[kortilla]

> like to think I'm sensitive to the wrongs done to indigenous populations but can't come to grips with the Native Hawaiian's protests.

It’s “holy land”. History is paved with mass death and destruction fighting irrationally over specific pieces of land that have nothing more than “societally sentimental” value.

[OldGuyInTheClub]

I can understand it better when people have lived in a place, built structures, raised families, and so on. AFAIK, the top of Mauna Kea was not settled that way and in fact, is pretty inhospitable to humans who are not very well prepared to be there. I've never been to Hawaii but understand that rampant development and tourism are big problems on some islands. I could understand knocking down massive hotels and returning that land to nature. The telescopes at least to me are an entirely different situation.

[dendrite9]

It might be similar to the way there are unclimbed peaks in the Himalaya because the summits are considered holy. For example Kailash is considered holy by several religious groups, and there are pilgrimages to the base of it but there is no record on anyone climbing it. People in Hawaii may have considered the summit holy without building anything up there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kailash

[sa1to]

No. You should read "Hawaiian Antiquities" by David Malo, a Native Hawaiian historian who lived during the early Kingdom. He documents what happened on the mountains, and as far as I can recall, he only mentions Mauna Kea to mention an adze quarry that was used. You can also read Liluokalani's book. She mentions sacred mountains, but it's Mauna Loa, not Mauna kea. That's not to say there hasn't been religious significance but that it never stopped things like rock quarrying or hiking, or even the early telescope building.

This idea of the mountain being tabooed for anything but Native Hawaiian religious practices is a recent invention by the Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement in the form of the TMT protesters, as well as a new "sacred" name they cooked up for it "Mauna a Wakea".

[OldGuyInTheClub]

That's a good point. Not that it changes my mind about the worth of the telescopes but I can see that the peak could have been left alone by Native Hawaiians for those reasons.

[wkat4242]

Isn't the exploration of the mysteries of the universe a great way of putting a holy place to use?

[vkou]

If we're going to be making utilitarian arguments, I'll point out that almost everything you own could be put to better use by someone else.

In this particular case of native Hawai'ians, and there's a long history of mainlanders deciding, without asking them, that their stuff could be put to better use by them.

[hnbad]

It's not just that it's a holy site, it's also that Hawai'i was annexed by the US and its population disenfranchised with most of the land increasingly being owned by rich foreigners and foreign investors. The telescope may be benign by comparison but with growing cultural awareness of Hawai'i's status and history, I'd imagine it's more about the symbolism than the immediate harm. Context matters.

[DiogenesKynikos]

Since statehood, Hawaii has been much more democratic than it was during the Kingdom. Under the Kingdom, a large share of the population was made up of migrant workers without much rights. The initial US takeover was illegitimate, but Hawaii later became a US state with much greater rights for the general population.

[SiempreViernes]

It's not simply a holy land, it is also a historic burial site, so it is covered with graves that have historically simply been bulldozed over

[DiogenesKynikos]

The TMT site was chosen because archaeological surveying showed that that particular location does not have any ancient artifacts (such as burial sites).