The state Supreme Court ruled in the telescope organizers’ favor last October. The plan was buffeted by legal and political challenges for the past 16 years. Native Hawaiians oppose the $1.4 billion project because they say it further desecrates the sacred mountain. Officials behind the controversial Thirty Meter Telescope are pushing ahead with construction on Mauna Kea despite continued opposition.
Thirty meter telescope 2021 download#
It shouldn’t be for the UC system, either.Podcast: Play in new window | Download (27.0MB) | Embed But to many, another telescope on Maunakea is not worth further destruction of their sacred ground.
It’s important to note that denouncing the current TMT proposal is not to oppose its construction entirely: Native Hawaiians largely support the research the telescope would inspire on any number of alternative sites considered by the board of the TMT. But years of steadfast opposition by a majority of Native Hawaiians, including highly respected elders, have made their position clear. Recently, there have been efforts by proponents of the project to collaborate with Native Hawaiians - a gesture of acknowledgment that shouldn’t go unnoticed. While the UC system is only one of many proponents of the TMT project, revoking its support for the desecration of Maunakea would be a resounding statement of principle and demonstration of solidarity. In seeking to reconcile its harmful past, the UC system has often made a point of honoring the history of Indigenous peoples in California, vowing to respect the rights of the many tribes the university has repeatedly wronged. It’s time the University of California heeded their calls.Ĭonsidering the UC system’s history as a land-grant institution erected on territory seized from California Natives, it’s difficult to fathom how the university can justify expropriating even more Indigenous land. A poll conducted in 2019 revealed that 63% of Native Hawaiians oppose the project. Since the TMT project broke ground in 2014, efforts to construct the telescope on or near Maunakea’s summit, already dotted by 13 other telescopes, have been met with defiant protest. This is a solemn and unconscionable trade-off the UC system simply cannot condone. The ground itself is treasured: Native Hawaiians say any changes to the physical landscape would sever the spiritual and genealogical connections they have to Maunakea and the culture it holds.Ĭonstructing the TMT on the mountain, then, would not only permanently alter the field of astronomical science it would irretrievably desecrate sacred Indigenous land. It is the center of beginning of Hawai’i, home to shrines and altars linking Native Hawaiians to their ancestors.
Maunakea is the origin of Native Hawaiian cosmology. The TMT is a scientific advancement the UC system would be honored to help lead.īut the site where the instrument is set to stand - Maunakea, a mountain with great cultural significance to Native Hawaiians - makes the situation infinitely more complex. If constructed, the telescope would be the largest visible-light telescope in the world, with cutting-edge technology that would spur groundbreaking research not yet possible in the field of astronomy. In the seven intervening years, however, it’s become clear the UC system should promptly denounce and divest from the project. Since 2014, the University of California has been a central supporter of, and investor in, the Thirty Meter Telescope, or TMT, a proposed observatory on the island of Hawai’i.
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