20 for the Next 20: Ryan Kanaka‘ole, Department of Land and Natural Resources

The deputy director brings legal and listening skills to the job of overseeing military contracts and long-term plans for Lahaina.

Ryan Kanaka‘ole grew up in a multigenerational home in Ka‘ū, the largest and southernmost district on Hawai‘i Island. It is 50% larger than O‘ahu, yet home to just over 8,000 residents, compared with O‘ahu’s almost 1 million.

So he says he suffered culture shock in sixth grade when he started boarding at Kamehameha Schools Kapālama in Honolulu. But those contrasting points of reference – urban and rural – ignited his interest in how land and natural resources are used across the Islands.

While pursuing a degree in political science and government at UH Hilo, he volunteered for OHA and interned with county government, gaining insight into “what government service has to offer.” In 2011, he earned his law degree from UH’s Richardson School of Law, with a specialty certificate in Native Hawaiian law.

Gov. Josh Green appointed Kanaka‘ole as deputy director of the Department of Land and Natural Resources in January 2024. Previously, he served as a deputy attorney general and worked for the state auditor, where he examined the department he now leads.

“I was looking at DLNR, UH, Department of Transportation, Hawaiian Home Lands, and I got to learn about the agencies,” evaluate their performance and suggest improvements, he says, which helped prepare him for his current role.

One focus at DLNR is Lahaina’s natural and cultural recovery after the wildfires, including helping to develop a long-term plan, securing resources to rebuild homes,  preserving and restoring the area’s cultural heritage, and also to create “the natural infrastructure to prevent these things from happening again.”

Another duty is overseeing how the Board of Land and Natural Resources handles leases to the military. “We are here to ensure process. … Because the leases are all kind of different, we’re really looking at the environmental statement and providing comments on those as they come in.”

Kanaka‘ole is also a member of the Public Land Trust Working Group, which is responsible for creating an accurate inventory of the ceded lands and determining how much the Office of Hawaiian Affairs is entitled to. 

These are daunting tasks, but Charleen Aina, a retired deputy attorney general and former colleague, has ample faith in Kanaka‘ole: “He’s smart in both a technical sense, legal sense, and he’s smart in the sense that he’s very good with people. He listens to what they have to say, he offers his response in a way that is not offensive.”