gedavis.com
gary e. davis
The protest leader of Hawaiian activists—protesting construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop “sacred” Mauna Kea—claims “We have always been here.” The reality is that the volcanic islands were inhabited a millennium ago. And culturally-plural Polynesian humanity is a branch
of vastly diasporic humanity, tracing itself back 200 millennia by means that didn’t exist several decades ago.
Now, merely 15 decades after the commercialization of electricity, We are an inestimable planetary techno-species designing Our way into solar system explorations, astrobiology, and facing the increasingly credible prospect of intelligence in the galaxy millions of years beyond our own exponential evolving.
This is compatible with Hawaiian culture. The astronomy community welcomes the need for “our culture as explorers” to also serve continuing community need for healing historical memory of political injustice toward indiginous Hawaiian lineages.
The Hawaiin TMT contest is easily regarded as an allegory of Our evolving: conceiving the narrative that brings telic cohering to Our many eras of cultural understanding—cohering the many conceptions of what’s sacred, what ultimately matters—living in the “same” Time with no prospect of Planet B.
What may be understood as ultimately belonging together in the same evolving Time?