#guy who thinks astronomy and science happen in a vacuum: well space IS the final frontier

[metamatar]

At the time, writes Casumbal-Salazar, “there was no public consultation, no clear management process and little governmental oversight.” Environmentalists soon began opposing further construction on the mountain, arguing that the existing telescopes had contaminated local aquifers and destroyed the habitat of a rare bug found only on the mountain’s summit.

Native Hawaiians joined forces with environmentalists, arguing that any construction on the summit is desecration of a sacred mountain that is the site of spiritual and cultural practices. “Indeed,” Casumbal-Salazar, whose ancestry is partly native Hawaiian, writes, “Mauna a Wākea is more than just a list of physical attributes; it is our kin. As our kupuna [ancestors] are buried in the soil, our ancestors become the land that grows our food and the dust we breathe.” Soon, native Hawaiians were required to seek permission from the state for spiritual practice on the mountain.

[...] Swanner finds that for native Hawaiians, “science has effectively become an agent of colonisation”, “fundamentally indistinguishable from earlier colonisation activities”. [...]

James Cook, the British explorer who was the first European to establish contact with Hawai’i, was tasked with leading an expedition to Tahiti to observe the 1769 transit of Venus (to help determine the Earth-Sun distance). But he had also been given sealed orders to search for Australia, indicating “that astronomy and colonisation have been entwined in the Pacific since first contact.”