Decolonial Ethics in Maritime Heritage Preservation: The Case of TMT in Hawaiʻi

See attached document: Choose 1 of the questions below.

Special Feature: Decolonial Ethics in Maritime Heritage Preservation: The Case of TMT in Hawaiʻi

For marginalized communities in which the ocean represents the colonial imaginaries of slavery, dispossession and displacement, Karin Ingersoll (2016) contrasts sinking and keeping afloat to articulate the complex layer of navigation shrouded within a colonial context. To sink signifies an assimilative move that allows colonial constructions to frame one’s reality. However, the ability to stay afloat signifies a mark of resistance employing the skills of navigation as an act of preservation. Staying afloat, in this sense, becomes an act of cultural survival.

Despite the generative potentialities inherent in Indigenous voyaging cultures, the act of preservation may produce ethical dilemmas that are murky and difficult to navigate. In particular, the culture of voyaging is intimately tied to the colonial context of Mauna Kea and the controversial proposed construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope. For many Kānaka Maoli cultural practitioners, Mauna Kea is seen as a sacred place inhabited by deities in the wao akua, the uppermost section encircling the peak and is viewed as the spiritual piko of the Kānaka Maoli. Mauna Kea is also the preferred site to study the night sky because of the mountainʻs location in the Pacific Ocean, which has the ideal conditions for viewing the stars with maximal clarity. The growing demand of building telescopes on Mauna Kea has been met with resistance and has resulted in an ongoing political and ethical contestation in managing activities (cultural and astronomical) on the mountain.

The practice of studying the stars that have defined the discipline of astronomy have long been associated with many voyaging cultures. This history has been used to justify how voyaging cultures are closely tied to the colonial infrastructures and global industry of building telescopes on Mauna Kea. In fact, Kālepa Baybayan, a respected master navigator of Hōkūleʻa, had argued before his recent passing that his perspective on Mauna Kea “is based on a tradition of oceanic exploration and the legacy of people who left the safety of the coastline, sailed away, and in so doing discovered the stars.” (https://dlnr.hawaii.gov/mk/files/2016/10/WDT-Baybayan-C.pdf). He links this tradition of oceanic voyaging to his own support for the construction of the TMT as the telescope will “with greater accuracy and speed, vastly increase the capacity for the kind of scientific research that is vital to the quest for mankindʻs future.” He supports the construction of the TMT conceiving the astronomical discoveries as logically connected to the revitalization efforts to preserve maritime heritage. He writes: “Our ancestors were no different; they sought knowledge from their environment, including the stars, to guide them and to give them a better understanding of the universe that surrounded them…[The science of astronomy] teaches us where we have come from, and where we are going. Its impact has been positive, introducing the young to the process of modern exploration and discovery, a process consistent with past traditional practices.” Staying afloat in this strategy understands Hawaiian maritime heritage preservation linked to advancing modern scientific astronomical discoveries.

However, Emmalani Case (2021) argues that cultural revitalization projects in voyaging cultures may lead to re-producing colonial power relations rather that resisting them. Case challenges a voyaging future that is rooted within the colonial histories of astronomy. Based on her research with a group of kālai waʻa, or canoe builders, of Mauloa, a twenty-six foot outrigger waʻa built from natural materials using traditional methods, she interviewed many of the members of the canoeʻs collective. Part of the collectiveʻs mission is to contribute to the Hawaiian revitalization of traditional methods of navigation in the Pacific. Case emphasizes that the history of Mauloa is intimately tied to Mauna Kea. Consistent with Baybayanʻs recognition of the stones that fabricated the adze to carve the canoes came from the quarry of Mauna Kea, Case notes, “The canoe builders generally agree that the life of any canoe begins in the uplands, where the materials necessary to build it come from” (67). While many of the kālai waʻa are also kiaʻi, protectors, of Mauna Kea, she recognizes that this view is not universally held by many of the Kānaka Maoli voyaging cultures. When voyaging cultures become so tied to Hawaiian cultural revitalization such that “all the research and writing about waʻa in Hawaiʻi is generative, empowering and useful, it can also begin to lock us into particular framings, shaping what is and isnʻt acceptable in society” (75). Opposed to other cultural revitalization efforts, such as Hale Kukukiaʻimauna and the ahu on Mauna Kea, which was destroyed by the State, according to Case, the function of the waʻa is perceived as non-threatening, “as long as it stands as a symbol of the past, in other words, it cannot disrupt visions of a non-Indigneous future, or settler futurities” (74). In response to some Kānaka Maoli supporters of the TMT to “share the mountain,” Case argues that these arguments fail to envision an Indigenous-centered future and instead supports a settler futurity in which settler desires are enabled to “endure and prosper” (79). Staying afloat in this strategy understands Hawaiian maritime heritage preservation linked to the cultural preservation resistance on Mauna Kea.

In summary, cultural survival through maritime heritage preservation generates distinct and opposing ethical actions in relationship to supporting or resisting the TMT on Mauna Kea.

Discussion: Provide reasons for your answers. ( Choose one below to write essay about)

1. How might you understand the role of building the TMT on Mauna Kea in either fostering voyaging traditions or suppressing them?
2. How might you understand the role of the resistance effort comprised of many Native Hawaiians who value voyaging traditions, such as some of the members of the crew of Mauloa?
3. Evaluate Kālepa Baybayan’s reasons to support the construction of the TMT. If endeavours to support the advancement of astronomical knowledge are linked to perpetuating Hawaiian navigation culture, is there a moral responsibility to support the construction of TMT?
4. If voyaging cultures are tied to other Indigenous practices, such as prayer, ritual and ceremonies on Mauna Kea, then what is the moral responsibility of voyaging cultures in responding to these nested and overlapping Indigenous practices whose aims may be interpreted to be in conflict with each other?
5. In what ways can Mauna Kea be shared with astronomy and cultural practitioners? Given the strong association of Mauna Kea as a sacred place, can the mountain ever be shared with astronomers?
6. Evaluate Caseʻs argument that the function of the waʻa is perceived as “non-threatening.” What does she mean here?
7. The waʻa is much about reclaiming the past that was lost due to colonial suppression, but how might the effort of reclaiming a past inform an ethical future for Native Hawaiian sovereignty?
8. In what ways does the colonial context inform the ethical dilemma of preservation and cultural revitalization? Can either Baybayanʻs or the kiaʻiʻs conceptions of resistance (staying afloat), which aims at preserving Indigenous cultural practices, be viewed as moral failures?