This is not going to be a revolutionary piece on why we should protect Mauna Kea and stand with all indigenous people who fight for their land. They have already said<\/a> and will continue to say<\/a> all the most important reasons for their actions. Please educate yourself<\/a>.<\/p>\n Morning meetings, Mauna Kea, 2019 I am writing here because silence is violence, because finding no use for my privilege is a privileged mindset. I write because there are people I can reach, as a non-native, with whom I can communicate, and it is my burden to do so. (Though again, others are better equipped and it is a shame that anyone might be getting their first glimpse of this now.)<\/p>\n Mathematicians need to know that we in academia\u2014especially those of us in STEM\u2014are in the middle of a struggle for our humanity. (Well, humanity has never been what it claimed\u2014much like America has never lived up to its self-image<\/a>\u2014but let\u2019s just call it humanity.) I do not know the entire history<\/a> of the TMT project<\/a>, whose idea it was, or who decided Mauna Kea was the best spot, but I do know that k\u0101naka maoli (Native Hawaiians) had no power in the decision-making process. I know that those who have taken<\/a> and destroyed<\/a> so much could never be trusted<\/a> with a site as precious as Mauna Kea. I use precious instead of sacred, following this definition<\/a>, because many of us haven\u2019t unpacked our religious bigotry when it comes to how we discuss indigenous beliefs.<\/p>\n The ability to view a mountain as precious is something that colonialism and capitalism has stolen from us.<\/p>\n I\u2019m going to say it again.<\/p>\n The ability to view a mountain as precious is something that colonialism and capitalism <\/strong>has stolen from us.<\/strong><\/p>\n My first semester at UH, I taught Business Calculus (zero stars, btw, do not recommend). I was supposed to tell my students how to maximize profit by minimizing, among other things, the cost of labor. The cost of labor.<\/strong> Nowhere in my book did it explain that labor was actual people with families to feed. Nowhere in my book did it explain that the cost of labor was how much you paid people who were counting on this money to survive. At no point did it discuss how to know if you were mistreating labor. The idea that you can apply calculus to human lives was taken as a given. And I was supposed to show them how to do it. Even when it\u2019s not Business Calculus, our apolitical abstract lectures perpetuate the idea that there is nothing precious.<\/p>\n Right now, Indigenous people and their settler allies around the world are saying \u02bbA\u02bbole TMT: No TMT. They are doing this not just because Mauna Kea is precious, not just because it is sacred to Native Hawaiians, but because they know first-hand<\/a> what happens when their land is taken. We are hundreds of years too late for this kind of favor, hundreds of years and countless lives too late to request this level of trust.<\/p>\n Ihum\u0101tao solidarity, police vans in the background, Mauna Kea, 2019 The mathematics community needs to care about this for many reasons. First, these are our students. One of the barriers to success for marginalized and first generation students is the disconnect between their academic world and their home life. When k\u016bpuna (grandparents, elders) are being arrested, when k\u0101naka maoli have to do the arresting, when Hawaiian scientists are being erased, when Hawaiians opposing construction are being mocked as “backward,” and when all of these degrading interactions are played out in national media, these are aggressions on native people everywhere, and our indigenous students shoulder this burden.<\/p>\n Second, those of us who work at research universities are complicit in the state violence acted upon a community who is explicitly posing<\/a> no threat<\/a>. The Governor of Hawai\u02bbi declared a state of emergency<\/a> because his<\/em> interests were being threatened, and the university\u2019s interests are being threatened. He went on TV and attempted to portray non-violent (and frankly, life-affirming<\/a>) protest as a threat to public safety. This type of action is not necessary if you are doing ethical research, and should not be Lastly, all of this ties back into something we’ve discussed here before, namely humanizing mathematics<\/a>. From recognizing the humanity in our own students<\/a>, to recognizing science and math as human endeavors<\/a>, we must break free from this colonized\/capitalist metric that sees humanity as a distraction. Indigenous voices, history, and knowledge will be essential to decolonization and sustainability. The time to start listening is long, long, overdue.<\/p>\n A scene from the workshops I will close with something personal because as valuable as abstract reasoning can be, it doesn’t matter if it isn’t personal.<\/p>\n The first people I met on O\u02bbahu were white moms who were mostly military wives. They had their own community, and I wasn’t sure how they fit into my desire to understand the local culture(s). Turns out, they didn’t. After many months and many hours in traffic spent just to “socialize” my three year old, an entire mom group abruptly cut me out of their lives over a Facebook thread. I had posted a link about white privilege on a thread where they were complaining about Black Lives Matter, and this was too much for them. I was stunned. Not that they were upset, but that they didn’t think it was worth getting through. My only thought was: \u201cHow are you going to burn bridges with people when you live on an island?!\u201d It seemed so clear to me that this was an unsustainable attitude. I would later read about Ho\u02bboponopono<\/a>, the Hawaiian process of conflict resolution, and this would be my first connection (however loose) with Hawaiian culture.<\/p>\n I never learned as much local history as I wanted. I never got past the second Last year was the first time I attended a demonstration about Mauna Kea. I am![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/inclusionexclusion\/files\/2019\/07\/morningmtg-300x146.jpg\")
Photo by: Eric \u02bbIwakeli\u02bbi Tong<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/inclusionexclusion\/files\/2019\/07\/solidarity-300x146.jpg\")
Photo by Eric \u02bbIwakeli\u02bbi Tong<\/p><\/div>\n
\nsupported by anyone in academia. We have to reevaluate what we think our quest for knowledge is worth, and whom we’re willing to force to pay that price. Any argument that only discusses the wonders of discovery can be used, for instance, to experiment on humans without consent<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t
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(Pu\u02bbuhuluhulu University)
Photo by: Eric \u02bbIwakeli\u02bbi Tong<\/p><\/div>\n
\nchapter in my \u02bb\u014clelo Hawai\u02bbi book. I couldn\u2019t figure out the politics of sovereignty,
\nor remember the right language regarding the US relationship to Hawaii. I wasn\u2019t even
\nsure if I should be saying aloha and mahalo. Really, the only thing that was immediately
\nclear to me was that we should definitely not be building an Earth shattering telescope
\non pristine land, especially not sacred Earth, especially not stolen land.<\/p>\n
\nembarrassed to admit I was shocked at how much I agreed with what was being said. I
\nknew I supported k\u0101naka maoli as an ally, but I still had not unpacked my bigotry that doesn\u2019t have a place for \u201csacred\u201d things. I expected to hear about ancestors and traditional practices, things that have been abstracted away from me without my consent. Instead I heard about sustainability, about accountability, about abuse of power, about mismanagement and lies. At the end of the event I was about ready to stand arm in arm and face the police on the Mauna.<\/p>\n