A Poem for Maunakea

we understand
that light travels at almost 186,000 miles per second—which is really fast
almost instantaneous the small distance between you and i
but when we look at objects that are really, really, really far away 
it takes a certain amount of time for that light to reach our eyes
and so we’ve realized 
that when we look up into the night sky
the light from the closest star took 4.2 years to reach us
so when we look at that star, we are seeing it how it was over 4 years ago

but most stars are even farther away, 
their light traveling for hundreds or thousands or millions or billions of years for us to witness
and so when we look at the stars
we are seeing them how they were when our ancestors roamed this earth
so, in a very real way, when we look up to the sky,
we are peering through a portal to the past
it is the closest thing we have 
to time travel

but the thing is
there are billions and billions of stars that we can’t even see with our naked eyes 
so sometime in the 1600’s
we figured out how to build telescopes to see them
to see billions of years into our universe’s past with even more clarity

sometimes we need  a little something extra to see more clearly

which brings us to today
where some of us are proposing to build the Thirty Meter Telescope, or the TMT, on Maunakea in Hawai‘i
but you see the TMT is more than just a telescope…
it’ll be one of the biggest telescopes humankind has ever built
18 stories tall with a footprint of 5 acres
providing 12 times more clarity than the Hubble space telescope 
to give us the ability to focus even better on the earliest moments of our universe
so we can tell the story more clearly 
on how we got here

but even more important than that,
is that the TMT is more than just a telescope…
it’s that something extra that we needed to help us see more clearly
it’s a catalyst that has awakened a movement
that has provided us the ability to see with more clarity Hawai‘i’s past
the ability to focus even better on the earlier moments of our nation
so we can tell the story more clearly 
on how we got here

you see the TMT is more than just a telescope…
it’s a time travel portal to the past…
it’s a time travel portal to ‘Iolani palace, a sacred, stolen land where an indigenous people stood to protect our government from being illegally overthrown by treasonous businessmen in the 1890’s
it’s a time travel portal to Kaho‘olawe, a sacred, stolen land where an indigenous people stood to protect one of our islands from being bombed by the United States government in the 1970’s
it’s a time travel portal to Maunakea, a sacred, stolen land where an indigenous people have stood, 
and continue to stand, kū
to protect, kia‘i
our mountain, mauna
kū kia‘i mauna, from further desecration and environmental degradation 
it’s a time travel portal to the same story of broken treaties 
and broken trusts
told and retold and retold 
around this globe 
through the hoarse voices of indigenous people

but this time, we stand while the world is watching…

there are other places that the telescope can be built, you know
other places where the science will be the same
top of the list is the Canary islands in Spain 
and we understand
that science is science no matter where it takes place 
and the secrets of the universe will be revealed to us through a TMT in Spain
so if you find yourself in the pro-TMT on Maunakea camp,
please understand
that we do not understand 
your reasons why…
is it about the money? 
the money?! 
really?!! 
the small pittance in rent that Hawai‘i’s colonizers will charge per year 
plus the promise of jobs, jobs, jobs for people mainly not from Hawai‘i 
and tax revenue that will benefit… who, and how many?
how much money do you need to gain to outweigh the pain of the thousands of us who agree that this sacred, stolen land is not for sale? 
how many times must we all bear witness to the same abuses before we break the cycle?

our ancestors used to look up at the stars, too, you know
they used the stars as a road map to figure out where they had been
and where they were navigating to
and so when we stand at the top of Maunakea and look up to Hōkūle‘a,
we are reminded of our portal to the past…
our ancestors sent out the roadmap to protect our land, 
and while that message took over a hundred years to reach us like the stars in our night sky
we can see clearly now,

because sometimes we need  a little something extra to see more clearly

and that is why we kū kia‘i mauna,
why we stand to protect Maunakea