issues, digitized in the Hawaiian Newspapers Collection, goes back to around 1980. It began as a way for OHA to inform beneficiaries about the agency's work, and it has long been mailed to tens of thousands of readers (over 60,000 as of 2017, per Wikipedia). It carries some Hawaiian-language content and regularly covers OHA board meetings, land and cultural issues, health, education, and community profiles. It has won awards from the Native American Journalists Association, including several in 2019 and 2020. Because the Board of Trustees oversees the agency that publishes it, it is a house organ and does not function as an independent watchdog of OHA. Its framing generally reflects OHA's goals, including Native Hawaiian self-determination, protection of cultural sites and lands, and benefits for Native Hawaiians. I could not retrieve details on recent editorial changes or on how it has covered the second Trump administration, so those points rest on limited evidence.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-11-06; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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