 My name is Samuel Alda King II. I am the executive director of Ibu'a TMT. I am joined here today with James Stone, Peter Oppo, and Khalil Babayan to discuss defining sacred and the sacred-nased claims of the Qia'i or protestors on Mauna Kea and what that means for our community and what it means for all of us in Hawaii. And we want to talk today about everything around that topic, around the separation of church estate, about the importance of cultural claims and the importance of respecting religious identity and religious claims. So without further ado, I will introduce our three panelists. Mr. Stone is a Hawaii attorney with 30 years of experience who practice focuses upon the representation of real estate companies, trade associations, and risk management. He's written 15 certified real estate continuing education courses over 40 real estate related training manuals and well over 100 real estate related articles covered a wide range of topics. Regarding Hawaiian culture, Mr. Stone is an accomplished musician and hula practitioner who was trained by Wendona Beamer and Henry Mokeha Pa. Mr. Stone has recorded five CDs and has been nominated for three Nahoku Hanahara Awards. In 2008, he won the Hoku for album of the year for Nalani'e Ha as co-producer and recording artist. Additionally, he was president of the Hawaiian Music Hall of Fame from 2004 to 2016. Thank you, Jim. Aloha. Aloha. And next, we have Peter Apo. Peter Apo is the president of the Peter Apo Company LLC from Business Planning and Consulting Company. He was a Hawaii state legislator for 12 years. He's the director of arts, culture, and arts for the city and county of Honolulu under Mayor Harris. He was also the director of Waikiki Development under Mayor Harris. He was a special assistant on Hawaiian affairs to Governor Ben Kaetano. He was elected to the first Ohaha Board of Trustees in 1980 to 82 and re-elected to Ohaha again in 2010, serving until 2016 or 18? 18. 18. He continues to serve on countless boards and commissions, and he's been doing that for over 50 years. Last but not least, we have Chad Kolobobayan. Board of Rays in Lahaina, Kolobobayan has been an active participant in the Polynesian Voyaging Renaissance since 1975. Kolobba has served as captain and navigator on board the iconic Hawaiian double-hulled Voyaging Canoe Hokulea, as well as the canoes Hawaii Law and Hoku Alakati. In 2007, he was one of the five Hawaiian men initiated into the Order of Po, a 3,000-year-old society of deep-sea navigators by their teacher, master navigator, Maok Yama, on the island of Satawal. Kolobba has served as Imi Loa's first navigator-in-residence since his appointment in 2009. Kolobba most recently participated in the three-year Malama Honua worldwide voyage of Hokulea. He returned to school late in life, graduating with a BA from Kahakaula E'O'kei Leo Kalani College of Hawaiian Language in 1997 and followed with a master's in education from Heritage College. So thank you all for being here. Welcome. And I want to jump right into it just, you know, this topic clearly is of great importance to our community, to our society, maybe even to the whole world. Everybody is paying attention to this. So I wanted to give you a chance to offer your initial thoughts on this topic, defining sacred and, you know, Mauna Kea and TMT. So, Ima, why don't we start with you? My observation is that for most of my life, and I am 63 years old, Mauna Kea and the scientific use of Mauna Kea and Telescopes on it have been viewed positively by our community, by our community, I mean, the Hawaiian community, is a relatively recent development that Hawaiians are at least perceived by the larger community as being against scientific uses of Mauna Kea. And this is particularly heartbreaking for me because I know many of the people in the movement. And I understand the impact that this will have for our people, as you know, TMT presents the most important astrological tool that's even contemplated. It reaches, it's essentially a time machine that reaches back hundreds of millions of years. And its development is not only the telescope itself, but also the educational support for Native Hawaiians, 100-some-odd scholarships for Hawaiians every year for the next 10 years plotted out. It is the future of the general community and the scientific benefits that we can get for it, but also the direct impact it has upon Hawaiians. And the claim to sacredness currently been leveled are really, I think as we talk about it more, personal in nature, and it is very difficult to draw a true threat back to what was sacred to Hawaiians pre-contact. Thank you very much. Peter, why don't we go to you? What are your opening thoughts? Well, first of all, Aloha and thank you both and Kalepa on the big island for opportunity for me to join you folks. You know, my observation generally comes from my 40 plus years of public service. So I bring an eye toward the impact on public policy here, which runs a whole range of issues. And what's been particularly interesting to me and when this issue was first raised in around 2015, the first little bubbling under of the volcano, it was specific to the TMT, everything was focused on 30 meter telescope. Since then, the two three year break that they took to go to court and to fight the legal battles, there've been other issues that have slowly been bubbling under. This time around, it's very different. The volcano seems to have like exploded and it sent down the mountainside several lava flows, all of which represent different issues. So the issue has expanded to a wide range of issues, a lot of it triggered by the blocking of the road. So you have things like, first of all, it really important, validating, which we're gonna get more into when we get into body, validating the cultural claim of Manawa Kale. You get into the separation of church and state based on the sacredness claim. You get into the rule of law that it's preventing people from going to work and an officially approved project by the government. You get into a very divided Hawaiian community and while the optic may be through because of the more friendly nature of the media to the protectors and the kiai, you get this optic that all Hawaiians, as Kimo mentioned, are anti-TMT and that is not true. We're pretty heavily divided on this. One of the more foreboding, I think, impacts that are beginning to feel and to sense is that this is something that's beginning to divide Hawaiians from the rest of Hawaii. And when I say that, what I mean is that there have been issues before, but we've always pretty much had the support of all of Hawaii dating back to the Akaka Bill. I don't want to get into the weeds. This issue has beginning to shift that and it's beginning to draw a line in the sand between the impact of a negative decision on the TMT between the majority of the people of Hawaii and Hawaiians. That, I think, is a really onerous, kind of a heavy cloud that bothers me a lot. So somehow we have to come to some sort of resolution on this. But the issues go on and on. So probably the biggest issue for me and I think the place where the buck has to stop is where we're at and that is, in my opinion, the total lack of leadership from state government where the true responsibility to the Native Hawaiian trust, the fact that we are a state is based on the fact that on the Hawaiian presence in the Admissions Act. I think the state and the government is really failing us big time on this with really poor leadership and the total lack of any predictability about where we're going. Thank you, thank you. Kalapo, what are your opening thoughts on this? Well, I think I'm just gonna back it up and share with the audience how I come to my relationship with the mountain. As you know, I have had extreme and rare privilege to serve as captain and navigator on board the Hawaii, East T-Boys in Kanu, Hokulea, Hawaii, Loa, and Hokuala, Ka'e. I'm a student of history. I'm a graduate of the University of Hawaii at the Hapa'u Okaili Polani College of Hawaiian language. And I hold a master's degree in education at this college. For years, I've worked with students and educators sharing the really powerful story of our Mariner ancestors and oceanic navigators who settled these islands. In 2007, along with four other Hawai'i men, I was granted the rank of full and accepted into a society of non-instrument master navigators in the Sarawaliye tradition and extended the privilege to teach and pass on the skills and techniques and values of the oceanic wayfinder. So my relationship with monarchy is grounded in the many occasions that this special mountain has led me back to my home and to my family as a navigator aboard Hawaii's Voyage in Kanu. On one occasion, on a particular occasion of the evening of February 26th, in the year 2000, 21 days after leaving Tahiti, a crew of 15 women and men sailing on board hopefully arrived off Hawaii Island. As the island loomed large in the foreground, a colleague and I were in conversation. On the horizon, the slopes of monarchy rose out of the sea. It's summit silhouetted, but a fabric of stars circled over it. The conversation quieted as we stared toward that immense site. As we looked west, the wind kept pulling us along. I stared at the magisk and pulled it before me. A barfield circling overhead and arching toward monarchy, welcoming the night sky. On this cloudless night at sea, peering with my crew, we did the awesome sight of monarchy, the stars reached down out of the sky and touched the last peak of the mountain. And you recognize that they are the same, monarchy and the sky. In that moment, I realized that monarchy and the universe were one and that monarchy was truly a portal into the universe. Monarchy is a celestial window into the universe. Since that moment, I've been an advocate for astronomy in Hawaii. My realization that astronomy needs to be an integral part of Hawaii's community is teaching the tradition of the oceanic explorers to discover these islands. But getting away from the safety of these shores, they discovered the stars. The way-finding techniques used on deep sea canals rely upon traditional methods of observing the stars, destitizing one's body to the motion of the sea and observing all the natural clues that surround you. Peering is but one of the many examples that illustrate our ancestors' wisdom to adapt and use their knowledge and resources to survive. It manifests the body of knowledge into the culture we know today. As explored, Hawaii's utilized island people sustained their communities. Social monarchy contained a record of how the generation of very adaptive and intelligent people utilized the mountain as a vital resource. Establated that thin air slopes of monarchy for high-quality, durable coast produce the best set of neolithic tools in the Pacific. The monarchy adds powering the largest in the world, which concludes with evidence that the ancient recognize the importance of monarchy rich resources and its ability to serve its community by producing the tools of state to sustain daily life. The vegetative monarchy appreciate the environment like boring rocks, have the high evidence of the work, and took materials of the mountain to serve their communities with the full consent and in the presence of their God. Using the resources of monarchy as a tool to serve and benefit the community through astronomy is consistent with the example of the at-court. To value astronomy and its work in monarchy, you have to value the importance of the key knowledge and its quest for greater understanding of the universe we live in. Our ancestors were no different. We sought knowledge from their environment, including the stars, to guide them and to give them a greater understanding of the universe that surrounded them. The science of astronomy helps us to advance human knowledge to the benefit of the community. It teaches us where we have come from and where we are going. Its impact has been positive, introducing the young to the process of modern exploration and discovery, a process consistent with past traditional practices. My perspective of monarchy is based on the tradition of oceanic explorers, from whom I descend. As a Hawaiian, I recognize that I am at this time that with some of the best-making eye astronomers the world has known. It is totally consistent to advocate for online participation in a field of science to continue to enable the tradition and a field in which we are to lead. I firmly believe that the highest level of desecration rests in the action to remove the opportunity and choices from the kind of future our youth can hold. At times, the knowledge reveals of astronomical discoveries, writing of galaxies colliding in black holes to prove all the confusions. However, the purefulness of these discoveries should be viewed with an islander's perspective by recognizing our remoteness and vulnerability. As islanders, we are isolated, surrounded by sea and all our horizons, and only an ocean of stories the way ahead as a companion. But to purpose stewardship and willingness to adapt and learn, we continue to survive. I recognize that our planet is part of the greater natural cycle of the larger universe, and there is little that we can do in quest of future, set amid a dynamic universe. A ultimate job of humanity must be to ensure that our planet lives the fullest to life. It is not science fiction to recognize that our future lies in a darkness of space somewhere among the stars that gave us light. Astronomy must provide the answer to where our future will be and the challenges we'll have to overcome to right there. In order for humanity to survive, we will have to travel light years, but each of us only have a life sentence to be to the effort. When it is completed, the 30-meter telescope on monarchy will with greater accuracy vastly increase the capacity of the kind of scientific research that is vital to the quest for mankind's future. The search for valuable knowledge on the summit of monarchy is a spiritual mission that takes place on a special mountain and it's consistent with the work about accession for birds and is done to benefit the benefit of tomorrow generation here in Hawaii and that's possible. Monarchy, unlike life, is secured and special. We need to proceed with the important work of ensuring our future. That's all I look to monarchy and the energy of mountain, exploration, and stars. Thank you. Thank you, Colepa. If anybody's watching the beginning of this, they are going to get the whole deal right there and I know what Colepa thinks. And I want to jump right into kind of the central question on this one. And I'll start with you, Kim, always. Because you mentioned that you know many of the cultural practitioners involved in this particular movement. Is Mauna Kea sacred? It is sacred to many people, but that's different from saying that in some absolute term, that it's sacred. Just in terms of context, we can look at Mauna Kea II, which was the Hawaii Supreme Court case that sent the issue of TMT and the development of Mauna Kea back down to the Board of Land and Natural Resources. And there was a 44-day hearing held by Judge Ricky Mayo Monal that took in the evidence from every witness that was prepared to and willing to testify. And in that body of evidence, there are a couple key facts that stand out for me. The first is the use of Mauna Kea for religious or cultural practices, which did not occur until the summit road was opened in the late 60s. Frankly, the top or summit area of Mauna Kea is so inhospitable. It's above 70% of the Earth's atmosphere. If you are there after the sun goes down, you die. It is as just as a practical matter, not something that can be used casually or even regularly by anyone, including religious or cultural practitioners. There it was and has been some evidence of the use of Mauna Kea on an extraordinarily limited basis. And so I think one of the challenges for us as modern Hawaiians, and I only say modern meaning that we live here today, not in the 19th century or 17th century, is to reconcile some people's belief of what is sacred, which is frankly a cherry picking of beliefs that support already a point of view or conclusions. It's frankly confirmation bias. Looking for things to support what I already have decided is either correct or proper. And that is the heartbreaking part for me as a Hawaiian. I grew up in Hilo and we would visit Mauna Kea when I was a child and I remember- I heard there's numerous times when people live on the island. Plain in the snow. And there was no practices, use, or even talk about Mauna Kea from a sacred point of view. Other than, I think we can say that there is sacred in all of the aina that we have, but there are some particular areas that are especially sacred. And Mauna Kea would not be on the top of that list. I mean, just as an example, you can point to the sacred spring of Apokihau in Waikiki, which is surrounded by the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center. Of all the architectural monuments of Waikiki, that is probably the most ugly. If you had to just look at what is essentially a parking lot. In terms of what the architecture is, but how it intrus, interferes, and sort of corrupts the area, that was sacred for Hawaiians and was the seat of power in O'ahu. If we were gonna pick on something, if we were gonna say something is desecrating an area that's particularly sacred to Hawaiians, it would have to be something other than the summit of Mauna Kea. And we can have dozens. And Apokihau and Waikiki, that area of Waikiki is just one example. I mean, I didn't wanna come back to that because Waikiki is owned almost entirely by the elite trust. So it seems that there's been some sort of transition in the understanding of what is or is not. Is that almost all owned by elite trust? But there are significant elite trust holdings in Waikiki, whether it's Commandment Schools or the Queen's Foundation that supports Queen's Hospital and the local elite trust. Well, Pia, I wanna give you a chance to respond to this. We're going to call up with you as, is Mauna Kea sacred? And however you take that, where you go with it? Well, let me just say this. You know, in my work as a cultural consultant at the Peterborough Company, some of the things that we got involved in was responding to that question whenever a claim was being made and a project was brought to a halt because of claim of some kind of cultural injury. And there is a system that is under federal and state law that you use to determine whether a claim of cultural injury is validated. None of those, none of that, the three principles are through archeology and anthropology, through the chants. It has to appear in the chant. The tradition or the custom or whatever the claim is, the tradition or custom that's being violated has to have occurred a number of times. You know, it has to have a system of frequency, et cetera. And none of those criteria can be met. As I understand, the broad overarching claim of Mauna Ava Kea, that is the mountain is sacred. Mauna Ava Kea refers to all mountains. And the first time that Mauna Ava Kea is even mentioned anywhere is in, was in 1819, that lake, the lake, early 1800s, and it did refer at the time, it was part of a birth chant, or keo keo ko olia, I'll forget the name of the agii. But anything previous to that, there was no mention. So the claim of Mauna Ava Kea itself cannot be validated. There's another thing that bothers me which is some of the claimants that are involved are really devotees of Pele. Well, Pele is not related to Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea is the goddess Poliyahu, that is her jurisdiction. So there's kind of a crossing of the lines there of jurisdiction, you know, even using the ancient rulings. And then lastly, it's unfortunate that today there is no center of gravity to adjudicate claims of cultural injury. The priesthood, which was a religious slash political body in ancient times, would be the ones to advise the Ale'i, the royalty, on whether a claim was good or not or, you know, guide them. And so the priesthood was dissolved with the battle of Kuo Mo'o when the religion itself was kind of wiped out as an official act of the kingdom. So the business of not being able to validate the claim, not even close, really bothers me that we're not hearing from the scholars on this. The silence actually is deafening. If you're really interested in preserving the dignity of our culture and our people, we ought to be able to demonstrate that we are living our culture as demonstrated and as lived over centuries. That all of it seems to be going out the window and we're starting to make up stuff. Lapo, what are your thoughts on this question? Is Mauna Kea sacred? Well, I can show you my own personal perspective and this is my opinion, right? I don't speak for any other Hawaiian except myself. On the matter of Mauna Kea's being sacred, I don't characterize Mauna Kea as being sacred. I do use the word spiritual to define my personal relationship with the mountain. And that's because of the definition of the word sacred and the premise of it. The word sacred, as defined, speaks about it's about the worship of God It's about a religious relationship. And the word spiritual is about a relationship to place. It's about a relationship to environment. It's about a reverence for serenity. It's about a respect for nature. And the reason why I base it that I don't characterize Mauna Kea as sacred is that because of the abolishment of the kapu system in 1819, historically our elite abolished the religious order that governed the daily lives of all Hawaiians in 1819. And so I'm going to respect that. I'm not going to act contrary to the will and wisdom of our esteemed elite by resurrecting an abolished religion. And let's be real clear, they abolished the religious order. They didn't care if they could say, only these gods, they completely abolished the whole religious order of which the apex of Hawaiian religious worship was human sacrifice. So I am not going to disrespect the will and wisdom of our esteemed elite by acting contrary to the will and wisdom. I am going to recognize that. So that's why I choose to call Mauna Kea a spiritual environment and not a sacred environment. Sam, you know, the thought that Kolepa triggers for me is it's one thing to say why it is not sacred, which is fine and his take is very good. But the sacredness, if you want to invoke sacredness, what is sacred about Mauna Kea is the opportunity for the search for knowledge. There is no denying that one of the fundamental principles and the dignity of Hawaiian culture and its history was the search for knowledge, was the constant, you know, paying attention to how things work, how the universe work. I mean, look at the accomplishments in the search for knowledge, what did it accomplish? Polynesians, Hawaiians being the last of the development series, without compass, without sextant, without stern post-brother, without keel, were able to settle one third of the Earth's surface through navigation over a moving environment. That's all based on the search for knowledge and the rise of the cultural, of the curiosity. Mauna Kea is, brings us down in history as one of the greatest opportunities, not just for Hawaiians, but for mankind, in order to reach out and the relationship of the 30-meter telescope that will allow us to go back in time, jives with the Hawaiian story of creation, which is the night of Paul, going back to the darkness, that this instrument will allow us to trace our ancestry down through the heavens, all the way back. There is nothing more sacred than that. So the mountain, to me, is sacred because of its opportunity to continue the search for knowledge, you know, and with our pride and the dignity of our people. Yeah, I just want to correct Peter. Thank you, Peter. It's not one third of the Earth's surface, it's actually two-thirds. Oh, two-thirds! Thank you, sir. Good thing we got that out of the way. Kimo, I want to bring something back that you mentioned specifically, which was the cherry picking, and that was a very interesting term. I think it speaks a little bit to what Kaleppo is raising about the religion having been abolished. Can you speak to what you mean by that exactly and what parts you see of being cherry picked and what parts being left behind? Well, I think Kaleppo mentioned how the Kampu system was overthrown by Hawaiians themselves, and it was initiated by the elite, but the high priest of Hawaii, Hava Hava, participated enthusiastically in the destruction of his own temples, and they threw off what they viewed at that time was the burdens and the shackles of a belief system that governed everything you do from the moment you awoke into your dreams and had aspects of that religion that included things that we would now today not accept by anyone or any religion, such as human sacrifice, such as the use of sorcery to pray people to death, and to the extent that you are accepting some aspects of a cultural belief, like the reverence for the Aina, the thought that the mountain is the residence of the gods, ignores all of the other aspects of the religion, which today could not be sustained. There would be not, as I sit here, I don't believe that any Hawaiian today would endorse the practice of human sacrifice. When Kamehameha, and this is something that Kaleppo mentioned, when Kamehameha was aged and he became ill, he was advised by his kahuna that they should sacrifice 40 people to help him recover from his illness, and so that was part of that belief system. Yeah, Kaleppo, I remember mentioning saying, oh, that left all the buck, I'm not a running for the hills there. Which was also part of it, too. I mean, there's a real practical aspect to our people. But let's be honest, that is not why the concept, or even the word, sacred is being used today. The word sacred is being used by those that oppose the TMT to stop the conversation. If you have a claim of sacred, there is no opportunity for accommodation, for understanding, or compromise. It's an absolute line drawn in the sand. That allows people to ignore the fact that the TMT is not going to be on the summit, which is arguably the most important place culturally of the mountain. It will not block the view of the sun as it rises or sets, which is important. It is off into a plateau 500 feet below where most of the most sacred or important cultural practices occurred. So the cherry picking that I was referring to was meaning that not only were we cherry picking amongst all of the aspects of couple, which were overthrown, and only looking at really the one or two percent of an entire belief system when we're talking about the realm of the gods and the mountain, but also cherry picking in just what was actually occurring on the mountain and how the TMT is not interfering with any of those. If you look at the history of 10 years of litigation, what you see is a series of accommodations for things like environmental questions, for things like cultural practices, for things like view playing on and on and on. Once all of those questions were answered, the permit after 10 years had to be accepted because it had met all the criteria. Now that people who are against the telescope have lost every legal avenue, they have resorted to what they have left, I think, or what they believe they have left, which is an emotional appeal, the traditional or historic denial of Hawaiian rights and cultural practices or the old grievances and the use of sacred so that there can't be any further discussion because that was already resolved by the courts. Can I just chime in? I just want to emphasize what people said about how we have of being a promoter for the establishment of the religious. It's a side note that he had the least vested interest in overthrowing the aqua system because that was his authority and he gave the monarchy to enforce, and so why you would never see that it was time for the abolishment of the religion? That's the most curious, one of the most curious aspects about individuals who chose to abolish the religion. So yeah, that's a good point. Thank you. Following up on what Kim was talking about sacred, from a public policy perspective, it's important to understand what Kimo said, which is when you say sacred, you're talking about no discussion, no discussion. All right. In all other matters that involve any violations of law that have to do with protecting historic sites, with tradition, with customs, there are processes that you use. The process is involved in investigation, process is involved, dialogue process is involved, some kind of a navigation. Here, they've raised the bar by using the word sacred because then it shuts off all dialogue. Now, I don't understand why the leaders who are trying to resolve this don't understand what that means because they've been spending months coming up with solutions. Mayor Kim with his package of cutting a deal, of creating conditions or trying to accommodate, and I guess it's not ringing true in their ear that sacred means no discussion. So the message that I'm getting from this very clear, very upfront, I mean, let's say they've been very upfront about this, we are not moving unless you tell us that the TMT is dead. What is it that we don't understand about that? Meanwhile, and we're going to get into this later, the impact of this on the community that goes beyond just the TMT issue. I absolutely want to get into that. I wanted to mention something that you had brought up before, Peter, which was there's a personal nature to the religious claim that I've heard this multiple times and I'm wondering if you can expand on it at all about this concept of family claims. I don't fully understand this, but I'm curious. This is the idea that every family on Big Island or in Hawaii, in ancient meaning pre-contact Hawaii, or even maybe shortly thereafter, had different family practices. How does that work? Well, this is kind of a gray area. I'm not an expert in it, but I know that, first of all, the Hawaiian gods were part human. They were like, it's like the Greek mythology, right? The gods were part human, and so you could argue with them. You could actually disagree with the gods. In the case of the almakua, that is the family gods. Family gods were established, but if they were not working, you got rid of it, and you created a new god. I'm not quite sure how that fits in here, but it kind of reduces the leverage that you're able to use in invoking the belief system of one or two gods because you can change it if it ain't working for your society. Sam, maybe I can respond to that. Sure. Everyone has a right to their own religious beliefs, and I have complete respect for anybody who has a belief in the mountain being sacred, but I don't think that that right for that belief and their personal belief to then impose obstacles or controls over other people who have equal and important rights as well. The challenge we have with the mountain is a relatively small group is imposing their view of sacred or religious upon everyone else, including an international consortium developing a telescope, including a hundred potential Hawaiian scholars every year who will be denied a portion of a million-dollar fund for 10 years or for education and astronomy. If it were up to me, every scientist on the mountain would be Hawaiian. Every Hawaiian that we lift up lifts up a family. 100 scholars a year lifts up 100 families. Over 10 years, that's 100 scholars and their families lifted up. That kind of creates a tide that is lifting the boats. My friends, and to this day, I called them my friends, even though some of them don't call me a friend anymore or on the other side. For me, it's not personal. I respect that their beliefs, but they will then deny a future for hundreds of Hawaiian families. They provide nothing in return. Now, I would feel completely different if they had a mechanism to provide a million dollars of scholarship funds every year for the next 10 years. Uncle, but it is not fair for my personal religious belief to deny another Hawaiian family an opportunity for excellence. If it were up to me, there would be an equal fund for Harvard Law School, Columbia Med School, and every other professional opportunity for excellence. We were a community known for excellence. No one even came close and everything we did, and whether it's feathers or astronomy, in Polynesia, the Hawaiians developed it to its epitome with one exception, the Māoris were better carvers, but other than that. There's a, that you, you hit right on another topic I wanted to discuss, and you might have said everything you wanted to say about it, but what does this claim of sacredness mean to the concept of separation of church and state in our society? And I want to give a little bit of context here at the danger of speaking too much, but people often, I've heard say, oh, you know, separation of church and state is a Western concept, and I, therefore, I don't want to talk about it or something like that. And I've never understood that argument because it's like, I don't care where it comes from, you know, you can get the yoga from India or wherever you're going to get it from or a feng shui from, you know, East Asia, and it's just be like, that's a great idea. I want to integrate that into my life. The idea of separating church from the political power of the state to me always seems like a great idea no matter where it came from. And you feel the same way, and this is for all three of you, or, and the extent you do, how do you think that this claim of sacredness fits into that? Well, I think you are showing your bias because there is an enormous proportion of the world that disagrees with you, that believes that it is not only good thing, but is you are compelled to combine religious as well as political and governmental administration. And then you have Iran. You have the Taliban. You, if you want to look at the most repressive societies on earth, you look at those that believe that base their government and political systems on absolute beliefs, religious beliefs, you will find the most oppressive governments that there are. Now, some people will argue that's a good thing. Obviously, I would not. What would you think? And I would not, but I don't think I have to. I don't have to take that position because all you have to do is look around and say, is that what we wanted? And I know that's what Hawaiians did not want because they lived, a couple was way more restrictive than even the most conservative form of Islam today. And Hawaiians threw off the Yoke of Kapu on their own and Heva Heva was the most enthusiastic leader of the complete dissolving of Kapu. Overly enthusiastic, I think you even said before. Yes, to such an extent that all of the artifacts that would be illuminating for us today were destroyed. But like Kalapa, I don't feel that it's my position to judge what they did at that time for their purposes. What they did, they thought was best at the time. What I object is that some of my friends are imposing what they think is best on everyone else, including denying opportunities for Hawaiians. Peter Kalapa, if you want to expand or? Well, I mean, the separation of church and state is a constitutional-based right. So I agree with Tehimo. Everyone is entitled to their belief system, whether the rest of the country believes it or not. But we do live under the Constitution, which says your belief system is yours, have it, practice it, as long as it doesn't interfere with the rights of the other citizens. So that's where you run into a kind of a problem with it. I'm curious on the, on the, do you agree with that? Do you agree with that constitutional principle? Because what are the things that are most fun? Oh, absolutely. You know, the United States is unique. It's one of the few countries that was not, was established and its constitution recognizing the rights of, regardless of race, color, gender, or sex. There is no other country in the world that I think that I know of that has that as a founding principle of the nation, right? Australia. Australia does, yeah. Well, we had our own problems. Australia had their own problems. We had the democracies of the world. So I mean, it just, Australia had a lot of indigenous rights issues in Hawaii, you know, the United States had slavery, obviously, where we could vote. I mean, it was, there was a whole other aspect of Hawaiian history also where, you know, women were separated from the political power, right? That was another part of the conflict. There is a valid criticism that the belief systems of the West, and we're using why many natives are so skeptical of this separation of church and state, is that if we look at every instance where the West has contacted native peoples, we have had a horrific experience, whether you're aboriginals in Australia, or the Maori in New Zealand, or the Hawaiians in Hawaii, or the Native Americans throughout the entire continental U.S. and Alaska as well. So you can completely understand the emotional, the sort of centered in your gut reaction of Native Hawaiians on issues where they feel that they have been wrong. The appeal to the protest is very emotional, and that's not a rational argument. We consider all day talking to each other about how do you accommodate the various views, which is what happened for 11 years throughout the whole hearing process for the permit. But at the end of the day, it didn't turn out to be now a matter of competition because the current plan accommodates every single objection that was raised. Now it's just a matter of winning. Now we're getting to some of the other areas, which is separation of church and state, the government needs to do its job, and I agree. The issue is more than TMT now, and hopefully we're going to get into that in a little bit. This is really about sovereignty. It's about self-determination of Hawaii. It's about 100 years of violating so much of our culture of basically ripping off all the land. So that emotion, I agree with Kimo, it's powerful, really powerful. That's what we're kind of seeing. TMT happens to be the match that lit the fire. I think we'll get a lot into the other more issues on the second part of this whole discussion. One thing I wanted to discuss on the separation of church and state question is a lot of the protesters have said that they believe their constitutional rights are being violated because they have the freedom of religion, they have the freedom to exercise the religion. Do you see that? I understand the Supreme Court has said that's not happening. There's no violation of that. They are free to exercise. They're anywhere in the mountain. They just can't stop other people from accessing the mountain. There is a process, both in federal and state law, that protects the sacred sites. There's huge documentation of most of it. You can take new applications and through the management system that they have. If you have something sacred you would like to do on the mountain. There's no one that's preventing anyone. But when the claim of sacredness declares that every square foot of the mountain is sacred and nobody's allowed to do anything without their permission, now you've got a problem with separation of church and state. And there was another question we got from the audience because we've done this panel once before and we had a state capitol. Hopefully we get a chance to do it again sometime soon. There were a number of questions we got from the audience and one of them that was interesting to me from a sacred perspective and a historical perspective was, in terms of Hawaiian spirituality and individuality, was the kapu system brought to Hawaii by others like priest Paul? Oh, yes. Well, it was a different and sort of enhanced version of kapu. It was much stricter. Can you explain that? I'm guessing the majority of the audience on the internet does not know that little bit of history. Did you know a little bit about that? You can a little bit. I mean, the high priest Paul brought a stricter kapu system. He brought a essentially breathing scheme for elite and how you might maintain mana by making sure that the relationships work as close as possible. They brought the practices of human sacrifice, which was not a part of Kapu before his arrival. His direct descendant and real expert, I don't think to be the real expert and I just know this sort of superficially, is Kahumomilam, who is the kahu for the heyo, which is Kamehameha's luakini. She explains how the TMT and the development of Monkea is not offensive to Hawaiian beliefs. This is a direct descendant of the most stric form of kapu. We could really get lost, I think, though, in the forest for the trees by trying to argue about the fine points of which priests brought what version of kapu and at what point in time did we practice kapu and to what extent. What we have no disagreement on is that the Hawaiians overthrew kapu. It was not through foreign influence in 1819 and that the current imposition of a relatively narrow set of beliefs, it cannot prevent other people, Hawaiians or not, I just want to say for Hawaiians, cannot prevent other Hawaiians from exercising their beliefs to explore the stars. We were the first adopters, whether it was firearms or telephones in Ulaanipalas. There is Kolepa's navigator so he can speak to the opportunities that Hawaiians would have had if they had modern scientific instruments. Maybe we can ask him. Kolepa, is there anything offensive about the use of modern scientific instruments from a Hawaiian cultural point of view? No, because Kamehameha granted Captain Cook and Captain Vancouver to the authority of the priesthood at Hiki'au Hei'au a right to erect their temporary observatories there. So what does that say? That says that Hawaiian people's point of view that culture and science could exist and from the perspective of the priesthood, they absolutely felt that it was not offensive for science and its instrumentation to be erected right on the Hei'au ground. And quite frankly, when Kolepa returned from Maui, because he was fighting on Maui when Captain Cook arrived in Calakiki, Obe, the first place he went to visit was the temporary observatory next to Hiki'au Hei'au and they were amazed at the astronomy instrument. They were especially amazed at the progress that Captain Cook and his men had set up on the Hei'au ground. And this was at a time when Kupu was still the law of left. So to claim that it is somehow offensive or inconsistent with Hawaiian beliefs is just not supportive. What would you say to the descendants of those who lost the battle of Kua'ba'u? Because I think you practiced under Winona Beemer. I think the Beemer family actually traces their descendants based on an article I was reading about it. It was very interesting about the battle. That's where I learned about it. That's where I learned about it. It was fascinating. And I'm just curious, and he actually was debating, or he was on television discussing, or one of the Beemer families on television discussing with Makana Silva, a native Hawaiian astrophysics student that's reporting to TMT. I went to Mauna Kea with him. So there seems to be some tie-in there to that family. I don't know what they're exactly, but if anything, but what is that, does that tie in to this? How does that play into all of this? I can't speak for the descendants of Kua'u and Manono and the Beemer family, but it is something of a trap. You try to go down every single rat hole that is proposed as being important, because not all of it, it is. There are several baskets of importance. Some are very important to people personally. Some issues are very important to some people in terms of their family, and some issues are very important to a community. And then we have a larger community. The governor is responsible for the entire state. The university is responsible for its university system. There is frankly an absence of leadership both on the state side and the university side in terms of clarity. There is no clarity of the message that TMT is, one, been now established by legal process as a project that is entitled to proceed. And two, what is the benefits? And let's be transparent. And what are the deficits, if any, of the project? But there is no conversation at all from that side, whether it's leadership from the state government or the university, that responds in any meaningful way to a generalized protest. And it's very sympathetic to see natives say that they have been harmed. But if that's all you know, at that superficial level, then the real core issues get missed. Sam. Sam. Kaleppo. There are episodes in the history of humanity when there are dramatic shifts in the direction of a culture. A battle of Cuomo was one of the when there was a dramatic shift, right, whether they're going to retain the practice of the traditional religion or whether they're going to abolish it and break away and choose a new direction. Yeah, so that's what happened in the battle of Cuomo. But you got to ask yourself a question, right? Yeah, Kekuo Kalani and Manono was at Cuomo. But why didn't the population who supported the Kapu system, why didn't they continue to keep on rising up and battling for the continued practice of the Kapu system? That's because all the people supported the policy of the system. They were ready for that dramatic shift in their culture. So it was this time. And it's too bad that Kekuo Kalani could not accept it. And he greatly underestimated the firepower that Leo, Leo, his general Kalani Moku had available to them. I would have never gone into a battle bearing musketeers. It was a battle that was won by musketeers. So interesting about what your question is. In spite of the battle of Cuomo and the general acceptance of Christianity, missionaries arrived about a year after the battle of Cuomo. In spite of the fact that the Hawaiians basically, most of them became Christian. But many of them never totally gave up some of the old, what you would consider to be spiritual or religious practices. It's been interesting me down through the years to see pastors of Kauaiho Church actually kind of walk a line between the two. I don't think there was any harm, but this is a feeling of still staying connected to your past and your culture in some way that wasn't offensive or it didn't hurt other people. And so bridging those two is really kind of fascinating to watch all that play out. But you can only do that, Peter. If you don't claim those cultural beliefs to be sacred. Once your random is sacred, then they have a different meaning, which is a bright line. I can say like Pilahi haki did, that aloha means a kahai, to be humble. Lukahi worked together. Olu olu to be pleasing or pleasant. And ahunui. We can have all of these cultural values, but if I want to point to a sacredness, then all of a sudden I've turned into something else. I agree with what you're saying in terms of behavior system. But then you have practices like calling a krishna kahu, who is Hawaiian, to go bless a place because ghosts are running around. You know, that's still practice today. And there is a belief system in that. So it's those kinds of practices that I think it's kind of, I don't know. I like the fact that they're able to walk that line, but it can't hurt other people. No question. The difference is when you engage in those cultural practices, you are not denying anybody else. And that's what Hawaiians are particularly good at. Can I just point out, Sam, that when the Kapu system was abolished and the Hawaiian populace was instructed to burn their personal gods or to hide them away. Hawaiians are very, very respectful. Yeah, they were going to depart for the ancient tradition, but they just didn't throw their gods in the fire. A lot of them took them into caves and created papayas or platforms where they could re-rest them and they walked away from the religion, but they left those ancient gods who it was to scare and inspect. And they were very, very, very, very clear avenues of respect and reverence as they turned it back on the ancient religion. Yeah, it was a good departure. It's one of the things I'm wondering is, do you think there's a risk, and it touches on the sacredness, but it expands a little bit more, do you think there's a risk, you know, especially from the legal background, that the more you push or the sacredness stamp on cultural practices, the higher the risk is that the United States Supreme Court is going to come down and say, this whole Hawai'i constitution where you are respecting gathering rights and Hawaiian-specific practices and DHHL and OHA, that's just crossing the line. They now have this, they take a re-look at the race space, they take a look at, you know, all of these things that are specific to Hawai'i that are really based on a lot of this cultural practice kind of angle, when you start bringing the sacred and making political demands on it, do you think that heightens that risk? We would need more time, I think, to explore. That's a that question. That is too complicated, I think, to give a superficial or servile answer. I can say this, with the current administration in Washington, D.C., and the appointment of 180 plus very conservative judges, it would not surprise me that Native rights in Hawai'i and elsewhere would be under threat, because from the point of view of people from the mainland, they see any program or preference or accommodation for Native rights as race-based. What they don't see is that there is a political basis for it, particularly in Hawai'i, but it was the whole reason for the Kaka Bill. And so that's why this is so complicated to understand in a meaningful way your question, I'd have to ask all of the questions that lead to what's the distinction between race-based or political entity, which allows programs to serve Native Americans on the mainland, because they recognize as separate political entities, and not a quote-unquote race. And then the whole idea of race is so complicated. I mean, there's no biological scientific basis for races. It's a concept that was imported from the West. I cannot say race in Hawai'i. There's no word for it. So that might be best served in another context, I think. There's a whole history, as Kimu mentions, the Native Native Americans. There's a whole history of law, federal law, that protects traditional customary. This is not sacred, but it's traditional customary practices that has been extended, even though Hawai'ians are not recognized as Native Hawai'ians, it extended some of those rights to the Hawai'i community, like the right to gather. A lot of that has to do with an undeveloped land, a Halao, a Hula Halao, has a right to cross undeveloped land, to access mountains, to gather flowers for whatever the ceremony is. Those traditional customary practices have been in place, but it is a very, very difficult, very fine line that you walk when you separate out that or try to take one of those practices and put a claim of sacred on it. Now you're talking about a whole different... We're at one hour, so we're going to take a little break and we're going to come back, I think, and expand on a lot of other topics that we can touch on in the time we have available. But, Kolepo, starting with you, I just want to give you a chance for some closing thoughts on the question of defining sacred. Yeah, again, you know, I would just reiterate that, you know, it's up to Hawai'ians what they want to call it, call it sacred. I choose not to. I choose to defy monarchy as a spiritual environment, and my relationship is with the place, not with any religious practice. It is with my reverence for the serenity and the natural beauty of this special environment. Thank you. Well, for myself, I feel kinship to the people who protest TMT, because for 10 years, they fought the fight to use every legal avenue and all process that they were due to establish whether or not the TMT complied with all criteria and requirements. They use that system to make sure that there's a strict adherence to every single regulation that could be applied. It is tragic now that even, it's only because they lost, ultimately in monarchy, too, and the 44 days of hearings held by Judge Ricky, that they now deny that there's no need to follow the decision that they asked for, that they demanded, that they felt was required under the law. Now, if everyone who lost the case could ignore it and then just do what they want, then we would not be able to have any of the benefits that serve our people today. Our real challenges are not the telescope. It's health, housing, and at a warrant level of incarceration of our people, none of which we can address if we have no other effort than to stop things from happening like the telescope. My closing thought is that if the QIA and the protectors can validate their claim, validate the claim based on evidence like any other claim, then I would absolutely retract how I feel about it and say, okay, you validated the claim, then you go from there, but right now, there's nothing to validate what they're saying. All right, thank you very much. For now, we're going to take a little break and we'll be right back with our panelists.