Hordes Are Made of People, Too

A few months ago, I was casually scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed when I saw a post by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein about people protesting the construction of a telescope in Hawai'i.  I didn't think much of it at the time, but kept scrolling and eventually went back to watching some terrible sitcom on Netflix. Some time after that, my Facebook and Twitter feeds exploded with stories about that same telescope. Suddenly, I couldn't look at any form of social media without hearing about Mauna Kea or the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). I started paying attention then (after all, when Khal Drogo sends a message, you better listen), and now I have lots of feelings about the subject.

 

For those of you who aren't friends with a lot of socially aware astronomers on Facebook and didn't get that same barrage of TMT news, here's what's going on:  Astronomers want to build the TMT on top of Mauna Kea in Hawai'i.  Mauna Kea is a sacred mountain. There are many people in Hawai'i (and elsewhere) who would rather the astronomers build their very large, very destructive telescope somewhere else.  

I started actively seeking out articles about this conflict, written from both perspectives. I found lots of astronomers who support the construction TMT and I found lots of astronomers who oppose it.  You know what else I found lots of? Language that lumps entire groups of people into one single being. It's "the protesters" this, or "the Protectors" that (if the author knows what's up), or "horde of native Hawaiians attacking" (if the author really doesn't know what's up).  And that's not cool!

I'm not really here to to talk about what I think of the TMT. That's a topic for another blog post. But regardless of what side of this argument you're on, it's important for everyone to realize that this movement is made up of individuals, each with their own backgrounds and motivations for being involved. I recently had the opportunity to spend some time on Mauna Kea and meet some of the people those articles are about. I'd like you to meet them, too. (Anonymously, of course, because ain't nobody got time to rudely give away people's identities without their permission.) 

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S was the first person I met when I approached the Protector tent, shy and awkward and totally unsure of how to initiate conversation.  Within 30 seconds of meeting me, S gave me a hug and offered me a donut. He won me over then and there. He won me over again when he told me that he "used to be just a normal guy" until a few months ago, when he heard about the TMT and all of the consequences its construction would have. He quit his job and bought a one-way ticket to Hawai'i island, and he's been there ever since. 

The first time I saw P, he was answering questions about his plans to repopulate the native plant life on Mauna Kea. When I asked him about it later, he talked about the different kinds of plants he wanted to bring back and their various purposes, some of them medicinal. He heard I was an astronomy student and got so excited, not angry like some of the articles led me to expect.  When I hugged him goodbye, he was on his way out to the garden to plant some more herbs I had never heard of. 

T is a farmer who lives close to the mountain. She and her partner practice a specific kind of farming that uses the natural waterflow that comes off of Mauna Kea. In between telling me about the damage the TMT would do to one of the largest aquifers on the island, T offered me chili, fruit, and a local tea that she had brought up the mountain for lunch.  She told me my name sounded like the Hawaiian word for "to dream" and we bonded over a love of science. We touched noses before she left. 

L has been on top of the mountain almost every day since people started occupying the mountain in response the first attempts to break ground for the TMT.  He's a teacher, and he's fluent in Hawaiian.  When I told him I was trying to learn a little bit of the language, he sat down with me for 20 minutes to go over some basic vocabulary. l asked him why he was there. He said he felt a responsibility to his family, to his aunt who signed the anti-annexation petition back in 1897.He talked about the power of love to fix all troubles, and I kind of felt like I had been transported back to the 60's, but I was into it.

K is a college student just like me, studying environmental science. She knows people who have dropped out of school to become involved in the movement.  Like most of the others, she offered me food, but it was my first day on the mountain and I was too shy to take it. She asked me why I was there, and when I told her, she led me around and introduced me to people, making sure I knew I was welcome. 

J and R are the sweetest married couple. He's been retired for over 10 years and she's excited to retire next year. They've only been off the island once. J heard that I was an astronomy student there to ask questions for my senior thesis and offered to give me a tour of the land. She showed me plants that looked like swords sticking out of the ground and bushes that smelled like fish when I rubbed them. When R got back from wherever he had been, she asked if I wanted to go hiking with them. We hiked to the top of a sizable hill, and along the way, they told me about their children, life-long friendships, marathons they had run together.  They promised me a place to stay if I ever found myself in Hawai'i again and I made them promise to look me up if they ever found themselves in Boston. 

These are just a few of the people I had the pleasure of meeting, but I think you get the picture. 

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When we talk about groups that form around controversial matters, like the Protectors or Black Lives Matter, we have this tendency to remove their humanity.  We talk about them as if they're a Borg cube, sharing thoughts, plans, and motivations. I don't know which is the chicken and which is the egg here, but when we do this, it allows a few things to happen:

1. It's easier to perform (and write about) inhumane acts that are direct consequences of racially charged colonization if you don't focus on the victims as humans.
2. It makes it so that the actions of one person, no matter how far removed they are from the group's agenda, represent the entire movement. 
3. It justifies condemning the group for being "disorganized."  Neither the Mauna movement nor BLM claim to have centralized leadership, yet we expect them to act as if they do because of the way we present them in the media. 

It's time to stop this and get to know the individuals within the horde. Maybe then we would see our actions, past and present, in a different light.