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.

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.

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:

1. The right to appeal to the highest court in Hawaiʻi a flawed conservation district permit and lease that injure the rights of Native Hawaiians and other Hawaiʻi citizens and two deeply flawed lower court decisions.
2. The right to protect our sacred mountain from desecration, a crime under state law whose maximum penalty is fines or jail time for each offense.

In Aloha we remain, 
Kealoha Pisciotta

"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."

A response to the Oct. 21, 2014 New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/21/science/seeking-stars-finding-creationism.html

October 29, 2014

Dear George Johnson,

I’m a board director of KAHEA: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance. Your “Seeking Stars, Finding Creationism” (Oct. 20, 2014) weighs in on a critical debate in our community and cites a statement from our website. I’m writing because I can help you understand what you saw when you saw protests against the groundbreaking of the Thirty-Meter Telescope at Mauna Kea on Hawai'i island.

You did not see environmental activists opportunistically pushing a political agenda in the guise of “a few traditionally dressed natives calling for the return of sacred lands[.]” We can ask the question, what conditions make it possible for you to reduce a tremendous response on the part of Kanaka ʻŌiwi and their allies to “a few traditionally dressed natives”?   What is not “convenient” for Hawaiians and non-natives alike has been the ongoing failures of the state of Hawai`i to step up to its public trust duties to protect these lands, which include Mauna Kea’s summit. As you note (sort of), people have “lingering hostility” against the U.S.-backed overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893. Since then, the feds, then the state, have held lands specifically set aside by and for Hawaiians “in trust” on the condition that they protect and use them for the benefit of Hawaiians and all the people of Hawai`i.

For decades, we’ve seen the state allow more telescope construction, parking lots, and invasive species on the mountain, while failing to protect ahu (traditional altars), sacred waters, and historic properties. We’ve watched the state sign $1 leases with private telescope operators who, in turn, have leased their observatories for $100,000 a night. These lands and resources are not the state’s to sully or misuse. They are legacies of a Hawaiian Kingdom’s good-governance, which have been through a settler colonial history that we have a chance of getting right with. So, when we say the state threatens to break the public trust in Hawai`i, we mean the state threatens the promise of restoring Hawaiian lands to Hawaiian governance and mending colonial fractures across our communities.

You also did not see Hawaiians turning toward the “dark ages”, but to a wealth of traditional knowledges that include astronomy, navigation, and geography.  Nor did you see Hawaiians dogmatically clinging to “Indian creationism” against the reasoned progress of scientific inquiry. You saw people insisting on a sacredness and kuleana to these lands that cannot be addressed only as a mitigation measure in a plan to build more telescopes. Kuleana in this sense is a deep spiritual responsibility that must be upheld for the survival and resurgence of a people.

Your attempt to equate technology as equivalent to Galileian or Copernican curiosity, and suggestion that they were all examples of the triumph of secular thinking over the sacred, lacks… truth. Early scientists were wholly captivated by the sacredness of God’s universe and were trying to understand humanity’s  place in it. The promises associated with these extremely expensive telescopes have been, over and over again, is that they will bring much-needed economic relief to Hawai'i island.

Indigenous peoples’ actual, meaningful, and historied presence on lands with scientific value are not merely permitted by your colleagues’ “act of contrition” - or even federal protections for Native graves. For you, this shared world of multiple meanings is hidden in plain sight and even a thirty-meter telescope will not help you see this.

Me ke aloha,
Bianca Isaki, Board Secretary, KAHEA: The Hawaiian-Environmental Alliance

www.kahea.org

"Two of our docs, “Mauna Kea – Temple Under Siege” and “Act of War,” will be screening at the Honoka‘a People’s Theatre (Hamakua coast, Hawai‘i island) starting at 6 pm, Wednesday, March 26. Free! Co-producers/directors Joan Lander and Puhipau will be there for Q & A."

“Money well spent” ...

This is how Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) Observatory Corporation representative Sandra Dawson describes the $100 million spent on TMT design, development, six-figure salaries, and the “shifting of mindsets” and “creat[ing] positive enthusiasm” for the TMT.  The proposed TMT would be the largest telescope on Mauna Kea by far and is the latest in a long line of the University of Hawai`i’s affronts to Native Hawaiian rights.

On June 5, 2011, West Hawai`i Today contributor Peter Sur reported major contributions and expenditures on the TMT.  Although Dawson emphasized those of the $100 million expenditures that went towards design, testing, and the environmental review process, Sur examined TMT tax forms, which disclosed that TMT Project Manager Gary Sanders earned $221,300 in 2008-2009, and at least six other employees earned six-figure salaries.  Even more controversially, the Hawai`i Island Economic Development Board (members of which have consistently testified in favor of the TMT during the environmental review process) has also been receiving TMT monies.  In 2006-2007, they received an unspecified sum to assess Hawai`i island communities’ thoughts on the telescope’s contribution to Mauna Kea development.  HIEDB spent $42,584.88 in 2007-2008 to continue community scoping work and created an Advisory Board “to help [the] shifting of mindsets and [to] create positive enthusiasm amongst our [Hawai`i Island] communities favoring the sitting [sic] of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea.”  HIEDB ramped up their efforts in 2008-2009, spending $153,522 on “public outreach and education” on the TMT.  The TMT paid HIEDB $200,757 to cover expenses during these two years.

We should question the transparency of funding for public agencies (like HIEDB and UH) whose authority rests on their service to the public interest.  The HIEDB should not be renting itself out as a publicity firm for the TMT Corporation.  Board Member Mike Kaleikini contends that outreach for TMT was part of the HIEDB mission to advocate for balanced economic growth on Big Island.  But, we should question whose interests are being leveraged against conservationists, Hawaiian cultural practitioners, and the many others who support the simple point that industrial development on sacred summits is an abdication of responsibilities towards the peoples whose land this is – and particularly when we’re talking about the (un)ceded lands of Mauna Kea.

The payments to the HIEDB are a drop in the bucket compared to the $375 million that has already been committed to the TMT by Gordon Moore’s foundation (co-founder of Intel Corporation), the California Institute of Technology, the University of California, and other Canadian universities.  In total, the TMT expects to draw in another $725 million to meet its $1.1 billion price tag.  These expectations build on the presumption that UH will prevail in the contested case hearing over the Board of Land and Natural Resources’ approval of the use of Mauna Kea conservation district lands for the TMT project.  As part of the Mauna Kea Hui, KAHEA will be contesting the BLNR’s decision to grant that permit on August 15-18, 2011.  In the meantime, let’s hope the TMT corporation and Hawai`i public officials refrain from embarking on a public-private partnership of TMT outreach and education.

Read the article for yourself here: http://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/sections/news/local-news/biggest-telescope-carries-big-cost.html

Public hearings on the TMT permit application will be held on December 2 (Hawaii County Council Room, Hilo) and December 3 (NELHA Gateway Center). More hearing info at:  http://hawaii.gov/dlnr/occl/hearings-workshops

We’re still reading through the documents, and we’ll be back with our comments and analysis soon. In the meantime, we wanted to share 3 facts, and 3 questions about the current paradigm of managment and decision-making on Mauna Kea:

- There exists a Mauna Kea Management Board, which is supposed to be like a community management entity. It is comprised of seven members of the community who are nominated by the UH Hilo Chancellor and approved by the UH Board of Regents. (see http://www.malamamaunakea.org/?page_id=80) UH appoints 100% of the
members of this Management Board, while at the same time benefiting financially from accelerated telescope development, in what they claim to be a “correct and representative” process.

- Mauna Kea is currently being leased and subleased for $1/year. (Some of the sub-leases are gratis!) Hawaii law (HRS 171) says that “ceded” lands (crown lands) must be leased for fair-market value. We know that telescope “viewing time” can go for at least $80,000/night (this is what Yale recently agreed to pay in a $12 million dollar deal with the
Keck Observatory) http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=6437. How is $1/year fair-market value for the years of development that has already taken place? We are now being asked to consider further development, under an existing economic paradigm which does not conform to the law.

- No study has ever been conducted to assess the carrying capacity of the mountain for development. Further, the only cummulative study on the impacts of past development (an EIS conducted by NASA in 2005, as a result of litigation by OHA) found the cummulative impacts of telescope development on Mauna Kea to be “significant, substantial and adverse.” Hawaii state law prohibits permits for projects in conservation districts that cause significant and adverse harm.

Three Questions:
(1) What is the carrying capacity of the summit for development? How can we know, unless we study it?
(2) How intensely can we industrialize in the conservation district, before its meaning and purpose as conservation lands is lost?
(3) Are the current “economics” of telescope development ($1/year leases) leading to optimal allocation of resources between astronomy and cultural and natural resources? Who wins? Who loses?

*Take action for Mauna Kea and protection of Hawai`i’s sacred summits today! Sign the petition at: http://bit.ly/petitionsacredsummits

Big MAHALO to Christen Marquez for hosting a screening of Na Maka o Ka Aina‘s Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege film. Christen is herself a film maker and Miwa met her on a trip to LA while giving a presentation on what’s been going on Mauna a Wakea.  Check out Christen’s facebook page with info about her film here.  Check out her blog for more about the screening.  Mahalo to everyone who came out to learn more and to  all who signed the petition.  It’s awesome to know we have hoa aina across the big blue sea.

If you are interested in holding a screening of your own, please email me at  shelley@kahea.org.

Last week Wednesday, a group of about 25 or 30 people came together for a screening of the film Mauna Kea: Temple Under Siege from Puhipau and Joan at Na Maka o ka Aina. Mahalo also to Native Books/Na Mea Hawai`i for hosting us, to Rey for mixing the `awa for us, and to Kamu and Miwa for running back to downtown at the last moment to bring the TV from our office!

Mahalo to Rey for providing the kanoa and to everybody at Na Mea for hosting us!

Despite the technical difficulties the audience graciously and patiently hung in there! Uncle Ku shared about the huaka`i (trips) that their Mauna Kea have been taking.  It is so inspiring to see how much ground they’ve covered! It is so important for us to, both figuratively and in this case physically, walk the path of our ancestors.

Uncle Tane, Uncle Baron, and Uncle Ku--awesome mana`o, mahalo for sharing!

Far too often culture and tradition are relegated to the past, with all modern day iterations appearing either as museum displays, placards or reenactments.  I think physically having our feet on the dirt does something to us–it was really beautiful to hear about their journeys and rediscovery together.  My favorite story was about their journey in 2003 on Ka La Hoihoi Ea (a Hawaiian National holiday commemorating the return of sovereignty after a short occupation by a British dude named Lord Paulet).

The simple act of honoring this day is cool in itself, but in 2003 the Mauna Kea Hui hiked to the summit with our national flags to raise them at the highest peak in the archipelago.  The pictures look super windy! What powerful images on so many levels!

If you’d be interested in hosting a screening of this film, email shelley@kahea.org  We only have a limited number of DVDs to lend out, but we do want to share the message as much as we can.

Also, here is a link to the online petition, please feel free to pass this link along far and wide.  We are in the process of getting a new website up, but this one will have to do for a couple more months! E kala mai!

Mahalo to Pono Kealoha for documenting this event!

We’re liking this thought-proving post from journalist Anne Minard, on the “next great telescope race”–Day 14 of her “100 Days of Science.” She asks some great questions about the fundamental purpose of the two U.S. proposals for “next generation” giant land-based telescopes being proposed for construction within the next 10 years. Do we really need THIS much telescope, guys?

Charles Alcock, director of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, acknowledged that the two telescopes are headed toward redundancy. The main differences, he said, are in the engineering.

He said the next generation of telescopes is crucial for forward progress in 21st Century astronomy.

“The goal is to start discovering and characterizing planets that might harbor life,” he said. “It’s very clear that we’re going to need the next generation of telescopes to do that.”

And far from being a competition, the real race is to contribute to science, said Charles Blue, a TMT spokesman.

“All next generation observatories would really like to be up and running as soon as possible to meet the scientific demand,” he said.

But when I asked him why the United States teams haven’t pooled their expertise to build a single next-generation telescope, Blue declined to comment.

In all, there are actually three teams (two from the U.S., and one from Europe) racing to build the first of these giant land-based telescopes: Extremely Large Telescope (Europe), TMT (U.S.), and Giant Magellan Telescope (U.S.). (And no, we’re not making these names up… in almost every description we could find, these bad boys are characterized first and foremost by their massive size.) The total estimated price tag for all this summit development? $2.6 billion dollars.

In the midst of this competition to build the first and the largest,  the worldwide community of those who share aloha for sacred summits are humbly asking:  for time and real consideration for native ecosystems, threatened endemic species, the cultural meaning of sacred space, cultural practice, and the natural and cultural heritage we have to pass forward to next generations… all in short supply on earth today. Can we not rationally slow down this latest race for space, in the interest of the future of life on our own planet?

Today, DLNR is proposing a “wild laundry list” of EIS exemptions for DLNR-managed lands, from building new roads to chemical herbicides. That’s 57 pages (fifty-seven!) of exemptions. Yeesh. We are asking the Office of Environmental Quality and Control (OEQC) to send DLNR back to the drawing board. If you or your organization is interested in participating in a group letter to OEQC or just want to know more about this issue, please contact Marti at marti@kahea.org by Friday morning.