Mauna Kea is the anchor for kanaka maoli, it is our collective mana, which is being stripped and disrespected. Our deities exist in its winds, its rains and mist and dew, and its snows. The elemental nature of the Mauna reaffirms from where we come and where we now stand.
This is not the first time that the state Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) has failed to enforce constitutional and legal protections for conservation district lands, native Hawaiian cultural practices and the environmental resources upon which those practices depend. For two decades, a hui of Hawaiian cultural practitioners and environmental justice advocates have worked tirelessly to bring attention to these issues and to be voices of reason against unfettered development of our sacred Mauna Kea. In 2015, the Hawai'i Supreme Court invalidated BLNR's approval of the TMT permit. BLNR has missed another opportunity to do the right thing and KAHEA and other community petitioners are faced with the burden of fixing those failures, yet again.
The next step will be the court appeal. Both the Hearing Officer and the BLNR have committed some of the same procedural violations that the Hawai'i Supreme Court cautioned against. Both those for and against the TMT earlier sought to disqualify the Hearing Officer, and similarly, objected to participation by board members with conflicts of interest. We emphasize also that the TMT International Observatory Corporation does not have a sublease for its use of Mauna Kea lands. Construction should not begin before all legal processes have run their course. We've been here before, we are here now, and we are here in the days and years to come.
]]>TMT's claim to a moral high ground in the name of science has been made loudly and consistently to an audience trained to think of "science" as an undeniable force of innovation and an institution that has produced nothing but good for human beings. Nuclear weapons aside, even if one were to concede the hallowed place of science in contemporary society, Mauna Kea reminds us that there are other knowledges and understandings developed, honed and cherished by human beings which native peoples globally have been striving to recover after the long wave of European ideas and beliefs inundated our societies and attempted to drown the observations and practices of thousands of years of experience.
At a moment in our history when we are more poised than ever to rediscover and resume the knowledge of our ancestors, it seems particularly cruel to destroy the resources that have survived the last two centuries of cultural upheaval. These natural pu‘u, viewplanes, and life forms, threatened and some already destroyed by astronomy development, are like our textbooks — poised to be burned just as we are approaching the library steps.
We use the word sacred to describe the mountain. Its name, Mauna a Wākea, describes the place that the mountain has in the imagination and experience of our people: first born of Wākea, the sky; magnificent in aspect; first to be sighted by ancestral visitors arriving from the southern islands. But the mountain is sacred to humans because of what it has meant to them over the millennia, a place where one treads carefully and reverently, because it is important for people to feel a reverence for something.
In the absence of that reverence, there is no meaning to our existence, and for Kānaka that meaningfulness is tied directly to our belief that we and the mountain share common ancestors. Even if not a single person had ascended that mountain in the last century to feel her quiet and yet powerful assurance, she would still have been waiting for us to remember.
The summit and the northern plateau of Mauna Kea are known as the wao akua, the realm of the gods. It is because of this reverence for this sacred mauna, this kapu aloha, that the Kū Kiaʻi Mauna, the protectors of Mauna Kea, continue to demonstrate that we have not forgotten who we are. People are streaming to Mauna Kea to protect her because in protecting her we are protecting another vestige, another ʻano of our collective selves. It is painful to have to explain and justify the sacred. It is a reminder that much of the world doesn't recognize the ways you identify yourself as valid.
The TMT supporters do not so much as engage with the reasons why we see the sacredness of this place, and merely insist that this is the best place on Earth for the best yet telescope devised. J.B. Zinker's book, "An Acre of Glass," details astronomy's insatiable desire for ever larger ground-based telescopes and clarifies that these giant building projects are not only bigger scientific instruments, they are also huge investments with serious money at stake.
And so we must address the question of whether we can share that sacredness with the telescope with a clear answer. No. We cannot because there is nothing careful or reverent about its development, construction or even its intent. The TMT itself is a symptom of a society that recognizes no limits. Why should 30 meters be sufficient when 3 or 12 were not? And if that gaze they have been afforded into the farthest reaches of this universe produces simply a hunger for more penetrating looks at the sky, at what point will the astronomy community possibly acknowledge the need for reverence articulated by Kanaka Maoli?
Stop the construction. Bring the machines off the mountain, let the leases to the university expire and the mountain heal.
]]>News coverage of the court hearing on the University’s plans for Mauna Kea characterized our opposition to the plan as anti-development. It said:
“(opponents) want to block new development on the mountain by stopping approval of the management plan.”
As one of our kupuna pointed out, actually the motivation is all the University’s part. She said
“advocates for more telescopes on the summit want the UH CMP rushed to completion in order to move forward with several new development plans.”
While it is true that as long as there is no plan there is no TMT, that is not the desired outcome for the plan. We’re not trying to block the plan to stop TMT.
What we do want is the opportunity to have a real plan–one that arises out of a transparent process and allows communities to articulate a public vision for the future of these extremely important public trust lands. That is what a public planning process is supposed to do. The point is that we have been denied the kind of critical, public and open discussion that would lead to such a plan. In its place, we are being told to shut up and accept a plan that was written by the university and driven by its interest in telescope development and telescope dollars.
We have long said that we want a fair opportunity to talk through and determine together how astronomy and cultural practice and natural conservation coexist–in what form, by what rules, and with what limits–on the summit. This is not an unreasonable ask. The University is wasting precious public education dollars on motion after motion in this case, because they are unwilling to compromise in any way on their development plans. For the University, this case is all about TMT. For advocates of the mountain, this case is not about TMT at all. It is about our standing, and the right of the people of Hawai’i to determine the future of a unique, irreplaceable summit that is part of Hawai’i's public trust.
Click here to read the article from the Hawaii Tribune Herald.
]]>Yesterday morning, the Third Circuit Court heard oral arguments on the University of Hawaii’s motion to dismiss our appeal for a contested case hearing on the University’s new management plan for Mauna Kea.
Though we are still waiting for the judge’s ruling, the hearing made one thing clear: supporters of this “CMP” also support more telescopes (and more desecration and destruction) on the sacred summit. Less than a dozen people sign-waved outside the Hilo courthouse during the hearing with pre-printed signs that said “Mauna Kea TMT Yes!” If you ever doubted the connection between more telescopes and the University’s CMP, then yesterday’s demonstration of support for the “Thirty Meter Telescope” at a hearing on the CMP should make it clear that the University wrote this CMP to facilitate telescope construction on Mauna Kea. Indeed, the CMP does not speak to any limitations on telescopes or a carrying capacity for the summit.
…unless, of course, if by “TMT” they meant “Too Many Telescopes.”
And, Mahalo Nunui!! This is just a little shout out to all of those who took time out of their workday to sit in solidarity with us before the judge. Mahalo for your unwavering support.
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