Astronomers May Not Like It but Astronomy and Colonialism Have a Shared History

[loomer]

With the TMT project now at a standstill, this article came across my feed and seemed like something worth sharing here given that so much of the reporting has focused on it as science vs religion (which is, to be fair, a viable but incomplete reading) while completely neglecting the colonial issue in Hawaii (fun fact on Hawaii's status as a colonial occupation: There's a genuine case to be made that the State of Hawaii proper does not actually include the islands. By genuine, I mean it's not complete tinfoil hat sovcit nonsense but a well-reasoned legal argument, though one with very little actual potential for impact.) No surprise that it's coming out of India, where there's been more than a few similar conflicts, and even less that it's coming out of The Wire, which is about as critical a mainstream press organization as exists in Modi's India.

Astronomers May Not Like It but Astronomy and Colonialism Have a Shared History

Casting Native Hawai'ians' opposition to the Thirty Meter Telescope atop Mauna Kea as a contest between science and religion is a red herring that distracts from a deeper problem with modern science.
Nithyanand Rao

Mauna Kea, an extinct volcano in Hawai’i, has been the site of a long-running conflict. Native Hawaiians who consider Mauna Kea sacred have been at odds with the international consortium of astronomers behind the $1.4-billion Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), meant to be “the largest ground-based observatory in the world” (source). Now, a white paper by Native Hawaiian scientists calls for an immediate halt to the TMT’s construction and for restarting dialogue [ed: link]. An associated paper by five US and Canadian astronomers situates the TMT controversy in the long history of how astronomy has benefited from “settler colonial white supremacist patriarchy” and calls on the astronomy community to reject these benefits. [ed: link

This may seem an unlikely combination of charges against fellow astronomers who simply wish to “reach back 13 billion years to answer fundamental questions about the advent of the universe” (source) – until one takes a closer look at the conflict, moving beyond its unhelpful framing as science versus religion and situating it in its historical context.

“At its core, [the conflict over] Mauna a Wākea is about power,” writes Iokepa Casumbal-Salazar, who studied the TMT controversy for his doctoral thesis at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2017.
“How are we to understand the controversy over Mauna a Wākea and the TMT if we fail to identify or accept the context in which this battle is being waged; if we fail to critically analyse settler-colonisation under US occupation?” Casumbal-Salazar is now an assistant professor at the Center for the Study of Culture, Race and Ethnicity at Ithaca College, New York.

The story of TMT in Hawai’i began in 2009, when the collaboration of scientists building the observatory selected Mauna Kea as the location. The summit, at about 4,200 m above sea level, is particularly conducive for astronomy, with stable, dry air that allows observations throughout the year. As a result, it is already host to 13 observatories that have been built since the 1960s.

Preparations for TMT’s construction began in 2014 but were paused following opposition from Native Hawaiians – “protestors” to the state and the astronomers, “protectors” for the activists. In December 2015, the Supreme Court of Hawai’i invalidated the TMT’s 2011 construction permit because it had been granted before the opposition’s petitions had been addressed – putting, as the verdict observed, “the cart before the horse”.

In October 2018, the Supreme Court gave the go-ahead and construction was to resume in July 2019. But Native Hawaiians have continued opposing the TMT by blocking access to the mountain and courting arrest. In December 2019, the Governor of Hawai’i announced that “the state will reduce its law enforcement personnel on Maunakea”, an admission that the project cannot be forced through. (India, a partner and full member of the TMT consortium, prefers moving the telescope to an alternate location in the Canary Islands, Spain.)

That’s the legal summary. For a historically informed understanding of the conflict, we have to go back much further, to Hawaii’s annexation by the US in 1898, following which land was ceded to the US government.

In 1959, these lands – including Mauna Kea – were in turn ceded by the US government to the State of Hawai’i, which held them “in trust” for native Hawaiians. The next year, a tsunami laid waste to the city of Hilo in Hawai’i, prompting its chamber of commerce to write to universities in the US and Japan suggesting that Mauna Kea might be useful for astronomical observatories. This event coincided with US astronomers’ interest in Hawai’i as well.

And so the conflict between native Hawaiians and the American astronomy community began in the 1960s, when the first of the 13 observatories was constructed on the mountain that the former consider to be “a place revered as a house of worship, an ancestor, and an elder sibling in the mo’okū’auhau (or genealogical succession) of all Hawaiians.”

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.

Contrary to the narrative that native Hawaiians did not oppose the first telescopes on Mauna Kea in the 1960s and 1970s, Casumbal-Salazar shows how they did indeed express their dissent “in the few public forums available, by writing newspaper editorials, publishing opinion pieces and speaking out at public events” while also fighting other battles, such as those to reclaim their rights to land, resources, cultural practices – even the right to teach their children in the Hawaiian language.

They were also fighting evictions and resettlements in the name of tourism development and decades of the US Navy’s use of an island as target practice for its bombs. At the same time, the state’s dependence on tourism and militarism resulted in income inequalities and emigration.

Mauna Kea is not the only mountain in the US where native communities and astronomers have clashed. Two telescopes on mountaintops in Arizona became controversial for parallel reasons, beginning from the mid-1970s, as Leandra Swanner examines in her doctoral thesis at Harvard University. Environmental groups opposed the Mt Graham International Observatory in Arizona fearing ecological damage and further threat to the endemic Mt Graham red squirrel, joined later by a community of native Americans for whom the summit had spiritual significance as a prayer site.

Similarly, native communities and environmentalists opposed the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona, concerned about the ecology and “spiritual integrity” of the mountain. At the time the new observatory was proposed, Kitt Peak was already host to two dozen telescopes.

Strikingly, Swanner tracks how native groups at these three different sites have “independently framed the observatories as colonialist projects”. She finds that astronomers, native communities and environmental groups “deployed competing cultural constructions of the mountains – as an ideal observing site, a ‘pristine’ ecosystem or a spiritual temple,” and that “the timing and form of anti-observatory narratives was historically tethered to the legal and political strength of environmental and indigenous rights movements.” In the case of the conflict at Mauna Kea, this is the nationalist movement known as the Hawaiian Renaissance.

Sustained opposition to construction on Mauna Kea led in 1998 to a state legislative audit that indicted the University of Hawai’i for its management of the mountain, citing inadequate measures to protect its natural resources and lack of recognition of its cultural value. In 2000, the University of Hawai’i drafted a ‘master plan’ for activities on the mountain, which empowered native Hawaiians to voice their objections to the observatories formally, eventually leading to the current impasse.

Swanner finds that for native Hawaiians, “science has effectively become an agent of colonisation”, “fundamentally indistinguishable from earlier colonisation activities”. This puts astronomers in a difficult position. They see the economic benefits astronomy brings to Hawai’i – over a thousand jobs, business for local firms and services and, once the TMT comes online, a promise to pay $1 million in annual lease rent – and their own work as a noble pursuit of knowledge. However, they encounter opposition that has charged them with environmental and cultural destruction.

“Unfortunately for the astronomers involved in the TMT debate,” writes Swanner, “whether they identify as indigenous allies or neocolonialists ultimately matters less than whether they are perceived as practicing neocolonialist science” (emphasis in the original).

Astronomers have attempted a counter-narrative, linking the contemporary practice of astronomy to ancient Polynesian explorers and astronomers who navigated using the stars. A concrete outcome and centrepiece of this effort was a science education centre and planetarium that “links to early Polynesian navigation history and knowledge of the night skies, and today’s renaissance of Hawaiian culture and wayfinding with parallel growth of astronomy and scientific developments on Hawaii island.”

Swanner notes the unequal relationship – the centre “merely grafts Native Hawaiian culture onto the dominant culture of Western science … Astronomers do not look to traditional knowledge to carry out their observing runs, after all, but the observatories studding the summit physically deny access to sites of sacred importance.”

For Casumbal-Salazar, this strategy of linking telescopes on the mountain to ancient Hawaiian culture reinterprets colonial conquest as inheritance while consigning indigeneity to history. This is not hard to spot from a glance at the TMT website, for example. The homepage displays the results of a “statewide scientific public opinion poll” which asked, among others, the following question: “Do you agree or disagree that there should be a way for science and Hawaiian culture to co-exist on Maunakea?” The way the question has been framed is revealing: science and Hawaiian culture are seen as distinct entities.

The conflict at Mauna Kea, as Swanner and Casumbal-Salazar learn from native Hawaiians, is not just over the construction of the TMT. The problem is that anything is being built on top of a sacred summit. Nevertheless, it is not incidental that the conflict involves science, particularly astronomy. Science did not merely happen to accompany colonialism: they are deeply linked in ways that are still being unraveled by historians who are tracing “the roots of contemporary science in the projects and practices of colonialism,” filling in the elisions from standard histories of science.

In their white paper, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, an American-Barbadian cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire, and her co-authors give examples of how colonial conquests have historically enabled, facilitated or benefited astronomy. 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.”

Colonial conquests helped develop astronomy and cartography, not least through the establishment of overseas observatories. Other sciences “co-constituted” with colonialism include botany and medicine. And, as one author reviewing the existing scholarship put it: “One cannot imagine Charles Darwin’s work being possible without his access to plant and animal specimens derived from several European empires.” Science and medicine “functioned not merely as a ‘tool’ for a project already imagined, but as a means of conceptualising and bringing into being the colonial project itself.”

This history has consequences – not because the TMT is “a pawn in a long, losing game” for the Hawaiians (as one condescending New York Times article phrased it [ed: link. It's a really nasty article that rages against even returning the stolen dead and ritual objects of Indigenous peoples as a 'return to the dark ages'.]) nor is the issue confined to questions of representation of colonised peoples in astronomy (although only one Native Hawaiian holds a PhD in astronomy, with none in tenure-track positions at major institutions). For Casumbal-Salazar, it is about how “Western law, science and the state together control the ways humanity is imagined in the first place” and about “the techniques of governance by which Kanaka ‘Ōiwi [native Hawaiian] claims to land, sovereignty and independence remain in perpetual deferral.”

This settler colonialism, he argues, is the product of a sustained process with territorial ambitions. As Swanner notes, dismissing this neocolonialist image of science has only resulted in native communities continuing to “report feeling victimised while scientists’ efforts to expand their research programs suffer social, legal and economic setbacks.”

In response, astronomy practice is changing. In her thesis, Swanner tracks how the opposition to mountaintop observatories and the rigours of preparing an environmental impact statement have forced astronomers to directly engage with the public and acknowledge their concerns.

Prescod-Weinstein and her coauthors go further, advancing a number of recommendations for a more ethical astronomy. For example, they call on the astronomy community to stop weaponising disagreements within native communities, which they have a history of doing. At Kitt Peak, for example, leaders of a native community signed a lease agreement in 1958 after they were invited to view the sky through one of the telescopes of the University of Arizona, even as others in the community remained unconvinced. Such tactics led the community to feel their interests weren’t fairly represented. They filed a lawsuit against the National Science Foundation fifty years later.

Prescod-Weinstein and her colleagues also recommend that “astronomers reject the use of state power to get what they want”, “consider what is globally healing for the communities rooted in the land” and “engage in dialogue and negotiations in good faith, understanding that a deal may not be reachable, with a mandate to respect a ‘no deal’ outcome.” The paper by Native Hawaiian scientists also recommends the same things, and asks: “Do indigenous people have the power to decide what happens to their own homelands?”

At Mauna Kea, this means understanding that Native Hawaiians, from the beginning of the opposition to telescopes on the mountain, “were not fighting against something,” as Casumbal-Salazar notes, “so much as they were fighting for something: the protection of the mountain from further development… Perhaps we should be asking what constitutes progress. Who determines that? And what are the costs of its production?”

source

[The Romulan Republic]

Certainly better to negotiate and try to reach a fair agreement on the issue than for scientists to push what they want through against the wishes of the local indigenous peoples.

Of course, I also want to support scientific research that furthers our understanding of the universe, but in a better world, I'd rather we focus on building more telescopes in space, which has the advantage of a) being outside the interference of Earth's atmosphere, and b) has (in this solar system at least) no indigenous sapient beings to dispose.

[bilateralrope]

which has the advantage of a) being outside the interference of Earth's atmosphere,

It's not the atmosphere that has astronomers most worried for ground observatories. It's satellite constellations like Starlink. Astronomy vs internet for places where it's not practical to lay cables.

[Solauren]

No one likes it, but just about everything has a shared history with Colonialism.

[Lord Revan]

No one likes it, but just about everything has a shared history with Colonialism.

Indeed, colonialism was such a major institution for a large part of history that if you go looking for those links pretty much everything in the modern world is somehow linked to it thru shared history.

Obviously no one sane is all that proud of those links or likes when shared history is pointed out as these days colonialism is seen as a black mark in our history.

However the way that shared history is brought up these days isn't really productive either, the style of "see how someone in that past who shared your race did a bad thing, how dare white people exist without constantly apologizing for their presence" pointing out past flaws ultimately serves no one, past flaws should be remember lest we repeat them, but that includes all flaws not just those of 1 race no matter how prominent they were in global politics.

For example when the Atlantic slave trade is brought up, it's typically repesented as if only white people did anything wrong and all africans were just 100% innocent paragons of virtue, ignoring the african tribes who sold their enemies to the white slave traders, I'm not claiming that slave traders were free of blame far from it, but they weren't the only ones who had hand in the slave trade.

[loomer]

Of course, one wonders how relevant that is to a direct issue of continuing clashes between colonizers and colonized peoples over access to and control over their unrelinquished, improperly acquired (see the Apology Resolution) traditional lands. I don't really see how that constitutes a 'how dare white people exist without constantly apologizing for their presence' issue.

[Lord Revan]

Of course, one wonders how relevant that is to a direct issue of continuing clashes between colonizers and colonized peoples over access to and control over their unrelinquished, improperly acquired (see the Apology Resolution) traditional lands. I don't really see how that constitutes a 'how dare white people exist without constantly apologizing for their presence' issue.

If read all I typed you see I was referring to the fact that there seems to be too much emphasis to the racial backround of the majority population (at the time though that hasn't really changed since) of the colonial power to point that being "born white" is seen as crime in and of itself.

My point was that this deflects blame and focus from the real issue and allows racist to ignore critism, since the most vocal critism can be seen as racially based attack and thus things like requesting return of ancestral lands can be framed as irrational and excessive.

Yes colonialism was bad and yes racism was part of it, I'm not trying to deny that, but as I said and Solauren above me, colonialism was such major institution back in the days that pretty much everything and everyone could be somehow linked to it so care should be when throwing accusations lest we make things only worse.

[loomer]

Of course, one wonders how relevant that is to a direct issue of continuing clashes between colonizers and colonized peoples over access to and control over their unrelinquished, improperly acquired (see the Apology Resolution) traditional lands. I don't really see how that constitutes a 'how dare white people exist without constantly apologizing for their presence' issue.

If read all I typed you see I was referring to the fact that there seems to be too much emphasis to the racial backround of the majority population (at the time though that hasn't really changed since) of the colonial power to point that being "born white" is seen as crime in and of itself.

My point was that this deflects blame and focus from the real issue and allows racist to ignore critism, since the most vocal critism can be seen as racially based attack and thus things like requesting return of ancestral lands can be framed as irrational and excessive.

Yes colonialism was bad and yes racism was part of it, I'm not trying to deny that, but as I said and Solauren above me, colonialism was such major institution back in the days that pretty much everything and everyone could be somehow linked to it so care should be when throwing accusations lest we make things only worse.

How does this relate to an ongoing, active dispute around access to unceded colonized land, precisely? You're throwing out vague complaints about how 'whiteness is now a crime' when there is exactly one mention of whiteness in the article (and, being generous, a discussion of it in a linked article by... oh look, primarily a bunch of settler peoples.) The issue is not 'Astronomers white, therefore astronomers bad', nor is the argument around access to and control over Mauna Kea some kind of 'deflection of blame and focus' from the real issue, as it, well, is the real issue.

Did you actually read the article, or did you decide to kneejerk in under the impression that anything talking about colonialism must be anti-white?

[Lord Revan]

Of course, one wonders how relevant that is to a direct issue of continuing clashes between colonizers and colonized peoples over access to and control over their unrelinquished, improperly acquired (see the Apology Resolution) traditional lands. I don't really see how that constitutes a 'how dare white people exist without constantly apologizing for their presence' issue.

If read all I typed you see I was referring to the fact that there seems to be too much emphasis to the racial backround of the majority population (at the time though that hasn't really changed since) of the colonial power to point that being "born white" is seen as crime in and of itself.

My point was that this deflects blame and focus from the real issue and allows racist to ignore critism, since the most vocal critism can be seen as racially based attack and thus things like requesting return of ancestral lands can be framed as irrational and excessive.

Yes colonialism was bad and yes racism was part of it, I'm not trying to deny that, but as I said and Solauren above me, colonialism was such major institution back in the days that pretty much everything and everyone could be somehow linked to it so care should be when throwing accusations lest we make things only worse.

How does this relate to an ongoing, active dispute around access to unceded colonized land, precisely? You're throwing out vague complaints about how 'whiteness is now a crime' when there is exactly one mention of whiteness in the article (and, being generous, a discussion of it in a linked article by... oh look, primarily a bunch of settler peoples.) The issue is not 'Astronomers white, therefore astronomers bad', nor is the argument around access to and control over Mauna Kea some kind of 'deflection of blame and focus' from the real issue, as it, well, is the real issue.

Did you actually read the article, or did you decide to kneejerk in under the impression that anything talking about colonialism must be anti-white?

I was responding Solauren's post I quoted, not the OP, the OP precisely the kind of thing that gets swept under the rug due to talks about colonialism often devolving into "anti-white" arguments. Do you understand now, what I said isn't that "talking about colonialism must be anti-white" but rather "due to overemphasis on racially motivated (aka anti-white) arguments the real issues (like the OP) get ignored".

EDIT:honestly we might be arguing the same thing in different terms so I back down for now.

[Vendetta]

I was responding Solauren's post I quoted, not the OP, the OP precisely the kind of thing that gets swept under the rug due to talks about colonialism often devolving into "anti-white" arguments. Do you understand now, what I said isn't that "talking about colonialism must be anti-white" but rather "due to overemphasis on racially motivated (aka anti-white) arguments the real issues (like the OP) get ignored".

EDIT:honestly we might be arguing the same thing in different terms so I back down for now.

You were the person who introduced that tangent, derailing the thread and producing exactly the effect you are opining about.

You know what doesn't help? Preemptive defences against contentious things that aren't happening.