Native Hawaiians on coverage of Mauna Kea resistance

IN 2009, an international consortium of scientists set their sights on Hawai’i’s Mauna Kea volcano as its preferred location for a massive, cutting-edge telescope. Native Hawaiians have long resisted the project on Mauna Kea for many reasons: Activists say construction there violates indigenous rights, threatens Mauna Kea’s fragile ecosystem, and is an affront to Native Hawaiian cultural and religious traditions.

For years, however, coverage of Native Hawaiian resistance has portrayed the situation as a battle between science and religion, revealing the journalism field’s severely misguided understanding of Native Hawaiian perspectives. “The telescope builders have a strong claim to legitimacy, and they are being blamed for things they had nothing to do with — like the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom, the loss of native lands, the state’s many social ills and degraded environment,” wrote the New York Times Editorial Board in 2015. “This is an unfair burden for a group that has spent years cultivating local support, navigating the approval process and successfully—so far—fending off lawsuits.”

After a decade of court battles, Hawai’i Governor David Ige announced that TMT construction would commence in mid-July. Last week, activists engaged in nonviolent direct action aiming to halt the project. Their efforts have attracted a new round of international coverage, much of which has once more downplayed Native Hawaiians’ range of concerns.  

In an op-ed for Honolulu Civil Beat, columnist Trisha Kehaulani Watson—who also serves on the board of directors for Āina Momona, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring Hawaiian sovereignty—considered opposition to the TMT alongside Kaho’olawe, an island used for decades as a US military training ground and bombing range, now the subject of remediation and restoration efforts. Opposition to the TMT, wrote Watson, “has nothing to do with a telescope”:

It has everything to do with the enduring battle over Hawaii’s future. The continued destruction of land and natural resources is short-sighted and fundamentally detrimental to the future generations who will one day live in these islands. The pattern of land mismanagement and natural resource abuse that the Thirty Meter Telescope represents should concern everyone, because it is not isolated to Mauna Kea.

CJR asked Native Hawaiian activists, scholars, and scientists to share their thoughts on coverage of opposition to the TMT: What has it overlooked, and how might reporters better represent the numerous issues that shape it? A selection of their comments, edited for length and clarity, follows.

Photo: Jad Limcaco/@jadlimcaco