A reader sees the issue differently:
I’m not sure I have much sympathy for the Hawaiians who don’t want this 14th telescope built on land that’s been leased since the 60s. Sounds like a few powerful players are using sympathies for supposed cultural or religious beliefs as a way to further empower themselves, more likely. I’m not negatively disposed towards native Hawaiians at all, quite the opposite. But I think this needs some perspective.
For example, compared to Native Americans on the continent, Hawaiians are very recent arrivals. The Hawaiian Islands are the very last of the Pacific Islands settled by the Polynesians that spread eastward to the south Pacific islands from what’s the Malaysian archipelago today. They were originally settled somewhere between 300 and 800 AD, and then (arguably, science is not settled) conquered in 1300 by Tahitians. Europeans showed up in 1778. Meanwhile, Native Americans were probably here 16,000 years ago. One could argue that a hundred years in any place is long enough to make it sacred, though. So this may not be much of an argument.
Another mistake we often make is to regard native cultures as close to perfection, living in perfect environmental harmony and respectful of nature, etc. That’s a huge mistake. Read the history of Easter Island (for example, as written by Jared Diamond in “Collapse”), and you’ll see that native, even primitive cultures frequently plunder and destroy their own environments, often to their fatal demise.
Hence, I want to see some good evidence that those protesting this telescope have some good, solid footing for doing so — other than it just makes good optics from some opportunist rabble rousers. Did modern native Hawaiians really descend from and maintain an existing belief system which contained venerated respect for the particular parcel on the mountain where this telescope is being built? Or is that more wishful thinking, or transference, or something else?
A telescope is a pretty innocuous renter, mostly.
I’m not sure how the “culture as perfection” thing plays into this; I’m aware of the messy, violent Mayans, the deforestation of Greece in ancient times, and other examples of imperfections in ancient culture. But so what? They’re human, just like us.
Like my reader, I have no idea if time even plays into making land sacred. Being agnostic, the word registers only a little more for me than does ‘spiritual’, which is more or less a zero.
I suppose telescopes don’t pollute much. Here’s the specs on the Subaru Telescope:
* Cylindrical enclosure rotating with the telescope
* Height: 43 m (141 ft.)
* Diameter at base: 40 m (131 ft.)
* Weight: 2000 metric tons (2205 tons)
And it took 8 years to build, which was probably equal portions technical challenge and altitude problems.
In the interests of really full disclosure, I worked, briefly, for a company that was performing administrative computer services for the supercomputer used to control the telescope. I didn’t get to go visit it, though, as I was in a different division.
