by Salman Hameed

I have regularly provided an update on the controversy over telescopes on top of Mauna Kea, Hawaii (see here for links to earlier posts). The central issue has been the proposed construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the volcanic mountaintop held sacred by some groups of Native Hawaiians, and hosts flora and fauna on the candidate list of endangered species. After numerous rounds of permissions, the TMT has been given the final go-ahead:

Hawaiian officials have granted a permit for the planned Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) to proceed atop the sacred mountain of Mauna Kea, project officials announced on 13 April. 

The move clears the way for construction to start, as early as April 2014, atop the 4,200-metre-high summit. Thirteen telescopes already dot the mountain, but the TMT would be the largest of them by far. The biggest optical telescopes now atop Mauna Kea are the twin 10-metre Keck telescopes. 

Development on the mountain is a sensitive subject in Hawaii. In 2011, the state’s board of land and natural resources granted a conditional permit to construct the TMT. Opponents pursued a contested case hearing under a board officer. The new decision confirms the original permit granting and moves the TMT forward for good.

Of course, this is tricky subject. On the one hand, this is good for astronomy and the economy of the island. But this comes at the expense of others who feel marginalized in this matter. The TMT folks, it seems, did make an effort to reach out and hold regular town hall meetings to at least listen to the grievances of the local community. However, the history of the US involvement in Hawaii is so messy  that it is unlikely that the issue can ever be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Indeed, the opponents of the telescope have vowed to keep on fighting - but I think the game is over on this matter:

One of the leading groups opposed to building the world's largest telescope at the summit of Hawaii's revered Mauna Kea volcano vows the fight against the space exploration site is far from over, despite a state panel's vote last week in favor of the project. 

"We're not going to go away because of one bad ruling," Nelson Ho, co-chair of the Mauna Kea Issues Committee from the Sierra Club's Hawaii Chapter, told Latinos Post. "We're in the early rounds of the boxing match and this is a twelve-rounder." 

Hawaii's Board of Land and Natural Resources approved plans for the so-called Thirty Meter Telescope, a collaboration between the University of California system, the California Institute of Technology, or, Caltech, and the Association of Canadian Universities for Research in Astronomy. China, India and Japan have also joined the effort as governmental partners. 

According to a report in the Associated Press, the telescope's primary mirror would measure nearly 100 feet (30 meters) long and be able to collect data from an area nine times greater than that scanned by the largest optical telescopes used today.
The Thirty Meter Telescope's images would also be three times sharper than anything currently captured. 

That improved range and strength would help researchers see an estimated 13 billion light years away. 

The next procedural step for the group spearheading the TMT project is to negotiate a sublease for the site with the University of Hawaii, which itself leases the summit area from the state. 

The Sierra Club and a handful of other environmental and Native Hawaiian culture organizations assert the TMT will severely damage the area atop the volcano, which Native Hawaiian traditions hold as sacred, a gateway to the afterlife that once only high chiefs and spiritual leaders were allowed to visit. 

At least one ancient burial site is confirmed on the mountain, which naturalists also say is one of the last pristine environments in Hawaii, let alone the world.

When it was planning the since-abandoned Outrigger Telescoping Project on Mauna Kea in the early 2000s, the National Aeronautical and Space Administration completed a study of the environmental impact of astronomical research facilities on the area, which in part concluded, "From a cumulative perspective, the impact of past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future activities on cultural and biological resources is substantial, adverse and significant." 

Read the full article here.

If interested, you can find earlier posts on the topic here:

Update on Mauna Kea: Telescope project given green light

University of Hawaii Regents Approve Plans for TMT on Mauna Kea

Management Plan Approved for Telescopes on Sacred Mauna Kea

Hawaii-Tribune Herald on the recent Mauna Kea lawsuit decision

Mauna Kea Observatories Update Is it good news that Maui is picked as the site for a new Solar telescope?

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by Salman Hameed

Our next Science and Religion lecture at Hampshire College is tomorrow (March 28th). And it is my absolute pleasure to announce that it will be by historian Tracy Leavelle. I met him back when he was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at Smith College, and I know that he is a big fan of soccer and the band Wilco! But he is not only a fantastic researcher, but also a great story-teller. Tracy and I have collaborated on the issue of telescopes on the sacred Mauna Kea in Hawai'i (if you follow the blog, you must have seen umpteen posts on that).

His Science & Religion talk does cover the topic of Hawai'i, but not of telescopes. Nevertheless, it sounds fantastic (and I'm not saying this because he is my friend...). If you are in the area, join us for the talk tomorrow. Here are the details for the talk:


Hampshire College Lecture Series on Science and Religion:

The Awful Crater and the Eternal God: Volcanoes and Missionary Science in Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i

by Dr. Tracy Leavelle

Thursday, March 28 at 5:30 pm

 Main Lecture Hall, Franklin Peterson Hall

Hampshire College

Abstract: In 1852, Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawai‘i erupted in dramatic fashion, sending fountains of lava hundreds of feet into the air and down the side of the mountain for miles.  The American missionary Titus Coan climbed Mauna Loa to study the event and found himself alone and afraid on the great volcano, aghast at “the awful crater.”  Here, Coan discovered the imprint of a mighty God of creation and destruction.  In a prominent American scientific journal, he reflected, “I seemed to be standing in the presence and before the burning throne of the eternal God.”  The volcanoes of Hawai‘i represented for Coan the dynamic contest between salvation and damnation, civilization and savagery.  As such, they became sites of both rigorous scientific study and deep religious contemplation.

Speaker bio: Dr. Tracy Neal Leavelle is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History at
Creighton University and a former Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellow at Smith College.  He has recently been appointed Director of Digital Humanities Initiatives at Creighton.  His first book is The Catholic Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French and Indian North America (Penn, 2012).

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by Salman Hameed

I have written about the issue of the telescopes on Mauna Kea before. What makes the debate over Mauna Kea interesting is that astronomers are not exactly doing it for monetary profits (though the allure of grant money can be looked in the same light). However, there are many other cases where native religions in the US clash with hotel and resort builders. Here is a case of the use of waste-water snow on a mountain ski resort near Flagstaff, Arizona:

Klee Benally, a member of the Navajo tribe, has gone to the mountains just north of here to pray, and he has gone to get arrested. He has chained himself to excavators; he has faced down bulldozers. For 10 years, the soft-spoken activist has fought a ski resort’s expansion plans in the San Francisco Peaks that include clear-cutting 74 acres of forest and piping treated sewage effluent onto a mountain to make snow.
But he appears to be losing the battle. 

In February, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the ski resort’s upgrade plans, ending a legal saga fought by a coalition of environmental groups and 13 American Indian tribes, which consider the mountain sacred and view the wastewater snow as a desecration.
This coming ski season, the resort, Arizona Snowbowl, will become the first ski resort in the world to use 100 percent sewage effluent to make artificial snow. 

“It’s a disaster, culturally and environmentally,” said Taylor McKinnon of the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs. He worries about the impact on the delicate alpine tundra and to human health should skiers fall into the treated sewer-water snow and ingest it. 

The basic structure of alliances usually remain the same: government and businesses arguing for the economic benefit of the local community and the native tribes and environmental groups arguing for the protection:

Half of all alpine ski areas in the United States, including the big names of Vail, Aspen and Lake Tahoe, are on public land, and many of them are faced with the choice of expanding or going out of business. “A ski resort, to remain competitive, has to hit certain dates. They have to guarantee they’ll be open by Thanksgiving, Christmas at the latest,” said Jim Bedwell, director of the Forest Service’s Recreation and Heritage Resources. 

“Everyone does well when the ski area does well,” said J. R. Murray, general manager of Snowbowl. 

But Indians, who pray and hold ceremonies on the mountain, feel their concerns are too easily swept aside. “Our culture can still be reduced to something that is less important than the profit margin on a ski resort,” Mr. Benally said. “That’s a very, very hard place to be in.” 

The wastewater snow, Indians say, will ruin a mountain they consider sacred ground as well as the ecosystem, a concern shared by environmental groups. When it melts, it “could degrade water quality of the aquifers,” said Rob Smith, regional staff director at the Sierra Club. 

Read the full article here.

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by Salman Hameed

There are plans for a giant 4-meter Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) to be built on top of Haleakala in Maui. This would be a significant improvement over the aging older solar telescopes and would indeed contribute enormously to our understanding of our closest star. But I have been quite apprehensive about this project (see an earlier post: Is it good news that Maui is picked as the site for a new solar telescope?). This is going to be a huge structure. The construction is going to further strain relations with the native Hawaiian population as well as raise concerns about the damage to environment. The problem is that this kind of episode has played out on the neighboring Mauna Kea (see related posts here and here), and the result is observatories at the cost of years of delays, mistrusts, and lawsuits. But then Mauna Kea is one of the best places for optical and infrared astronomy - and may be one can argue that some of the insensitivity to cultural and environmental issues was worth it. But a solar telescope can indeed be built elsewhere. Light pollution is certainly not an issue. Stability of the atmosphere is important, but then there are places in New Mexico and Arizona that should be able to compete within a reasonable level. I really don't see the justification for ATST in face of opposition from the local groups. From last week's Nature:

Last December, more than seven years after the NSO chose the site, Hawaii's Board of Land and Natural Resources gave permission to develop it. A group called Kilakila O Haleakala ('Majestic is Haleakala' in Hawaiian) has contested the decision. An endangered seabird, the Hawaiian petrel or 'ua'u (Pterodroma sandwichensis), nests near the proposed site. Furthermore, some Native Hawaiians say that the telescope's stark white enclosure — necessary to control heat-induced air currents within the scope's optical path — will scar a sacred area. But the telescope builders say they will do all they can to mitigate the impacts. Construction workers will limit vibrations that could collapse the petrels' burrows, and will receive 'sense of place' training to avoid culturally insensitive missteps. 

Honolulu-based lawyer Steven Jacobson, the arbiter appointed by the board to re-evaluate the permit, says that he will hand in his recommendation in the next week. NSO director Stephen Keil is cautiously optimistic that Jacobson will give the telescope the green light — although he has seen the process take plenty of detours before. "It keeps me awake every night," he says. "This is part of doing business in Hawaii."

Hmm...well, may be the reasons why this is "part of doing business in Hawaii" has something to do with the messy history of US takeover of the Hawaiian kingdom in the late 19th century, and then the crappy treatment of the local population. A recognition of this is essential for astronomers to gain respect in these matters - and ATST project in Maui, I think is not only unnecessary, but it is also insensitive. There have been efforts to include financial support for the local Hawaiian community in exchange for ATST. How much money? Well, $20 million over the next 10 years to train native Hawaiians in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. Is it worth it? I don't know. I think the answer lies with those who are directly affected by ATST. But is Maui the only place in the US to build this particular telescope? This, I'm pretty sure is not the case, and comparable level of science is achievable from other locations. So may its time to move!

Also see:
University of Hawaii Regents Approve Plans for TMT on Mauna Kea
Management Plan Approved for Telescopes on Sacred Mauna Kea
Hawaii-Tribune Herald on the recent Mauna Kea lawsuit decision
Mauna Kea Observatories Update 
Is it good news that Maui is picked as the site for a new Solar telescope?

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by Salman Hameed

There is a fascinating new study out that shows that there were two waves of original human immigration to Asia. The Aboriginal Australians are descendants of the first wave, about 62,000-75,000 years ago, whereas, most modern Asians are linked to the second wave about 25,000-38,000 years ago. Fascinatingly, this was found by sequencing the DNA from a 100-year old lock of hair donated by an Aboriginal Australian. While there was a considerable effort was made by researchers to seek permission of Godfields Land and Sea Council, a body based in Southern Australia that represents Aboriginals living in the area where the original lock of hair was collected.

Nevertheless, this raises a number of issues (from Nature):

The study also raises broader consent issues over body parts of indigenous people held in museums, says Kowal. Many collections are returning bones to these groups, but the British Museum in London, for instance, generally excludes hair and nails from its repatriation policy. Such specimens are a valuable tool for studying the genomes of people from around the world, including populations that no longer exist, argues Willerslev.

So who has the authority to give permission for such genetic investigations? Furthermore, it changes the ethical dimensions may appear to change if the specimen is considered archaeological rather than biological. For example, a Danish bioethical review board didn't think it was necessary to review the hair-lock study as this was an archaeological specimen. To their credit, the researchers still went the extra mile to seek permissions from the relevant populations. But that will not always be the case, and it is essential to create some firm guidelines on this.

This issue is important and it comes up often with Native Americans in the US. Here are some earlier posts on the topic:
Disputes over Native American Remains
Blood Samples Back to Yanomamo
Havasupai Tribe and the Ethics of DNA Research
Skeletal Remains and the Issue of Cultural Affiliation

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by Salman Hameed

For the past couple of years we have been following the controversy over telescopes on Mauna Kea. This dispute has come to a head over the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). This is a tough-tough issue. Astronomy, culture and environmentalism meet at 14,000 feet - and leave almost no one happy. The TMT folks did learn from the past mistakes of astronomers, and I think they overall did a good job of reaching out to the local Hawai'ian community. But it is also true that, for some, any new construction will be a further sacrilege - let alone the construction of the one of the largest ever optical telescopes. Although astronomers had nothing to do with this, but all of these issues are further complicated by the messy history of how the US took over Hawai'i in the late 19th century - and the early treatment of native Hawai'ans.

This past week, the Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) unanimously approved the $1.3 billion project (see an earlier post: University of Hawaii Regents Approve Plans for TMT on Mauna Kea). This approval was widely expected. But the Board also left room for one more hearing by the opponents of the telescope. I don't think any thing will change with another hearing. Everyone is set with their views and the TMT has, overall, followed the procedures well. I think this will be a spectacular telescope (it is expected to begin its construction in 2012). At the same time, I also hope that astronomers appreciate and recognize the historical and cultural context of the arguments of the telescope opponents.

If interested, you can find earlier posts on the topic here:
University of Hawaii Regents Approve Plans for TMT on Mauna Kea
Management Plan Approved for Telescopes on Sacred Mauna Kea
Hawaii-Tribune Herald on the recent Mauna Kea lawsuit decision
Mauna Kea Observatories Update Is it good news that Maui is picked as the site for a new Solar telescope?

By the way, if you are prefer getting history via Hollywood, you can check out Princess Ka'iulani about the early period of US takeover of Hawaii. She was heir to the throne when US took over in the late 19th century. The movie is okay - but at least it provides light on to an area rarely talked about. Here is the trailer:

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From time to time I try to bring issues of science and religion interactions that are not related some of the big world religions nor are they about issue of origins and scientific explanations. I find issues of science and native (American and Hawaiian) religions quite complex and often deeply tied to cultural identities (see earlier posts related to science and native religions here).

So here comes a news story about a wind farm in Hawaii. Now Hawaii would be an excellent place - being in the middle of the Pacific, there is no shortage of wind. But there is some opposition to it:

But, similar to the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts, not everyone here is welcoming the windmills.

Protesters gathered at a recent informal legislative meeting at the state capital.

Robin Kaye, with a group called Friends of Lanai, stood next to a scale model of the island. He pointed to the hundreds of miniature windmills that cover an area called Garden of the Gods.

"So you tell me, if that was in your backyard whether you'd object or not," Kaye said. "NIMBY is relative." Kaye and others are unwavering in their opposition, despite an effort to assemble a generous public benefits package — including a share of the wind farm's profits, not unlike the oil payments Alaskans get.

Walter Rittie, a longtime activist on Molokai, says that for native Hawaiians like himself, the wind is a revered god. "So until the state realizes what they're dealing with, that it's not a commodity, it's a cultural resource that Hawaiians have high regard for, part of our heritage, then we're in for a train wreck here," Rittie says.

So couple of things. The controversy over Cape Wind project was about land and about rituals (see this earlier post: A Wind Farm vs Sacred Rituals). The issue of aesthetics plays a big role in nature religions, and that again seems to be an issue at Hawaii. But unlike the Cape Wind dispute, the Hawaiian protest seems to be more about cultural recognition than actual rituals. Due to particular historical/political quirks, Native Hawaiians have less religious/cultural rights than even the Native Americans. Therefore, high profile projects such as these stir up debates about cultural recognition. I don't think the project will be stopped, but I think it will be a constructive  step to recognize the importance of wind in the religio-cultural tradition of native Hawaiians.

Related posts:
Dispute over native-American remains
Mauna Kea Observatories Update
Is it good news that Maui is picked as the site for a new Solar telescope?
Blood samples back to Yanomamo
Havasupai Tribe and the Ethics of DNA Research
A wind farm versus sacred ritiuals
Skeletal remains and the issue of cultural affiliation

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When we think of science & religion, we often think about monotheistic religions and the struggles over the questions of biological and cosmological origins. But there are many many different interactions taking place - such as the common ground over environmental protection, archaeological studies of religiously important sites, and disputes over the ownership of human remains and scared artifacts. The last one is particularly important for the US and this has a complex and tangled past.

This coming November 16th will mark the 20th anniversary of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). The key provision of the act was to return any human remains or artifacts to the relevant tribe. Seems reasonable enough. However, some remains - such as the Kennewick Man - are of extreme scientific importance and can be shown to have predated any of the native tribes. What to do then? Usually there have been prolonged lawsuits that leave all sides quite unhappy over the outcome. The arguments from the side of the scientists have usually focused in showing that the remains are unrelated to the tribe and, because of that, they do not have to be returned. Now some new rules have been put into place where the tribes can recover bones even if a link to the existing people cannot be established. Understandably, this is worrying to scientists:

Yet researchers who study primarily human remains rather than artifacts worry that the new rules will make their work even more difficult. They point out that the oldest skeletons, many of which are likely to be covered by the new rules, are often the most valuable to science (see p. 171). "The idea of repatriating 10,000-year-old skeletal remains to the group that happens to be living in the vicinity where those remains were found is simply preposterous," says ASU Tempe paleontologist Geoffrey Clark. Kintigh hopes legal action will eventually overturn the new regulations.

...

The American Association of Physical Anthropologists argued in a 10 May letter to Hutt that the rule "could effectively remove ... human remains that document the rich and complex biocultural history of the first Americans." The result, it warned, could be "wholesale reburial of indigenous history." The Society for American Archaeology took a softer line, criticizing the rule for failing "to recognize scientific study as an important part of increasing knowledge about the human past."

This has some parallels to the issue of telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii (you can find links to posts on this topic here). But on Mauna Kea, we are talking about the relative importance of the top of the mountain for astronomy and for the Native Hawaiian religion. In many ways, the the two issues, while entangles in place, are orthogonal to one another. For human remains however, the object of study itself is highly contentious.

But the biggest problem arises from that of history (damn you history!). In the Mauna Kea case, the telescopes are located on ceded lands and the lease was signed way before Native Hawaiians had any say in the matter. The history of the native-American remains is actually a bit more grim. From Science:

The roots of the conflict lie in the enormous collections of Indian remains and grave goods assembled primarily during the second half of the 19th century. For example, more than 4000 heads of Native Americans were taken from battlefields and burial grounds, stored in the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C., and used by some researchers to argue for the racial inferiority of Native Americans. Famed anthropologist Franz Boas said that it was "most unpleasant work to steal bones from graves, but what is the use, someone has to do it."

Native Americans had little say about the disposition of such remains, many of which were displayed publicly. "They should have stayed in the ground with Mother Earth," says Riding In. Given the long history of grave desecration and the reverence most tribes have for ancestors, asserting control over such remains became a key goal of the nascent Native American movement during the 1970s.

But American archaeology also changed during this time:

During the same period, American archaeology was changing. Its long association with art and the humanities began to wane. A new generation of researchers began to draw on the hard sciences to piece together past cultures. "The move was away from the history of a people and toward adopting the scientific method," says archaeologist Michael Wilcox of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, a descendant of Arizona Yumans. Archaeologists began to use new and more sophisticated tools to study animal, plant, and human remains often neglected in the past. They dated remains with radiocarbon, analyzed diets with isotopes, and took the first steps toward extracting DNA to trace relationships among populations. As a result, osteoarchaeology, or the study of ancient human bones, flourished in the 1980s.

The unfortunate conjunction of these two trends pitted Native Americans, with their pent-up grievances and newfound political muscle, against a group of overwhelmingly white scientists devoted to rational inquiry and largely unfamiliar with modern Indian culture. Researchers initially fought the law but misjudged its appeal. NAGPRA was widely seen as human-rights legislation, granting Native Americans—there are roughly 4.5 million in the United States today—the right to rebury their dead. The bill passed both houses of Congress unanimously and became law on 16 November 1990 (Science, 1 April 1994, p. 20).

The final legislation was a compromise with scientists that laid out a complicated process for repatriation. Under NAGPRA, all institutions that receive federal funding were to make inventories of remains and ceremonial objects and repatriate them to "culturally affiliated" tribes. Some items were exempt, including objects and remains that could not be linked to a particular tribe and those found on private land.

Of course, this issue of direct linkage (for example, this was used against the repatriation of the Kennewick Man) is now being removed with the new laws. How should we think about this all? This is a tough-tough issue. Being a scientists myself, I am very sympathetic to (and excited about) the potential of learning about American settlers from 10 millennia ago. This also makes sense when the identity of the remains can be clearly shown to be different from that of the current tribes (by the way, this also becomes a clash of the story of origins of the relevant tribe...). All things being equal, I would argue for this position. But all things are not equal, and there is a relatively nasty history about how some of these objects and remains were collected (and used). This is not the fault of the archaeologists/anthropologists today - but we have to acknowledge this fact and be sympathetic to the position of the tribes. This may include giving up objects/remains we may not want to give up. With some trust and time, who knows, we may be able to do some of this work with the cooperation of the tribes.

Your thoughts?

Read the full article here (you may need subscription to access it). There are couple of interesting article on this issue in the same issue of Science. I will have another post on this. But a relevant article here is about an increased interest in archaeology amongst native-Americans and how this sometimes put individuals in tough positions:

A legacy of exploitation colors the way Native American archaeologists are perceived both by their peers and by American Indians. In the early 1990s, a few years after the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act was enacted, Norder says Indian activists "would literally yell in my face" for being an archaeologist. Although passions have since cooled, Wilcox says Native American archaeologists are still considered suspect by the Indian community: "To them, it's like a chicken working for Colonel Sanders." Lippert, who like Norder caught grief from Native American activists years ago, today gets an angry earful from some of her fellow archaeologists, who wonder where her loyalties lie because she supports the new rules. Says Wilcox wryly: "We manage to make everyone unhappy."

Read the full article here.

Related posts:
Mauna Kea Observatories Update
Is it good news that Maui is picked as the site for a new Solar telescope?
Blood samples back to Yanomamo
Havasupai Tribe and the Ethics of DNA Research
A wind farm versus sacred ritiuals
Skeletal remains and the issue of cultural affiliation
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There is no question that astronomy, perhaps more than any other science, has spectacularly changed the way we look at ourselves as humans. It has inspired awe and it has also challenged many religious traditions unwilling to adapt to the new astronomy of the time. It has also been useful (and tricky) for calendars and in providing navigation help for early sailors. Plus astronomy played a major role during the scientific revolution of the 16th/17th centuries, from the debate over the geocentrism to the imperfections of the heavens as revealed by the new telescopes.

So it is no surprise that some of the sites of astronomical discoveries and of the gathering of astronomical knowledge are being considered for the World Heritage status (from Science):

The study, which has been officially endorsed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), highlights 44 sites and artifacts that mark humankind's millennia-long fascination with the heavens. Usually, it notes, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee focuses on what it calls "tangible, immovable heritage," such as buildings, parks, and railways. But when addressing astronomical heritage, it's the development of scientific knowledge that is important, not the bricks and mortar, says Thomas Hockey, an astronomer at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls and a member of the International Astronomical Union's working group that helped produce the report.

For example, the twin monastery of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in northeast England no longer houses the scientific writings of the medieval monk Saint Bede, but World Heritage status would recognize the "scholarly activity" that occurred there. Saint Bede's most influential work, On the Reckoning of Time, written at the monastery in about 725 C.E., "became the principal text for early medieval astronomical study," says the report, which is available online at www.astronomicalheritage.org.

I think this is absolutely fascinating! But interestingly, one of the candidates is also the Mauna Kea Observatory. The fact that Mauna Kea is sacred for the native Hawaiians and the telescopes are often a flash-point for controversy (see earlier posts on this topic here, here, and a summary here), this sets up an interesting question about how we assign cultural values. Some of the astronomical contributions from observatories at Mauna Kea have been truly outstanding (extrasolar planets, some of the work around Dark Energy, confirmation of supermassive blackholes in galaxies, etc.). So is this a world heritage, even though some Hawaiians feel that these discoveries have come at the expense of their culture? These are some tough issues - and I will address this a bit more soon. The section on Mauna Kea (pdf) in the IAU study just devotes one sentence to the Native Hawaiian connection.

In the mean time, check out the Astronomy and World Heritage Report here. You will find some fascinating places in the report. By the way, the Jantar Mantar Observatory in Jaipur, India has just been added to the World Heritage (other sites, such as the Stonehenge and the Greenwich Observatory are already on the UNESCO's World Heritage list).
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This is an update of the controversy over the presence of observatories on top of Mauna Kea. Yesterday, the University of Hawaii Board of Regents unanimously approved the plans for the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) - one of the largest planned telescopes for the next decade (it is expected to be operational by 2018). Some of the Native Hawaiian and environmentalist groups are unhappy about it and still plan to challenge the approval in the courts. The TMT now will now apply for a permit from the state, however, it is looking more and more likely that TMT will indeed be located on Mauna Kea. As an astronomer myself, I'm happy to see that this time astronomers have been more sensitive to the local concerns over Mauna Kea and I really hope that relations improve between scientists and those opposing the new telescope. Perhaps the key is for us to recognize that there is a real loss of a sacred space for some native Hawaiians and be mindful of the fact even when in disagreement about the future telescope.

Here is the story from the Washington Post. In case you want to hear from the locals on both sides of the debate, here is a letter to the editor (on behalf of The Sierra Club?) in West Hawaii Today against the proposed telescope, and here is a letter in response in the same newspaper (also see this blog post: Is The Sierra Club Anti-Hawaiian?). As you can see this is a complicated issue with religion, politics, environmental concerns, economics, and US history in Hawaii, all mixed in together. While this case is different from the run-of-the-mill science & religion issues (such as evolution), it is still in the domain of science & religion. Instead of epistemology, the debate here is over identity. Tracy Leavelle (Creighton University) and I are close to finishing a paper on the topic, and I hope to provide you with an update on it soon.

In the mean time, here are previous posts on the issue:
Management Plan Approved for Telescopes on Sacred Mauna Kea
Hawaii-Tribune Herald on the recent Mauna Kea lawsuit decision
Mauna Kea Observatories Update
Is it good news that Maui is picked as the site for a new Solar telescope?
Read More »

The name of Yanomamo is often associated with controversies in anthropology (see here and here). But for a change, here is a positive step being taken to repair some of the relations with the Yanomamo tribe: Researchers will return 40-year old blood sample taken from the tribe members. From Science:

Now, in an agreement being worked out by Brazil, he and others are pulling tissue samples out of storage and preparing to have them shipped back to the jungle.

Weiss says he accepted the vials years ago as a favor to his postdoctoral adviser James Neel, who was retiring and wanted them preserved. Along with cultural anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon, Neel collected the samples from the Yanomamö in Brazil and Venezuela during fieldwork in the 1960s and early 1970s, and they've been stored since then in labs around the United States. (Neel died in 2000.) Weiss and others will be releasing parts of their collections to the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, D.C., which in turn will escort them back to Brazil and the Yanomamö tribe. Venezuela has not asked for samples taken from its Yanomamö tribes, Weiss says.

The return marks at least the third time that an indigenous group has retrieved DNA or other tissue from scientists, suggesting a shifting landscape in genetics studies on indigenous people.

There are still some interesting problems associated with the return:

Researchers and diplomats alike want to ensure that the samples are safe and free of contaminants. That's easier said than done. The usual approach—heating material at very high temperatures—would cause the vials to explode. A suggestion to sterilize some samples with bleach was rejected, says Karen Pitt, special assistant for biological resources at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which holds 477 vials. NCI is investigating the possibility of irradiating them. "We'd like to accelerate this," says Pitt.

Still, I think this effort is a step in the right direction. Yes, there was no "Informed Consent" procedure forty years ago, but now we do have stricter procedures in place - so why not follow them more consistently. Just a few months ago, I had posted about the contentious DNA research involving the Havasupai tribe. However, in general, it seems that scientists are becoming more sensitive to issues involving indigenous tribes and is pointed out in the Science article:

Scientists are increasingly trying to accommodate demands from indigenous groups. Three years ago, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research in Ottawa released new recommendations for aboriginal research requesting, among other things, that research be of benefit to the community, that researchers translate their publications into the language of the community, and that researchers get consent before transferring samples to a colleague.

"If you have a sample in your lab, you have been loaned it, you haven't been given it," says Laura Arbour, a medical geneticist at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in Canada who helped craft the Canadian guidelines. Arbour, who works with Canadian aboriginal populations, believes they should be treated as collaborators and shown drafts of papers prior to publication, something she routinely does in her own genetics work.

"I don't object" to this approach in principle, says Kenneth Kidd, a population geneticist at Yale University, but it would make research "a lot more difficult." He and his wife, Judith Kidd, have amassed 3000 samples from 57 populations over the years. It would be virtually impossible to find a nomadic tribe from whom samples were collected a decade ago and share a planned publication, he says.

I think the idea of shared publication is excellent! In any case, read the full article here.
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Last week the Mauna Kea Management Board (MKMB) unanimously recommended the approval of plans for the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea. There is a long history of controversy here and there is opposition to new construction from some Native Hawaiian groups as well as some environmental groups. But, as usual, this is a complicated issue with multiple views on each side. However, it seems that the TMT - one of the largest of the next generation of telescopes - will be located on Mauna Kea. After the MKMB recommendation, the TMT proposal will now go for approval to the UH-Hilo chancellor and then to the UH Board of Regents. And if you are not tired of reading acronyms, the Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR), will then decide on the permit. Phew.

If you want to catch-up on the controversy, check out the following posts:

Management Plan Approved for Telescopes on Sacred Mauna Kea

Hawaii-Tribune Herald on the recent Mauna Kea lawsuit decision

Mauna Kea Observatories Update
Is it good news that Maui is picked as the site for a new Solar telescope?

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When will we ever learn? Because of the US history, scientists here have to be extra careful when dealing with culturally sensitive issues involving native tribes. Trust should be the center-piece in all cases. It seems that this very trust was breached in the DNA research involving the Havasupai Indians who live in the Grand Canyon:

At issue in the Havasupai case was whether an Arizona State geneticist had obtained permission from tribal members to use their DNA for anything other than finding clues to Type 2 diabetes. More than 200 of the 650-member tribe signed a consent form stating that their blood could be used to “study the causes of behavioral/medical disorders,” but many said they had believed they were donating it only for the study of diabetes, which tribal members suffer from at extraordinarily high rates. When they learned years later that the DNA samples had been used to investigate things they found objectionable, they felt betrayed.

There are couple of issues embedded here: First, can scientists use blood for research purposes other than the reasons stated at the time of collection? This is a bit complicated as sometimes research can end up taking a different direction. But then the donors, perhaps, should be informed of the new direction and asked for a new permission. And this was the basis of the settlement reached between Arizona State University and Havasupai Indians. But this can also become quite cumbersome - and problematic, especially when anonymity of specific donors is also being protected.

Some have proposed an international tribunal akin to the Helsinki human rights agreement, which would lay out the ethical obligations to research participants. Others suggest staying in touch with subjects so they can be consulted on new projects — and because under current practices they tend to learn of breakthroughs based on their own DNA only if they become close readers of scientific journals.

Courts have ruled that individuals do not have a property right to their cells once they are taken in the course of medical care, but they do, under federal guidelines, have a right to know how they will be used. Complicating matters is the increasing impossibility of ensuring that DNA data can remain anonymous. Do participants need to be told that their privacy cannot be guaranteed? Can “blanket” consent up front do the trick, or is even that misleading because researchers can’t adequately describe the scope of studies they have yet to design? Is it O.K. to use DNA collected for heart research to look for genetic associations with intelligence, mental illness, racial differences?

For one thing, “we have to communicate a hell of a lot better to the public what is going on when we put their specimens in our biobanks,” said Stephen J. O’Brien, a geneticist who runs the Laboratory of Genomic Diversity at the National Institutes of Health.

But what caught my attention here was a larger issue. The DNA research showed that the ancestors of the Havasupai originated in Asia, contradicting the origin story of the tribe originating in the canyon and, thus, being assigned as its guardians. What if the Havasupai did not want to subject their DNA for migration studies? What if their origin story plays an important role in their identity and they want to protect that? Well, I guess this should be their right. This got me thinking about young earth creationists or Muslim creationists who reject evolution. Can they argue for a similar protection from a scientific view of the origin of humans? I guess this would be okay (though suicidal for development) in their own private schools - which they can still do. This demand would also be reasonable if crucial evidence for evolution dependent on the cooperation of these creationists (say if their DNA was really unique). Phew! I'm glad there is sufficient evidence without that.

Back to the Havasupai case:

Another article, suggesting that the tribe’s ancestors had crossed the frozen Bering Sea to arrive in North America, flew in the face of the tribe’s traditional stories that it had originated in the canyon and was assigned to be its guardian.

Listening to the investigators, Ms. Tilousi felt a surge of anger, she recalled. But in Supai, the initial reaction was more of hurt. Though some Havasupai knew already that their ancestors most likely came from Asia, “when people tell us, ‘No, this is not where you are from,’ and your own blood says so — it is confusing to us,” Rex Tilousi said. “It hurts the elders who have been telling these stories to our grandchildren.”

Others questioned whether they could have unwittingly contributed to research that could threaten the tribe’s rights to its land. “Our coming from the canyon, that is the basis of our sovereign rights,” said Edmond Tilousi, the tribe’s vice chairman.

Oh boy - the last issue adds a whole other layer of political complications. Combine it all together and we return to the basic issue of trust. My fellow scientists - lets be careful and open about how we present our research.

Read the full article here and another one here. Also see this earlier post on Science, tissue-ethics, and faith-healers.

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This is an update of the controversy over the presence of observatories on Mauna Kea, Hawaii (for background, please see here and here). The State of Hawaii's Board of Land and Natural Resources (BLNR) has unanimously approved a new management plan by University of Hawaii to protect the resources (scientific, cultural, and environmental) at the 14,000 foot summit - home to some of the best observatories in the world. While there are many who support the continued presence of astronomy on the mountain, there are a number of groups who oppose any new construction and distrust the new management plan.

This is an emotional issue. For many Hawaiians, the mountain top is sacred and connected to their identity. But astronomy is also one of biggest economies of the island. In fact, Mauna Kea has been picked to host the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) - the largest in the world (though Europeans are planning their own comparable one in the high desert of Chile) - and is expected to bring in substantial capital to Hawaii. Furthermore, it ensures the prominence of Mauna Kea as a premier place for astronomy for at least the next couple of decades.

The vote in favor of the management plan was unanimous. However, do check out these three short videos (about 5 minutes each) of the testimonies before the vote. These will give you not only an idea of the issues involved, but also a glimpse of the raw emotions involved - both in favor of and against the observatories. Especially, listen to the person that starts testifying in the middle video, starting about 3min and 30 seconds in. He encapsulates the complexity perfectly: the silver rainbow he saw recently on Mauna Kea was not pure silver anymore - but "it was still there".

I think the management plan is a good effort and addresses many of the past concerns about cultural and environmental issues. I hope astronomers genuinely appreciate the complexity of issues on the mountain. This is definitely a case of overlapping magesteria - and not NOMA. The least we (astronomers) can do is acknowledge it.

I will keep you posted about the status. You can read about the BLNR decision in Star Bulletin here.

Related posts:

Hawaii-Tribune Herald on the recent Mauna Kea lawsuit decision

Mauna Kea Observatories Update
Is it good news that Maui is picked as the site for a new Solar telescope?

Read More »