LRADs were developed by military contractors after the bombing of the USS Cole. LRADs are pain inflicting weapons used by the U.S. military to suppress close-range attacks on Navy warships. When mounted aboard a Navy ship, the “area denial” feature emits a “sound at a dangerously high level . . . to cause pain/hearing damage” as well as “repel” an attack on a warship by combatants.
Individuals immediately lose balance, experience nausea, dizziness and lack of control over bodily movement. The use of LRAD as a deterrent or dispersant of nonviolent, noncombatant civilians has caused serious and many times permanent bodily injury in a number of cases across the United States since certain law enforcement agencies began using them on noncombatants.
KAHEA’s attorney pointed to state, federal, and international law provisions under which use of the LRAD against nonviolent demonstrators is unlawful. “Under federal constitution law,” KAHEA wrote, “the use of this military weapon (the 100X model specifically procured by you) in a manner capable of causing serious and permanent bodily injury to move non-violent demonstrators ‘violates the Fourteenth Amendment under clearly established law.’” According to DLNR documents, its LRAD contract is from June 15, 2019 to December 19, 2019 and the justification for the approximately $15,000 purchase of the device is for natural disaster warnings.
KAHEA’s letter, however, notes that an LRAD device was first observed in DLNR officers’ possession during demonstrations on Haleakalā last year and was confirmed only after multiple open records requests by KAHEA were denied.
KAHEA’s letter requests Case to “immediately and publicly renounce the use of these military weapons against civilian noncombatants seeking to protect natural resources and historic properties anywhere within your department's jurisdiction” and promises to seek the protection of the courts if no such action is taken.
Contact:
Lance Collins
Editorial| Island Voices
No, the state should not allow TMT on Mauna Kea
By Kealoha Pisciotta, Bianca Isaki and Candace Fujikane
September 7, 2016
Since Sept. 1, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has been holding its 2016 World Conservation Congress in Honolulu.
Committed to conservation and sustainable development, the congress, which ends Saturday, has brought together world leaders, nongovernmental organizations, businesses and indigenous and grassroots organizations to act on the challenges to the environment we all face.
While Hawaii’s leaders see this gathering as an opportunity to showcase Hawaii’s conservation efforts, our accomplishments cannot hide the elephant in the room: the state-supported proposal for a massive Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) proposed for a designated conservation district near the summit of Mauna Kea.
Mauna Kea dwells in the heavenly realm of po, out of which is born the potential for all things. Because of this, Mauna Kea is the equivalent of Papahānaumokuākea: They are the two sacred places in Hawaii that make complete our creation stories, one in the highest heavens, the other in the darkest depths of the oceans.
Mauna Kea is the firstborn of Papahānaumoku, Earth Mother, and Wākea, Sky Father, and is the elder sibling of kalo and the Hawaiian people.
Culturally significant places such as the “Ring of Shrines” are concentrated on the northern plateau. The many water deities who reside on Mauna Kea are a constant reminder that the mountain sits atop five aquifer systems that provide water for the entire island.
Laws protect the conservation district, and TMT cannot comply with these laws. The proposed TMT would be 18 stories tall on 5 acres on the pristine northern plateau. Construction would excavate 20 feet into the mountain, relocating 64,000 cubic yards of earth. A commercial dump truck can hold 10-14 cubic yards of dirt. It would take over 4,700 dump trucks to remove the earth at the TMT’s construction site.
The state Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) is responsible for protecting the fragile ecosystems in conservation districts through a permitting process. In 2011, however, it approved the TMT’s application, which the Hawaii Supreme Court later vacated based on BLNR’s error of approving the application before the contested case hearing.
Today, 24 organizations and individuals are preparing for the second contested case hearing against the TMT.
Development projects being considered for permitting must be consistent with the purpose of the conservation district, which is “to conserve, protect, and preserve the important natural and cultural resources of the State.”
Furthermore, the state Constitution protects rights customarily and traditionally exercised by Native Hawaiians.
The permit application asks whether the TMT would have a “substantial adverse impact.” NASA’s 2005 environmental impact statement on the Outrigger Telescopes concluded that the 13 telescopes on Mauna Kea have had a cumulative impact that is “substantial, adverse and significant.”
The mountain is overbuilt, and the TMT would only add to adverse impacts.
Yet the TMT is touted as a model of “sustainable astronomy” because it will be “zero waste,” use solar panels, truck wastewater down the mountain, and be painted an aluminum color to reduce visibility.
These are short-sighted, manini concessions to “sustainability.”
The 10,400 gallons of liquid waste generated by the TMT would require two trips by a large-sized tanker truck each week. The TMT will also generate 120 cubic feet of trash per week. Operation of the TMT will increase the use and underground storage of chemicals that will need to be transported by truck. All of these hazardous activities threaten both sacred ground and the waters of the aquifer.
We ask World Conservation Congress participants to address indigenous concerns over the “World Heritage” designation, to bring critical attention to Mauna Kea, and to pass a resolution urging the state of Hawaii to reconsider its support for construction of the TMT.
]]>Richard Naiwieha Wurdeman, attorney for the Mauna Kea Hui, said that his clients are encouraged by the Hawaii Supreme Court’s decision to grant the application for transfer. One of the criteria that the Court considers in granting an application for transfer is whether the matter involves a question of imperative or fundamental public importance. Wurdeman said UHH, on behalf of TMT, had strenuously objected to his clients’ application for transfer of the appeal from the ICA to the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court for review.
The grant of transfer comes in the wake of UH’s public concessions of its mismanagement of Mauna Kea and agreements to Governor Ige’s plans for purported “improvements” on Mauna Kea, all of which fall short because they were premised on continued support of the TMT project. “These are interesting, to say the least,” said Wurdeman, “given the University’s vigorous opposition in legal battles.”
In a separate case, the ICA had earlier ruled against the Kilakila o Haleakalā’s similar appeal concerning the University’s CDUP for an Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) to be constructed on the Haleakalā summit. The Hawaiʻi Supreme Court subsequently granted a request for review and oral arguments were held in April in that case. Now, appeals from both the TMT and ATST CDUPs are under review by the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court. The Court has not yet issued an order on whether oral arguments will be held in the Mauna Kea case.
Deborah Ward said the court’s decision to hear the case is “heartening” and Kealoha Pisciotta stated, “This is good news and recognizes the importance of our case for all of Hawaiʻi.” Both cases may bear on the ways conservation districts islandwide will be treated. CDUPs are essentially variances for construction in conservation districts and can be granted only if a project meets eight criteria, including an absence of substantial adverse impact, preservation of natural beauty, and consistency with conservation district purposes.
"The transfer signals that the Hawai'i Supreme Court, in unanimity, believes that the so-called TMT Conservation District Use Permit deserves the utmost legal scrutiny and priority,” stated Kū Ching."
View court order granting application for transfer to Supreme Court
]]>In 1998, the state auditor submitted a meticulous analysis of the University of Hawaii's abysmal performance over the prior 20 years. In 2005, a follow-up analysis was done which was no less troubling. The most recent audit was last year, showing some improvement but continued failures. Taken together, these three independent reports document a continued breach of the UH's fundamental trust responsibility for over 45 years.
There is wide agreement regarding the importance of protecting Hawaii's unique cultural and environmental resources. Discussion and debate on the balance between preservation and development require an informed and objective analysis such as that provided by the state auditor.
From the start, the UH saw Mauna Kea as a vehicle to gain academic prestige and that has never changed. The effort to characterize this as science against culture — or worse, the past versus the future — completely misses the fundamental flaw.
The UH was never equipped to manage Mauna Kea. It measured success by the evanescent standards of academics: papers published, credit given and international accolades conferred by being connected to some degree to work performed by others because it came out of Mauna Kea.
The true economic value of observatory sites was never pursued and never realized. The protection of the environment has been secondary. Cultural and historical protections have been viewed as nuisances. The summit became a scientific industrial park of which the UH was a poor manager.
We now have the biggest of all the telescopes ready for construction. The Thirty Meter Telescope has reaped the bitter harvest of all that came before and Hawaii is very much in the world's attention because of this controversy. Our leaders seem paralyzed, while TMT opponents have demonstrated both conviction and tenacity in their protests. It seems that events are going to careen inevitably into destructive conflict, which will further polarize our communities and diminish Hawaii's credibility in many ways.
It is not too late to set things right. It seems that these unresolved issues from our past are the place to start. To ignore these transgressions is untenable.
The UH pursued international acclaim at the expense of its relationship with the community, which created it and supports it. DLNR allowed it. All of us who did not object long ago share in these failures.
For the good of our home, our leaders and their institutions must take the difficult but unavoidable step of acknowledging the failures with genuine contrition and implementing credible changes in the control and operations of Mauna Kea. We must definitively resolve the past issues that haunt the present discussion.
Progress will come when the UH is replaced by an independent entity that can properly balance the competing interests. Until then, I support the peaceful protesters impeding further construction on Mauna Kea.
We are Hawaii.
Hawaii is Mauna Kea.
Onipaa.
Abigail Kinoiki Kekaulike Kawananakoa is a philanthropist, Campbell Estate heiress and descendant of Queen Kapiolani.
]]>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.
]]>One, two, three, then thirteen telescopes were constructed on Mauna Kea’s highest summit, Kukuhauʻula, which the University of Hawaiʻi took to calling the “Astronomy Precinct.” These actions – the construction and the naming of these lands – sought to naturalize astronomy as the purpose of Mauna Kea’s summit. The state Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) acquiesced with UH’s management efforts. DLNR conservation district rules recognize “astronomy facilities” as a permissible use of a certain classification of the conservation district, called “Resource Subzone” lands.
Construction on conservation district lands, even of astronomy facilities, must meet eight criteria, one of which prohibits projects that cause substantial adverse impacts. All authoritative documents agree that the existing twelve observatories under UH management have caused substantial adverse impacts. This is true for Mauna Kea and Haleakalā summits. UH has argued, essentially, because these summits are already messed up – an “increment” more would not be substantial. Because Mauna Kea (and Haleakalā) has already been compromised, new observatory construction would cause only a “slight increase” of bad impacts. According to this logic, the more UH messes up these summits, the lower the bar is for new construction.
This logic bears comparison to former DLNR-chair nominee, Carleton Ching’s misapplication of “balancing” to the problem of a resource that had been already been 90 percent depleted. A “balance” between developer and conservation uses of the last ten percent would not only leave the developer with 95% of the resource. It would leave us with a rule that permits future balances between the remaining 5%, 2.5%, and so on. Compromise cannot be the rule.
I am certain that those calling for compromise would not endorse UH’s magical math logic about bad impacts and increments. My point is that we cannot look only at the construction of the Thirty-Meter Telescope as an isolated problem to be remedied by making both “sides” happy. The questions being raised by Mauna Kea protectors are about whose futures, knowledges, and histories will be made to thrive in Hawai'i. And it seems the TMT project is going to be made to provide answers to them.
Bianca Kai Isaki, Ph.D., Esq. has been active in the landscape of Hawai'i’s environmental and Hawaiian rights protections through her work with KAHEA: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance, the Conservation Council for Hawai'i, and the Hawai'i Alliance for Progressive Action. She works as an independent writer and researcher on Hawai'i water code, public process, public trust land, and other environmental law and policy issues.
Maunakea Teach-in: Kū Kiaʻi Mauna on April 23rd, Thursday at UH West Oʻahu campus.
The event is from 11am to 1:30. 11 am – 12 will be the film showing of Maunaka: Temple Under Siege. 12 – 1:30 will be the panel discussion, featuring Walter Ritte, Bianca Isaki, Ilima Long and Noelani Goodyear-Kaopua
Here are directions to the UHWO campus: http://www.uhwo.hawaii.edu/default/assets/Image/aerialmap.jpg
Please spread the word, especially to those on the West side. Mahalo!
]]>Foes of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Monday delivered to Gov. David Ige a petition with more than 53,000 signatures opposed to the $1.4 billion project on Mauna Kea.
Kealoha Pisciotta, leader of the Mauna Kea Hui, also called on the governor to pardon the 31 “protectors” who were arrested April 2 trying to prevent work vehicles from reaching the construction site at the summit of the 13,796-foot mountain.
In addition, Pisciotta asked Ige to rescind the appointment of state Attorney General Douglas Chin because he was the former managing partner of a law firm, Carlsmith Ball, which is representing the University of Hawaii and the TMT project in the lawsuits filed by the Mauna Kea Hui against the development.
]]>In the statement released Friday afternoon, Ige said: “My understanding is that TMT followed an almost 7-year planning and permitting process, which included public hearings and community input. Following this process, project permits were issued. The TMT team is legally entitled to use its discretion to proceed with construction.”
He continued, “I understand that not everyone will agree with this." Ige noted that he recognizes and respects the right to appeal the matter through the court system.
Any further announcement about the construction schedule will come from TMT.
On April 7, Ige announced a one-week “timeout” in construction to “evaluate the situation from multiple perspectives.” On April 11, he announced a second timeout, which wraps up on Monday.
“We have used this time to listen and learn about Maunakea from various stakeholders. I learned about other issues that need our attention to create and implement a better plan for the stewardship of Maunakea," Ige said in the statement.
According to the statement, this plan may include:
-decommissioning and removing older telescopes and facilities to restore the summit;
-reducing the level of activity on the summit; and
-integrating culture and science.
]]>Native Hawaiian and environmental groups oppose the building of the $1.4 billion, 18-story-tall TMT that would be the biggest telescope on Mauna Kea and nine times more powerful.
“I thank TMT for its willingness to be respectful and sensitive to all of Hawaii — its special people, its sense of place and its unique host culture,” Ige said in a statement.
In related news, the Office of Hawaiin Affairs Board of Trustees met Friday and discussed the burgeoning crisis. In a press release Saturday, the quasi-state agency, which initially approved of the TMT project, said it has been in discussions with “state decision makers.”
“In these talks, OHA leaders have emphasized the need for all parties to address the unresolved legal matters while the TMT construction moratorium remains in place,” the agency said in a statement.
Two days ago, dozens of protesters turned out at an OHA board meeting and asked trustees to lend them support. Hundreds of protesters also rallied at the University of Hawaii at Manoa on Friday.
“The Board plans to gain greater clarity on the pending legal cases relating to the TMT project,” the agency said Saturday.
Read Civil Beat’s latest reporting on the TMT protests, Telescope Protesters Prepare for Another Police Showdown.
]]>Statement on the Mauna Kea arrests
Kealoha Pisciotta, Mauna Kea Hui
April 2, 2015 (4:00 p.m.)
There are no words...we are deeply deeply saddened by the arrests today of our Hawaiian brothers and sisters and other citizens who were peacefully protecting Mauna Kea from further desecration while we wait for Hawaiʻi’s courts to hear our appeal.
In aloha we’ve directly sought the help of Governor Ige, Hawaiʻi Island Mayor Kenoi, University of Hawaiʻi President Lassner and Hawaiʻi County Prosecutor Roth. But so far none of them have stepped forward to intervene on our behalf.
Last night we were informed by the Governor’s Chief of Staff that there was ‘too much construction company money at stake” for us to expect Governor Ige to use his executive authority to hold off construction until our appeal can be heard by the State Supreme Court.
Today’s arrests are hewa—a grave wrongdoing. At least 30 of our Mauna Kea ohana have been handcuffed and hauled off the mountain by County police and by State DOCARE officers of the Department of Land and Natural Resources—the very state agency that we are challenging in court.
We understand that Governor Ige’s office is getting flooded with phone calls today from Hawaiʻi citizens expressing shock at these arrests and disappointment at the Governor’s failure to act on behalf of the petitioners, the Hawaiian community and the mountain.
Unfortunately, today’s arrests are consistent with the way the State has treated the Hawaiian community during the whole TMT hearing and permitting process—by the Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR), the University of Hawaiʻi Board of Regents, and the Office of Mauna Kea Management (OMKM), all of whom have worked diligently to forward the interests of this University of California/Caltech project and Hawaiʻi’s local construction companies.
Hawaiians blocked the TMT’s construction crews and equipment in order to support two important statutory rights:
In Aloha we remain,
Kealoha Pisciotta
MAUNA KEA, Hawaii – As the Mauna Kea Access Road blockade enters a seventh day, those opposed to the Thirty Meter Telescope project are still taking the time to explain their reasons for the action to authorities, visitors, and media.
Big Island Video News has gotten many questions from viewers and visitors concerning the purpose of the blockade. This interview (above) sheds some light on the arguments being made by the protectors, as they call themselves. For the most part, the arguments are unchanged from the concerns raised during the lengthy permitting process. On the same day these interviews were conducted (Tuesday) the University of Hawaii released an update and background statement, refuting some of the positions being taken by the protectors.
The primary concerns were explained by Kahookahi Kanuha and Lanakila Mangauil on Tuesday. Both stressed that they are not “anti-science” or even “anti-TMT”, but rather opposed to the observatory being located on the summit of Mauna Kea. They say the rules that govern the permitting process in a conservation district – the “8 criteria” – were not followed by the Board of Land and Natural Resources when they rendered their decision to allow TMT to go forward.
The University says the claim that TMT did not meet the eight criteria for a conservation district use permit is inaccurate. “The Third Circuit Court ruled that TMT did meet the criteria by being consistent with state laws governing the districts, not causing substantial adverse impact to existing natural resources, being compatible with the surrounding area, preserving the existing physical and environmental aspects, not subdividing or increasing the intensity of the land use and not being materially detrimental to the public health, safety and welfare. State regulations specifically identify astronomy as a permitted use in the Maunakea Science Reserve.”
Kanuha, Mangauil and others disagree with UH. They say a conservation district is not supposed to look like a “city” of telescopes, as it does now. They say one more observatory is too much; especially one as big as TMT.
UH says that over last seven years, “TMT has met all legal requirements in obtaining the necessary permits to build a next generation telescope from the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources and the County of Hawaiʻi, including a sublease from the university.” TMT was granted a motion to proceed by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources on March 6.
However, the lawsuits are not entirely settled. The case is in the Intermediate Court of Appeals and the 3rd Circuit Court now, and the “legal questions before the court are whether the TMT has meet all of the legal or regulatory requirements to allow it to be build on Mauna Kea or not,” wrote petitioner Kealoha Pisciotta of the group Mauna Kea Anaina Hou recently. Opponents say the project should not be moving forward until the final court appeal is decided.
Opponents of TMT also raise concern over the water shed. “If you live on Hawaii you need to be familiar with where your water comes from,” said Mangauil. “This mountain is one of the main sources that feed our aquifer. So any contaminant on the mountain will go directly into our aquifers.” It is one of the reasons that the summit realm has been kapu in ancient Hawaiian traditions.
But UH refutes the water claim as another inaccuracy. “Comprehensive research by expert hydrologists confirms that TMT and the existing 13 telescopes pose no such danger,” UH wrote Tuesday. “Furthermore, TMT is designed to be a zero waste discharge facility with all waste securely transported off the summit. There is also very little precipitation above 8,000 feet and the observatories are located well above that at the top of Maunakea at 14,000 feet.”
Native Hawaiians have been divided over the detrimental effects the project may or may not have on culture and religion. There is agreement that the summit is sacred. TMT supporters – including Native Hawaiians – have drawn a connection between the ancient Hawaiians understanding of the heavens in wayfinding and early astronomy as a justification. “A sacred science on a sacred summit,” they said during the permitting process. But Mangauil and Kanuha say that idea is a falsehood propagated by developers in the interest of building their observatory.
“We did not need to destroy mountains” to practice astronomy, Kanuha said.
Managuil agreed. “We were protectors of the natural cycles of the world,” he said. “If you made an offer to put this on the top of our most sacred mountain, no… I don’t think (our kupuna) would be for that. They’s say great science, great technology. Wrong place. And that’s what we’re saying.”
There is one more glaring issue brought up by TMT opponents; the political elephant in the room. The Hawaiian Kingdom still exists, they say.
“As many people are finding out, Hawai is under illegal and prolonged occupation by the United States of America,” Kanuha said, “and therefore the state of Hawaii is illegal. So therefore the contracts between the contractors and the state are illegal. Their claim of entitlement to the mountain is based on illegality.”
“These are not only cultural lands,” Kanuha continued, “but these are crown lands. These are lands that were seized by the United States of America after the overthrow. They call them ceded lands. I call them seized lands. These are supposed to be held in trust for the Hawaiian people. And I believe the Hawaiian people have made it clear that they are against this.”
The issue relating to the Hawaiian Kingdom has not been addressed by the university or TMT in recent media releases.
]]>"They [the astronomy community] were accustomed to considering themselves the underdogs, continually embattled for funding and support. The astronomy community initially dismissed indigenous claims as spurious, antiquated and antiscience, a perspective that is still prevalent. In a column in The New York Times last October science writer George Johnson likened Hawaiian’s opposition to the telescope to the Catholic Church’s oppression of Galileo, and suggested that the indigenous protesters were pawns of environmentalists who “have learned that a few traditionally dressed natives calling for the return of sacred lands can draw more attention than arguments over endangered species and fragile ecosystems."
Check out our response to Johnson's NY Times Op-Ed referenced above here: http://kahea.org/blog/kahea-response-to-nytimes-seeking-stars-finding-creationism
To be uncritical of the fact that indigenous people's worldviews continue to be dismissed by the science community is to say that our worldview--that we, ourselves--are dismissable. To go on to substantiate that perspective, by providing a quote that kanaka maoli are being used by environmentalists for their own agenda is false and insulting to both groups. If you would like to see this sentiment in real live action, go ahead and check out the comments section on the original article (or don't and save yourself the blood pressure spike).
This article reinforces a problematic false trichotomy between Hawaiians, environmentalists and scientists. Hawaiians are environmentalists and we are scientists. We appreciate the coverage, but could do without the condescension. I don't want to go after the article's author, Katie Worth, inasmuch as I believe she was attempting to stay objective and impartial in her writing, but as Desmond Tutu famously said, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
]]>As vast as its expanses of ice and lava are, Mauna Kea has not proved sizable enough to accommodate the desires of all three groups. The dormant volcano has become a battleground between astronomers, who have placed 13 telescopes at its summit and now wish to build one more, and Hawaiian cultural and environmental activists who believe the stargazing science has already had too much impact on the 4,205-meter-high mountain.
Two lawsuits are in motion over the California Institute of Technology and the University of California’s proposal to build the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT); in October activists shut down the project’s groundbreaking in a protest that made headlines worldwide. So far, courts have ruled in favor of the telescope and construction has recently begun. Activists have appealed and say they will continue to protest.
For astronomers, the proposed new telescope represents tremendous promise: With a mirror nearly three times larger than any other on Earth, it could detect signs of life in other solar systems and provide clues to the origins of the universe. But for some Hawaiians, it represents the ongoing desecration of a sacred place. Ancient Hawaiians considered the volcano the umbilical cord connecting the land to the heavens and used the mountain as a site of burials, altars and worship; thousands of shrines and other cultural artifacts have been recorded on the Mauna Kea and many are still tended by Hawaiian families. Fishermen still make offerings at the volcano for a good catch and hunters still fan across its forested skirt in search of prey.
Kealoha Pisciotta, one of a half dozen plaintiffs suing to stop the project, finds herself in the unusual position of having friends on both sides of the debate. She was a telescope systems specialist technician on the James Clark Maxwell radio telescope for 12 years. Meanwhile, she maintained a family shrine near the summit and led a cultural heritage group. “I descend from Polynesian navigators, people who carry the star knowledge, so in the beginning I didn’t see the conflict between telescopes and the mountain,” Pisciotta says. “I only began to see it later when there were problems—people looting antiquities from the mountain, building these bigger telescopes that really affected the landscape, and destroying important landmark features.”
The amount of development at the summit is among the activists’ complaints. As the summit has been carved up by roads and studded with buildings, the awesome beauty of the once-stark landscape has diminished, Pisciotta says. Some of the telescopes can now be seen by 72 percent of the island’s population, according to an environmental impact document. Environmentalists have their own bone to pick with the project, arguing the development has already harmed the habitat of the wekiu bug and other endemic flora and fauna, and limited recreational uses.
Project managers say the new telescope has been carefully designed to avoid these impacts. Although the TMT will loom 18 stories high, making it the largest building on the island, it will be visible only from 15 percent of the island and will touch only 0.08 hectare of the bug’s habitat.
If activists were to succeed in stopping TMT, it wouldn't be the first time: In 2002 a federal court blocked a NASA plan to build a half dozen 1.8-meter telescopes on the mountain because it failed to do a comprehensive environmental assessment; NASA eventually abandoned the project.
Two other U.S. mountaintops have become combat zones between astronomers and activists. In the late 1980s astronomers at the Mount Graham National Observatory in Arizona faced opposition to a new telescope from squirrel-protecting environmentalists and from the San Carlos Apaches, who perform religious ceremonies on the mountain. Astronomers eventually won, but the delays forced them to downsize their project. In the 2000s the Kitt Peak Observatory, built on the tribal reservation of the Tohono O’odham Nation, became the site of another clash. In 2005 the tribe successfully put a stop to a new $13-million telescope complex at the observatory.
When these conflicts arose, says Leandra Swanner, a science sociologist and historian at Arizona State University in Tempe, astronomers “felt blindsided.” They were accustomed to considering themselves the underdogs, continually embattled for funding and support. The astronomy community initially dismissed indigenous claims as spurious, antiquated and antiscience, a perspective that is still prevalent. In a column in The New York Times last October science writer George Johnson likened Hawaiian’s opposition to the telescope to the Catholic Church’s oppression of Galileo, and suggested that the indigenous protesters were pawns of environmentalists who “have learned that a few traditionally dressed natives calling for the return of sacred lands can draw more attention than arguments over endangered species and fragile ecosystems.”
Plantiff Pisciotta bristled at these implications, saying native groups have every right to make claims, and can do so without being antiscience. She noted that plaintiffs have invested tens of thousands of their own dollars into the campaign because it is of deep personal importance to them.
TMT leaders have been more careful than their predecessors and have taken the opposition seriously, by trying to gain public support for their project. TMT spokesperson Sandra Dawson says her team had more than 300 “talk–story sessions”—the Hawaiian pidgin term for dialogue—with community members over the course of several years, including half a dozen well-attended public hearings, and that by their estimates well over half the island’s population supports the project. They collected thousands of pages of testimony and conducted an extensive environmental and cultural impact review that have so far been met with approval from Hawaii’s land board and its courts.
Banana farmer and Hawaii Island Economic Development Board member Richard Ha, who is part Hawaiian, says he was initially ambivalent about the new telescope but now supports it. That support was won when TMT leadership promised $1 million a year to the island’s public schools. But more importantly, he says, project leaders have treated islanders with respect. “The first thing they did right was talk to the community,” he says. “That was a huge deal, because prior to that they would make decisions at a high level and people would just have to deal with it.”
Nevertheless, the project still faces considerable opposition. In October the number of people who showed up to protest at the telescope’s groundbreaking ceremony—protesters estimate around 500—took telescope supporters by surprise, and suggests there may be resilience to the opposition. That momentum may derive in part from a renewed appreciation of Hawaiian heritage as part of a “new Hawaiian renaissance,” as protester Joshua Lanakila Mangauil put it. He says efforts to protect Mauna Kea are one vein of that renaissance. “Hawaiians are learning the laws that were used against us,” he says. “We’re learning the legal game. We’re using it to reclaim our people and our islands and our culture.”
After about 50 protesters lay across the road and later stormed the ceremony the groundbreaking was aborted. Its master of ceremonies concluded, “We do hope we’ll be able to find a common ground and proceed with this in the future.”
But TMT’s Dawson says they later decided not to reschedule the event. “We will have no more ceremonial events,” she says. “We will just move forward.”
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