Kealoha Pisciotta used to journey up Mauna Kea in Hawaii for work. A Native Hawaiian (or Kanaka Maoli), Pisciotta worked at the Joint Astronomy Center for some 12 years helping tune and care for the
Kealoha Pisciotta used to journey up Mauna Kea in Hawaii for work. A Native Hawaiian (or Kanaka Maoli), Pisciotta worked at the Joint Astronomy Center for some 12 years helping tune and care for the telescope instruments. She liked her job and aspired to become a cosmologist someday, studying the galaxies for a living. Then, everything changed.
“I can remember the day that I really turned that corner when I started to realize that the human landscape was becoming dominant, and the sacred landscape being pushed down and suppressed and tampered with and destroyed,” Pisciotta told Earther.
Mauna Kea—a mountain sacred to many Native Hawaiians who have been using it as a place of worship for centuries—was transforming before Pisciotta’s eyes. By the 1990s, she saw the cultural, natural landscape of the nearly 14,000-foot tall mountain become more of what she called a “humanscape.”
That’s when she started speaking out to protect this sacred place. After 25 years, Pisciotta’s efforts have a renewed focus. The Thirty Meter Telescope, otherwise known as TMT, would be the world’s largest telescope and have the ability to gaze deep into space and time. But it has been opposed by Native Hawaiians and a growing number of academics who see it as a form of scientific colonialism. Hundreds of protesters have been gathering at the mountain since July to stop construction from starting on the TMT.
Mauna Kea is the latest manifestation of an energy has been bubbling for years now among indigenous activists. Indigenous communities from around the world are no longer sitting back and allowing corporations, governments rooted in colonialism, or private interests to trample their sacred lands.
We’ve seen what these mobilizations can look like in Standing Rock, in Canada and the battle to stop the Trans Mountain Pipeline, and in Brazil where tribal nations have been protesting the loss of their land (especially now that they have a fascist in office). Indigenous people are demanding governments, developers, and even academics respect their tribal sovereignty. And they won’t quit until they’re taken seriously.
In North Dakota, the movement of all movements dominated headlines in 2016. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe brought thousands of people together, including some First Nations people traveling from as far as the Ecuadorian Amazon to challenge a massive crude oil pipeline that would cross their ancestral burial grounds and nearby water bodies.
This certainly wasn’t the first time indigenous people came together to combat a giant company, but Standing Rock signaled a breakthrough of this growing effort from indigenous people on an international stage. There was an urgency around ending fossil fuel infrastructure construction and consumption in the era of climate change. The protests also arose, however, around the issue of consent. The tribe alleged that developer Energy Transfer Partners never properly consulted them to build the 1,172-mile-long Dakota Access Pipeline across parts of their land, something the company disputed. Many tribal members didn’t want to see their prayer grounds overrun by fossil fuel infrastructure that could also threaten their water and resources should a spill happen.
“We’re trying to not only protect our sacred places,” Tara Houska, a tribal attorney with the indigenous organization Ginew Collective, told Earther. “We’re trying to prevent further desecration of these places, as well
Similarly, the Native Hawaiians who have rallied at Mauna Kea don’t want to see their lands degraded any further. As the first people to inhabit these lands, their opinion should count for something, right? Well, not everyone sees it that way.
The Dakota Access Pipeline was completed despite widespread opposition. And the TMT International Observatory—the group of partners behind the telescope—still plans to bring the project to the summit of Mauna Kea despite project leaders recently applying for permits at an alternative site in the Canary Islands. The Hawaiian Supreme Court has approved the telescope’s construction, so no real legal barrier exists to stop the project for now. Opponents are still filing lawsuits, but none has resulted in an injunction or pause to construction.
It’s important to note that the protests aren’t an attempt to thwart science. They’re about protecting a sacred place.
In addition to the legal battles, folks are betting on the power of prayer and protest to stop the construction of the massive telescope. If construction vehicles can’t reach the summit, then construction can’t happen. And if their actions open the world’s eyes to what this land means to Native Hawaiians, the outpouring of support could permanently put an end to construction.
That may not have worked at Standing Rock, but it almost did (until Donald Trump entered the White House). And since then, indigenous organizers have learned many lessons. The fight at Mauna Kea is much more organized than the last face-off in 2015 over the telescope, said Noelani Goodyear–Ka‘ōpua, 