Hawaiian sovereignty is not a dead issue. The young Lyft driver and I had a brief conversation on the way to my destination. He passionately defended monarchy against democracy. The king acts to protect his followers, unlike elected leaders. The king is like a father. Hawaii’s gold is hidden in the U.S. Treasury, collateral for U.S. debt. I listened spellbound, as an ardent student of new religious movements and their mythologies, expectations and resistance to government interventions.
The Thirty Meter Telescope protest enlivens Hawaiian sovereignty, which is why it persists in the face of possible defeat. David C. Rapoport, UCLA emeritus professor of political science, has concluded that four generational “waves” of international religious terrorism have rocked the world since the 1890s. Only the Second Wave, anti-colonial terrorism, succeeded after new nation-states arose from indigenous protest movements. The Hawaiian sovereignty movement is an echo of the Second Wave in its most peaceful form, kapu aloha.
Although terrorism has a bad name, it is the weapon of the disenfranchised against a Goliath. The Sons of Liberty headed by Sam Adams tarred and feathered Englishmen singled out as oppressors. Kenya became an independent state during the Third Wave on the back of brutal Mau Mau attackers, and Israel’s Stern Gang was led by Menahem Begin, who opined, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”
Nation-states are founded on myths of heroic fighters against a cosmic foe; freedom fighters are enshrined as forefathers, prophets and demi-gods. Their struggle becomes the national story. If a freedom movement fails, it becomes a chronic myth of millennial expectation, a future event that will right all wrongs and establish justice.
Mauna Kea is a high place where worshippers communicate with a sky Father, a lawgiver who both sustains and punishes. In Polynesian cosmogony, the sky god and the earth goddess produced lesser gods and created the world where humans reside. Mauna Kea is the highest and most sacred place in Hawaii.
Sacred place is not an ordinary object of bartering in an earthly negotiation process. You cannot replace it with an international peace park or a promise of more jobs and higher income. This dispute is not over a mundane object like a super ferry. It is a matter of ultimate concern, and therefore, altogether different.
I am not speaking to or for Kanaka Maoli; Hawaiians speak for themselves. The entire planning process of establishing the TMT atop the “cathedral” of Hawaiian religion has been culture blind.
In Polynesia the stranger must be invited onto the plaza of meeting/hui where disputes are peacefully resolved. Here, the court discerned that the TMT consortium did not follow proper procedure. But even after the court ruled, police conducted a night raid on structures of worship before the Solstice, to demonstrate the consortium’s power over the land.
When a people’s land is taken by a superior foe, not only a culture, but the people themselves, can die. When cultures fall, hopelessness, addiction and poverty, arise. After colonization, Pacific Islanders experienced genocidal population decline. Hawaiian monarchs alone among the elite routinely visited the leper colony in Kakaako. Queen Emma established a hospital 160 years ago to staunch the dying of her people.
If civil authorities desire a peaceful outcome, they need to respect the Hawaiian claim to Mauna Kea. Scientists worship their sky gods in a different manner, but “cosmology” means study of the heavens. The TMT is a cathedral where shamans engage in rituals. Some Hawaiian wayfinders and scientists regard the telescopes as a legitimate use of sacred space because they reveal ultimate things.
Brute force is not the answer. The sovereignty movement is small, but it speaks for those who died under the brutalities of invasion and depopulation. Hawaiians reject tribal status, because they never ceded their claim to the islands. Strangers occupy their space, but do not own it. Like the young Lyft driver, sovereigntists dream of the return of the crown jewel of their kingdom.
Two religions contend for the highest space in Polynesia. Is there room for both?
Honolulu resident Jean E. Rosenfeld is a retired historian of religions (religion and violence).
