Native Hawaiians Want To Halt A Massive Telescope Project. Here's Why

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Native Hawaiians have a lot of reasons to distrust the U.S. government.

Hawaii’s path to statehood began with the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, during which a group of American entrepreneurs and the U.S. military held the queen captive and took over the government.

Since then, many Native Hawaiians have been disproportionately displaced in and marginalized, and elements of their culture either erased (the language was banned for nearly 100 years) or turned into a marketing ploy (a tourism boom in the 1960s led to explosive development).

But a Native Hawaiian renaissance began in the ’70s when a group of native activists protested the U.S. military’s use of the island of Kahoolawe as a practice target for bombs. (The damage was so bad, restoration efforts are still ongoing and the island remains closed to the general public.)”