Hawaii Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Building Thirty Meter Telescope
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> But some environmentalists and Native Hawaiian groups say the spread of observatories on the summit has polluted the mountain, interfering with traditional cultural and religious practices, or are actually infringing on the sovereignty of the Hawaiian kingdom.
The links in the article to the actual decisions are broken (for me at least) The article https://bigislandnow.com/2018/08/08/supreme-court-rules-in-f... implies that the issues were largely procedural and this decision isn't actually deciding if any of the above are true.
So I'm left seeing big claims, but no real idea on if those claims are true-but-ignored, mostly-not-true, or a fringe-group-only-viewpoint. (While the media coverage IMPLIES that those claims ARE decided, and it's that implication that bugs me)
> or are actually infringing on the sovereignty of the Hawaiian kingdom
made no sense to me, given that the Hawaiian Kingdom hasn't been a sovereign entity for 125 years.
The stuff about pollution and interruption of cultural practices is more about the idea that those things are being forced upon native Hawaiians, much like annexation was.
Not all native Hawaiians feel this way about the telescopes, but the ones that do are the ones protesting.
Plus some other tribal folks from the rest of the US showed up to protest. I'm glad this was posted, now I know what the heck they were talking about when the relatives used the phrase "going to Hawaii to protest a volcano". I was a bit confused.
And for what it's worth I saw more Kingdom of Hawaii flags than any other.
On a side note I could move there tomorrow and take up surfing. So anybody willing to have a remote engineer working on Hawaii time just let me know...
I was under the impression that the "independent nations" concept implied independence from the states. Naturally as the power in the US has shifted away from the states towards the federal government the autonomy and sovereignty of the tribes has decreased.
https://www.bia.gov/frequently-asked-questions
> Tribes possess all powers of self-government except those relinquished under treaty with the United States, those that Congress has expressly extinguished, and those that federal courts have ruled are subject to existing federal law or are inconsistent with overriding national policies.
That has not changed at all.
It sounds strange, and it kind of is, but in reality life on a reservation in most cases is rough, few options to make a living, lots of substance abuse, tribal politics can be pretty petty and nasty. I lived near a reservation for a while and the first thing you think "oh man they have this nation inside a nation they could do a lot of things" but really life is rough there.
There's a lot of issues going on right now that draw the majority of my energy (climate change, propagation of hate, etc), so unfortunately I can't bring myself to look into or exert effort into the moral debate of natives' rights, but I think it's a massive issue with huge implications and not nearly so clear-cut as some of the other ones we're dealing with (i.e., climate change is straightforward easy to argue about).
The issue, as I see it:
Take Native Americans in the USA. Outside the written-law rights they have regarding their reservations, one could argue their sovereignty was violated if, say, a plot of land bought in the 1600s (off-reservation) that happened to include a burial mound was developed on. One could also argue that, yes, their sovereignty was violated, but they failed to defend their sovereignty, and so it was relinquished (I don't like this because I think seizing via violence is fucked). One could also argue that they aren't the prime sovereign claim to that land - one tribe might have warred and taken it from another some 500 years prior, so why should the most recent tribe be considered the morally "sovereign" authority on the land?
Which brings me to the point that really concerns me: Taiwan. Populated by natives that were mingling with mainland Chinese for centuries, before a total Japanese takeover. Japanese sovereign territory (by violence). But then, mainland Chinese take over, uh, "back again?" Maybe? Arguable. Either way, another violent sovereign takeover. And finally, a civil war in China between two political parties, with a huge swath of one side fleeing in defeat to Taiwan. Is that even a sovereign takeover, or a political shift? And what of the aborigines, during this time?
Now China is claiming sovereignty over Taiwan, and from one point of view, they kind of do have a claim - Taiwan was technically Mainland Chinese territory, given back after Japan lost the war, and the Communist party did overthrow the Democratic party. However, the Communists did not successfully completely terminate the Democratic party (which is great because who wants more death), so on the other hand, I can see why ROC(Taiwan)'s claim to the island is also legitimate.
Either way, I'm terrified PRC will enforce their self-proclaimed sovereignty over the nation (which is effectively non-existent at present) using violence, which I'm not sure ROC(Taiwan) would be able to withstand, and then I'm worried afterwards the rest of the world will let China get away with it for the slippery sovereign arguments listed above.
As you acknowledge in the next paragraph, it’s not like Native Americans weren’t seizing land from each other by violence. So what good does it do to write off the primary ways in which land is acquired in the absence of any applicable legal process?
Does bring up a good point though - are the borders of most countries now "locked in?" Perhaps. Federations might form / break apart, which could shift around "sovereign territory." Like, imagine the EU consolidating, or the USA splitting.
Ask the Ukrainians.
This can get messy, but it can also give rise to some really culturally fascinating places, like the Alsace.
Is there actually any legally recognized sovereignty for Hawaii or native Hawaiians? Tried doing a quick search but it all came back with an ongoing sovereignty movement but nothing similar to the Native American tribes.
* "They voluntarily joined the US" language
* the repression of culture - in particular but not limited to language, which was apparently ruthlessly quashed for a long while and is enjoying a lot more respect today, relatively speaking.
In a courtroom I doubt this would count for much, but in a war of PR releases it can be significant, and most of what I found about this case was press releases.
Are you saying that it doesn’t matter that sovergty was taken violently from the Hawaiians because their ancestors conquered the original inhabitants hundreds of years ago?
Would it be fair if Russia came in and took Hawaii from the US because the “History of Hawaii is all about using force to take land from the population”?
For the record, I strongly support building the TMT. But the opposition isn't totally illegitimate and I think it's worth covering both sides fairly.
[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46046864
[1] https://19of32x2yl33s8o4xza0gf14-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-...
However I will say that there is no widespread religious activity involving the top of the mountain. There are far more people performing ceremonies and leaving sacrifices at Kilauea or even just various heiau, a type of man-made temple site. Even that is a very low proportion of native Hawaiians.
People feel respectful of it and it has widespread meaning but these feelings are barely above average compared to the respect felt for all other geographical regions and features of Hawaii.
My point here is that there's no substantive disruption to anyone's religious expression.
Even these religious activities are pretty rare, as Christianity was pushed pretty hard once missionaries converted the royalty in the 19th century.
Most of the time when people are against building telescopes, the conversation seems to carry on to reveal that it's kind of a proxy used to air greivances for the long history of ethno-political issues.
There was a reference above referring to the telescopes as a violation of the Kingdom of Hawaii which hasn't existed for over a century- to include a telescope under that standard you would literally require the formation of a new country. Obviously in that case, building a dog house by the ocean would be equally impermissible.
Ancient Hawaiians took their religion very very seriously, and still had quarries up there due to high quality stone availability, so they didn't seem to think technological exploitation was much of an affront.
From what I know about Uluru, it's far more significant to a much larger swath of people, and it's a much smaller area than a whole mountain.
Someone could have a different perspective than I do or might know something that would invalidate some of the points I made, and I welcome the input.
https://deepgreenresistancegreatbasin.org/civilization/colon...
You can interpret this as either: Judges decide how they want the case to go, and can find a loophole for either the appellant or the appellee (as well evidenced by the frequency of 5-4 decisions); or that the public simple misunderstands the meaning of most cases' decisions.
The problem is exacerbated by the Supreme Court's limited time-budget for cases, and its interest in taking on a wide diversity of cases. A case may set precedent for many future similar cases, even if the Court's rationale for the decision isn't relevant to those other cases.
Since the thing that sets precedent is the rationale, not the outcome alone, this isn't really true.
So Hawaii is a normal U.S. state. It has state legislation. It obeys federal laws. Except, occasionally native Hawaiians will stand up about some issue. And when that happens, sometimes everyone else will bend toward their perspective. A lot of normal people do so out of respect for native Hawaiians. Politicians do it because it is politically tough to stand in opposition of Hawaiians. As a side note, there are very few republicans in Hawaii. There are none in the state legislature or U.S. representatives. There are a growing number of republicans that grow from the strong military presence.
The thing is, when Hawaiians protest its hard to figure out who or how many they represent. Because there is no official Hawaiian government. (There is the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA). But dont even get me started. lol) So no one can say "Hawaiians dont want the thirty meter telescope (TMT)". You can only say, "those people protesting over there dont want the TMT".
My instinct is that a large amount of this particular protest springs forth from the students of the University of Hawaii. When people started talking about the telescope students started to organize, hold meetings, and invite speakers. At one point the students built an ahu which is a an altar built out of stones right in the main field when you come upon the university, next to the president's office.
The University is probably too scared to remove it. Months later the students planted trees around it. It'll be there forever. Some say that native Hawaiians came to some professors at the University and asked them to help organize but that the core of the anti-telescope movement are native Hawaiians. Its impossible to say. There has never been any kind of survey or vote of native Hawaiians- which itself would be impossible as there is no real registry of native Hawaiians.
This was a long way to say, the only reason this went court was because of protest that, at least in part, included some native Hawaiians. No matter what the court decides, nothing is certain. It could still be slowed for years or indefinitely. If Hawaiians block the one road up the mountain, and are willing to get arrested on a daily basis, its hard to imagine that any politician would back the continued construction.
You can get a sense from polling http://www.staradvertiser.com/2018/03/25/hawaii-news/support...
>My instinct is that a large amount of this particular protest springs forth from the students of the University of Hawaii.
You're partially right. The protests are fueled largely by sovereignty activists, some of whom are trained as sovereignty activists in the University of Hawaii School of Hawaiian knowledge, which is sort of a de facto sovereignty training camp. The dean is a vocal sovereignty activist.
> If Hawaiians block the one road up the mountain, and are willing to get arrested on a daily basis, its hard to imagine that any politician would back the continued construction.
Not true. This is exactly what happened with the solar telescope on Maui, and for the exact same reasons. The protesters were arrested in the streets and construction continued. There has been no decrease in support.
The HSC held that Native Hawaiian rights would not be substantially impacted by the TMT, which was an issue in the administrative hearing that took place from 2016-2017, and what was being appealed in this HSC case.
What was procedural was the previous administrative hearing was ruled invalid because BLNR granted the permit before convening the hearing, so those that wanted to voice their grievances weren't given a real opportunity to. HSC said that violated due process and remanded the case for a second administrative hearing. It is this second hearing, regarding the TMT building permit, that this court case deals with.
The judge in the administrative hearing, a retired state judge, found that there would be no substantial impacts to natural resources, most importantly water resources, but also cultural and archaeological resources. The University of Hawaii brought in a hydrologist with expertise in local (Big Island) water resources to demonstrate why and the hearing officer (the administrative judge) accepted that based on the hydrologists scientific expertise in local water issues. It was then found to be a valid conclusion when appealed to the HSC.
If you want to read the conclusion of the hearing officer in the administrative hearing, her findings of fact and conclusions of law can be read here https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/mk/files/2017/07/783-Hearing-Officer... (long: 305 pages). This was what BLNR used to grant the permit. And as a matter of it being so thorough and as a matter of everyone being a chance to voice their opinion, the HSC upheld the permit and the conclusions of the hearing officer.
Who is the king of Hawaii?
With this, the ecological impact will be highly minimal (based on the impact of the existing observatory and the environmental studies done after the plans were drawn up), but it's very high profile so a natural target for them. I'm very glad that the court pushed it through as they had no data to back up their claims that that it would pollute the mountain. The claim that it interfered with traditional and cultural practices has some merit, but that's only because the entire mountain of Mauna Kea is considered sacred - nothing about the peak itself is special. Also, there's already a ton of observatories up there[2], so it wouldn't be changing the status quo in any way. Overall I personally saw their protests as more political than based on arguments with merit.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaii_Superferry [2] https://i.imgur.com/7TjQd52.png
On the other hand: some of the telescopes have been there many years and are probably somewhat obsolete by today's standards, producing little new science. Perhaps one of the existing structures could have been removed to make room for the TMT, to lessen conflict.
TMT project will in fact remove three old telescopes.
This issue was brought up on the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast several years when the problem first surfaced.
I think the problem the islanders have is there are so many telescopes on the island already. Adding another one is simply piling on, in their view.
Keeping that in mind, and the physics of the situation regarding elevation and atmosphere etcetera, it's tough to side with the protesters on this specific dispute.
I can assure you most of those telescopes are still being used for new science.
There is a serious lack of "big" telescopes, globally. We simply don't have enough instruments to follow up everything we want to look at, and getting time on these "old" instruments is still competitive. A big part of this is location: Mauna Kea has fantastic skies and is good for things like IR astronomy as a result of its elevation.
Telescope optics are fairly simple. They're a bunch of mirrors which focus light in one place - a 2m mirror is a 2m mirror. The main maintenance task is cleaning or re-coating, which happens once in a while. While larger telescopes really need adaptive optics to fulfill their potential, you don't need it unless you need to resolve tiny objects in crowded fields.*
One good use for these smaller telescopes is long observations, or repeat observations. Time domain astronomy is a Big Thing at the moment, and for a lot of objects you don't need a 30 metre mirror (the main benefit of which is seeing extremely faint stuff). Another use is follow-up work, which is rather mundane, but necessary. For example you get a bunch of targets back from a sky survey and you want to observe them all for a period of time. Doing that on something like the TMT or ELT would be a fantastic waste of resources. Usually you would need to prove, using a smaller telescope, that it would be worth pointing a O(10m) mirror at it.
What often changes is the instrumentation: lower noise or higher resolution CCDs, fancier spectrographs, etc. These can all be retrofitted to fit onto older telescopes.
* more specifically, if you want to do diffraction-limited imaging and your telescope can theoretically resolve better than atmospheric seeing.
The only way the TMT construction will be able to proceed is if local law enforcement is willing to arrest dozens of protesters (including "aunties" - photogenic elderly Hawaiian women) every week day, and not release them immediately. There is absolutely no reason to believe that will happen.
Even if the local law enforcement officials are willing to perform mass arrests, there are lots of other pressure points that the protesters could attack. I would not be surprised to see the protesters shut down the University of Hawaii, which hosts the Institute for Astronomy that runs Maunakea Observatory, because that university has a very active Hawaiian Studies program.
I worked for an observatory on Maunakea when the the first set of TMT construction protests took place. The protesters were allowed to build an unpermitted shelter building, to make blocking the road more convenient for them. If they spend half a day piling rocks in the road, they can declare that it is a sacred shrine, and the road maintenance crews cannot simply remove it. Meanwhile, our observatory had to go through a formal review process with an outside board if we wanted to move a small weather station from one side of our building's roof to another side.
[1]: http://casca.ca/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/CATAC-Report-Fina...
I think at least one of the points can be appealed in the federal courts, if the US Supreme Court would be down to hear it - so there would be several gambles.
> In any event, as held by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Navajo Nation v. U.S. Forest Serv. , 535 F.3d 1058, 1077 (9th Cir. 2008) RLUIPA “applies only to government land-use regulations of private land such as zoning laws not to the government’s management of its own land. Therefore, this point of error is without merit.
Not that the government would ever cede control over its own land, I just feel like the current Supreme Court would be more lenient to religious arguments.
All the rest of this particular case ignores the religious arguments and focuses on the procedural stuff, which was all done by the book and expected of a state and federal permitting agency, at least compared to arbitrary claims by religious folks.
Now on to the dissenting opinion:
I gather no real rebuttal, just a partial affirmation to "points I-III" and no comment on the other points. hm.
Applauds from me.
I wish it was easier to build things like this off of the Earth, in space or on the Moon or Mars, etc.
To the group of native-space-beings I just made up and claim to be a member of.
Launching things into space violates our sovereignty. It tramples our sacred orbits, and makes a mockery of our proud heritage.
We shall protest all launches, all progress, all research, and especially anything that might make money or improve anyone's life in even the tiniest way. We'll feed off the publicity, and the habit of some in the media to represent even our whack-ass views as being co-equal and legitimate right alongside everyone else.
And when people claim we made it all up, we'll only gather the sympathy of other whackaloons who've been accused of the same. It will only make us stronger.
We shall call ourselves the Righteous Indig Nation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Astronomical_observat...
Good for them
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/23/mark-zuck...
[1] ie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_Alabama
For what it's worth, as the only major newspaper, they don't have to go out of their way to appeal to advertisers. If you want to buy print ads, you don't have much choice.