On Mauna Kea, she continued, "many, many were arrested, but only two went to trial. And the first was Craig Neff. When the judge asked him why he had blocked the road and obstructed the government operations, he said that he had done that in order to prevent a greater evil, the desecration of our sacred place, that he had no choice. The judge believed him. The case was dismissed."
"Many years ago, we told the Supreme Court that this is a sacred place, we object to the development. We had a right to a contested case hearing, but the state delayed the hearing for years while they allowed 13 telescopes to be built on our sacred Mauna Kea. If you go there now, you will see that there are 22 structures. How is it possible when they only had a plan for 13? Well, they Hawaiianized it, they put up a big telescope, and then years later, they wanted to put six little baby ones around it. And when we said, 'Hey, that was not in the Environmental Impact Study,' they said, "but we Hawaiianized it. The big telescope is actually a canoe and the little ones are amas, they're outriggers to suport the big canoe.' Well, the Supreme Court threw that out and that is where we are today. Now we hear last week that TMT may move to another country, so, quickly we are sending emails to the indigenous people in Chile, heads up because that's where the big telescopes will go."
For me, the antidote to absurdity is to hear--and to tell--the stories that remind us of what matters most, to look at how far we have drifted without the anchor that a shared sense of the sacred provides, and to once again ask the questions that have become my watchword.
Who are we as a people?
What do we stand for?
How do we want to be remembered?
Winona LaDuke said, "the point is now to accelerate the move toward an enlightened pathway." It's hard to think of a better yardstick.
Kaulana Na Pua, an inter-island collaboration from Project KULEANA.(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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