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The Thirty Meter Telescope protest camp was expected to swell this week as spring break offered a chance for many in Hawaii who oppose the project to join the front lines.
Instead, people are being discouraged from visiting, and the camp at the base of Mauna Kea is downsizing in response to safety concerns linked to the coronavirus pandemic.
“We’re urging people to go home and shelter themselves,” said Noe Noe Wong-Wilson, one of the leaders of the largely Native Hawaiian movement opposing construction of the $2.4 billion telescope project.
On Friday, leaders of the kia’i, or protectors, urged folks in an online video to stay away from the camp at the intersection of Mauna Kea Access Road and Daniel K. Inouye Highway.
They also sent home the camp’s kupuna, or elders — the age group considered most vulnerable to the disease.
“We have the ability to learn from others around the world and hopefully get out ahead of what’s happening,” kia’i leader Kaho‘okahi Kanhuha said in the video. “We have a goal to accomplish, and that goal is not accomplished without the safety of our people.”
On Tuesday, after a COVID-19 case was confirmed on the Big Island for the first time, the decision was made to shrink the makeshift community that was established in July after the state and the international TMT coalition announced construction would begin.
Wong-Wilson said leaders decided to send almost everyone home, plus pack up the tents and move them to the other side of the highway next to Puu Huluhulu.
Wong-Wilson said that while daily Hawaiian ceremonies will continue as before, she would expect fewer than two dozen to remain at the camp for the foreseeable future.
“We’re pretty certain the project will not attempt to go up the mountain,” she said. “They don’t even have all of their funding.”
For herself, Wong-Wilson, 69, the retired educator and native rights activist, said she’s sticking it out on the mountain.
“We’re being very careful,” she said. “We’ve always had strict protocols for sanitation, wiping down hard surfaces and cleaning up. It’s not a huge change.”
What is different, she said, is the lack of embracing, touching and kissing.
“It was hard for the first week. But now when someone tries to give us a hug, we hold up our hands and keep our distance,” she said.
Since summer the protest camp at the 6,000-plus foot level has seen crowds that reached into the thousands. Lately, with winter weather and a lowered likelihood of TMT construction, the population has ranged from 20 to a couple of hundred.
On Saturday, 300 off-island charter school students were scheduled to visit. Instead, a team of kia’i traveled to the students’ Hilo hotel to teach songs and dance tied to the movement, Wong-Wilson said.
Kia’i leader Lanakila Mangauil said that if the TMT were to try to mount any attempt to take its construction vehicles up the access road during this time, it would show extremely poor character in putting the workers at risk.
“If they try returning to the mountain, we would come back to defend it,” he said.
TMT spokesman Scott Ishikawa said there are no immediate plans to start construction.
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