Mauna Kea: Indigenous Land and Stolen Skies

The Mauna Kea volcano shoots out of the bare volcanic fields of the Big Island of Hawaiʻi, one of the rare snow capped peaks of the state. At over 13,000 feet above sea level, it dominates the landscape and human settlements. For thousands of years, Mauna Kea has been a cultural and spiritual mecca for the native Kanaka Maoli people. It’s a place whose ecosystem has been traditionally managed by the Kanaka Maoli, and has been threatened in recent years by invasive plants and increasingly extreme weather patterns. It’s a religious site where tribal members have traditionally practiced services, a cultural center for celebration and mourning, and the site of some human remains from Kanaka Maoli tribal members buried there. It’s also where some UC Berkeley linked organizations want to build a telescope. 

As the highest point in the state, and indeed all of the South Pacific, Mauna Kea has long been a target for astronomers and scientists. There are already multiple telescopes on the peak, three of which have been ordered to be decommissioned, but the process has been stalled multiple times. When the decommission process is completed, construction of a new telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope, or TMT, can begin. The proposal has sparked global protests by indigenous rights groups and environmentalists who see the construction as desecration of sacred land, and the Governor of Hawaiʻi was recently forced to issue an emergency declaration after thousands of protesters blocked access to the site and engaged in civil disobedience. The debate has stirred questions about the role of indigenous land management and religious rights, the painful history of racism towards native peoples, and the ethics of western science. 

If built, the TMT would dwarf the other telescopes currently on the mountain, and would dominate the peak of the tallest mountain in the world. In order to create the foundation for the massive telescope, construction workers would have to dig up hundreds of cubic feet of dirt. This would disturb what the Kanaka Maoli believe to be the most sacred place in the world, and a place where human remains have been found. Proponents of the telescope argue that it would give researchers “unprecedented sensitivity” to the night sky from a ground telescope, and that people are overestimating the environmental and cultural impact the telescope would have once completed. Indeed Mauna Kea is one of the darkest places in the world on accessible land, and if built the TMT would be the largest operational ground visible light telescope in the world.

The TMT is a multi-billion dollar endeavor, funded by the less than transparent “TMT Observatory Corporation.” While not much is known about the exact financial contributions, the telescope will be operated and paid for by a consortium of universities and agencies from around the world, including the UC system. Berkeley’s role in the TMT is questionable, and has opened a rift in students and faculty about racial biases in the scientific community and the disregard for native culture and spirituality. Over the summer multiple protests on campus took place to demand divestment from the TMT project, which as of the writing of this article has not happened. In April of 2015, a UC Berkeley Astronomy Professor named Alexei Filippenko forwarded an email to everyone in the Berkeley astrophysics department from a UC Santa Cruz professor named Sandy Faber, saying he agreed with everything she said. The email was a petition in support of the building of the TMT, and in it she describes protesters as “a horde of native Hawaiians” threatening the safety of telescope personnel. The phrase was seen by many as a manifestation of the racial bias and cultural disregard of the scientific community, especially considering the protests have been almost entirely peaceful.

A screenshot of the email in question. Source: Hawai’i Public Radio.

The TMT could also have environmental consequences. As one of the few snow capped peaks in all of Hawai’i, Mauna Kea is a crucial watershed for the surrounding ecosystems and traditional water source for the Kanaka Maoli. Construction of the TMT would almost certainly contaminate the water with a variety of chemical contaminants as well as dirt and ash from the volcano. Mauna Kea’s snow melts gradually and regularly over the course of the dry season, bringing hundreds of thousands of fresh, clean water down to the forest below it. The huge footprint of the TMT, as well as the traffic to and from, may disrupt that crucial flow and cause the snow to melt too fast.  While this won’t be confirmed until the telescope is built, many activists are worried about the consequences the telescope may have at lower elevations.

The state of Hawai’i, indigenous rights organizations, and the broader scientific community are all grappling with the limits and ethics of scientific discovery.

Is it worth destroying the Kanaka Maoli’s equivalent of the Notre Dame in order to get a better idea of outer space? What role does UC Berkeley play in the threatening of water rights for hundreds of native people and thousands of acres of rain forest? What matters more, protecting the Earth today or discovering possible planets tomorrow?

Typically scientists are seen as allies of human rights advocates and environmentalists, but the vitriol and misinformation from some in the scientific community has exposed a deep disregard for anything they feel gets in the way of progress. UC Berkeley has made no changes as of the writing of this article to it’s backing of the TMT, along with most universities and institutions involved in the venture. If the telescope is built, it may set a precedent for university funded research that devalues the beliefs of indigenous people and the environment for the sake of “progress.” As members of the Berkeley community, students should consider what they are willing to sacrifice of someone else’s land for progress they may never see.