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Protesters Block Effort To Restart Work On Controversial Hawaii Telescope
sciencehabit writes: An attempt to restart construction on what would be one of the world's largest telescopes was blocked yesterday, after state authorities escorting construction vehicles clashed with protesters blockading the road to the summit of Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano. Officers from Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), and construction workers for the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT), turned back from the summit shortly after noon Wednesday, citing concerns for public safety after finding the road blocked by boulders. The withdrawal followed several hours of clashes with Native Hawaiian protesters blockading the road, culminating in the arrests of 11 men and women, including several protest organizers. The protesters have said the $1.4 billion TMT would desecrate sacred land.
Note the huge error, the denial of those persons, their culture and their heritage "sacred sites in Hawaiian religion and culture". This repeated denial of equal existence by Immigrants that stole the land but deny the people. It is not "sacred sites in Hawaiian religion and culture", a denial that they are American, it is "sacred sites in Hawaiian American, religion and culture". They are meant to be Americans, their culture and religion are mean to be American culture and religion and not somehow be publicly defined as be foreign and those people are being foreigners. This is repeated again and again in immigrant dominated societies, the complete denial of those original inhabitants as being real citizens, they are foreigners in the own land, who hold foreign non-Immigrant cultures and beliefs and whose history is not Immigrant America, it is foreign to Immigrant America but the immigrant capitalists of course still want that land whilst they was want to denying the people and who those people are. Hawaii culture and religion is 'American' culture and religion and you are horribly racist and prejudiced if you believe any different (one element of it, of course, not the totality of American culture and religion). They are meant to be Americans and hence their culture and religion are meant to be American and not denied by immigrants as being somehow foreign to those immigrants and thus denied in a country now predominately occupied and controlled by foreign immigrants.
Hawaiians are Polynesian; ethnically, culturally, linguistically... Long before they were Ameican. No reason why they should deny that heritage in order to conform to your definition of 'American'. That word is already quite well defined.
My suggestion is, ante up on the compromise. Promise to build the new one on the site of one of the old ones.
Nobody would accept that compromise. The protesters don't really care if the telescope is built, they just want a payoff. Any compromise that does not include some cash, is not going to be accepted. They should have paid off these groups at the beginning of the process, not when they are ready to start construction. It would have been much cheaper.
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That sad thing is this isn't even all native Hawaiians or even a majority. It's just a small minority of extremely loud native Hawaiians. Plenty of native Hawaiians have no problem with the observatories and actually want them built
The protesters call themselves kanaka, the working class of precolonial Hawaii. Did you know that in that culture only the ali'i, the hereditary nobility, were permitted to go above the treeline on Mauna Kea? Thus by the laws of their own culture, the protesters at the 9,000 ft level, are there illegally.
Native Americans and Native Hawaians aren't really related. But they both caused lots of extinctions when they arrived, and if they did less than the West it's largely because they had less capability to do anything. What makes you think either was a good steward?
If my church were being torn down for a telescope, I would of course protest.
However, I would protest when they were first tearing it down in 1967, and not wait until 37 years later, in 2004, to start protesting.
They've only been protesting about how holy the site is since about 2004. When it benefitted them in ways other than piety for them to do so. This is about trying to garner international attention for the monarchist movement in Hawaii, who would like to bring back the Kingdom of Hawaii, and are still pissed off about the deposition of Queen Liliuokalani, and the effective annexation of Hawaii in 1893.
Protesting a telescope gets media attention, even though there are already 13 telescopes on the site, operated by 11 nations, and they are in fact already the largest astronomical observatory on the planet. The only thing new about this one is that it was easier to latch onto the media attention, since the telescope in question was going to be very large, and was therefore already getting media attention.
Of course, assuming this was granted (thus setting the precedent for all non extinct indian nations to reclaim their lands within the U.S. as well), there would immediately be internecine warfare as to *who*, of the 10 groups claiming to have the "rightful" king or queen among their members, got to be the "official" one.
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...