 This is Hawaii Is My Main Land on Think Tech Hawaii Fridays, usually at 3 p.m. And I'm Karwi Lucas. Last week I spoke with Martha Noyes on Hawaiian Archaeo Astronomy at Kukani Loko as a way of illustrating the fundamentally different way Hawaiians conceptualize the universe without the rigid confines and artificially discreet disciplines like science that Western thought has evolved. This week my guest, Euclain Aluli, attorney for CAHEA, talks about the recently concluded contested case hearing. Overway the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources should grant a construction permit for the TMT International Observatory on top of Mauna Kea. Aloha, Euclain. And so what's it like to be involved in a case with 44 days of evidentiary hearings involving 71 witnesses? Really unexpected. And when we began, they thought it would only take two weeks. So they started with a schedule that would be concluded by the end of October. And then we rolled into Thanksgiving and they had to, so you can see how the days got spread out. And finally, I mean we went through Christmas. I remember writing things that were due on the 27th of December and then the reply on the 30th. So it was hell. It was hard reading, reading this summary that I just, that I sent to you. So you're the representing CAHEA, the Hawaiian Environmental Alliance. Yes. They're of Local 501C3 and tell us about what the standing was. Well, CAHEA, interestingly enough, they were involved back in 2011, which was the appeal in the end. And they also were involved when they attempted to, the University of Hawaii, were trying to get a permit from the DLNR for a thing called the Outrigger Telescopes. And they were very much another configuration that was huge for the summit. So this controversy, if you think of it as having, the contested case having concluded on March 2nd of 2017 has been going on for approximately 20 years over the size of this thing and where it's going to be located. So that's how long that CAHEA was formed back then for this very purpose. Wow. By Vicky Holt Takamini was the first president of it. Wow. Yes. Okay. So that's why you're here, because you know this stuff. Well, I didn't. I had to. And I didn't know all that stuff. So. Okay. So you're in Hilo. There is this massive amount of people who are witnesses and it's going on and on. What's happening? What are you learning? What are you hearing? What was it like? Well, one of the things that happened was a good Dexter Kayama, who was another attorney, he and I stepped in for Naivi Warderman, who had handled the appeal from the previous contested case hearing, both at the level of the circuit court and then at Hawaii Supreme Court, which bounced it back. So we were the bounce back. And by the time he concluded, he had, if you look at it, he attended the first four or five hearings in Hilo to suss out who were the parties going to be. And then he just couldn't, he needed help or he wanted to take a break. And so I had always told him, if you need a second chair, not the only chair. But we managed, we just didn't expect it was going to be 44 days. And we really worked hard. So there were two attorneys for Cahea. There was, for the University of Hawaii Hilo, there were three attorneys from Carl Smith Ball. And from TMT, now known as TIO, there were three attorneys from Douglas Inge's law firm. And then they had this other nonprofit that had been formed to say, we want the scholarship. And they are called PUEAO. And they had a local council from Torkelson Cats. And so, and the only other lawyer who's not is, was Larry Simkin and he represented the Temple of Lono and everyone else was pro se. Yep. So that was epic. Okay. Give us a taste of what epic means. Well, every, you had people who were not lawyers who had the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses and bring on their own witnesses. And so I thought, I liked that. And in that, you know, in the service of that, I would go a long way. But that sort of tended to make things a little more unwieldy. But we had some incredible, what we call pro se or for themselves parties who became the experts on cross-examination. I mean, awesome. Anything particularly memorable you can think of in that vein? Well, one of the parties, his name is E. Colani Flores. And he is a professor of Hawaiian lifestyle at one of the community colleges up in Kona. And so when he did a cross-examination early in the hearing, it was of the man who wrote either the application or the environmental impact statement. He did such a great job that when he finished, everyone applauded in the room. And the judge said, what YouTube did you watch? It was so fantastic. And so from that point on, we knew he could always cover his action, you know. Wait a minute. What YouTube did you watch? Well, they must have cross-examination YouTube. They were excellent, you know, and they continue to be excellent. And I think that's a good thing, you know, to if you're going to have to do this on the cheap, which is what has happened here, then the parties need to be, you know, helped to get some skills so they can survive. So can you see this being? Would you like to see more of this in general in Hawaii? Well, it'll be, I don't know if they're going to ever have this again. I mean, the contested case hearing that they, that this was the bounce back from, was done by another hearings officer. His name is Paul Aoki, and it took eight days, and it took him a year to render a decision, because he had to read all the papers versus this one took 44 days, and we've got a time frame where, you know, end of May, we've got it, you know, so she's got a time frame that I had sent to you where she's trying to make a decision. Of course, we're getting pressured for the decision. Because they want to either build or go on to the Canary Islands, they've got their plan to be, the TMT has their plan to be worked out now, so they have until the end of May. Well, they have set a wish list for themselves that they would like to be permitted and underway by a year from now, and between a year from now and now, we have to come up with a decision and order, plus they recently had their sublease vacated by the judge up in Hilo, but they don't really need to have a sublease, because they've got some folks operating up there right now without subleases. You mean some folks with observatories? Yes, and so it's, I mean, it's pretty cowboy up there is what I would say. We have some visuals. There's like an earth shot that has the existing observatories up there mapped out to kind of get a feel of what that looks like, if we could have that, and yes, the earth one. There we go. So it's kind of busy up there. It's 13 observatories with a total of 22 structures all at the summit of Mauna Kea, and there is no longer any room up there to situate these larger observatories that they're all wanting to build so they can encounter the black hole somehow, or the big bank theory, although it happened millions of years ago, so it's bizarre to me, but they'll fit. So now they have moved to the northern plateau. I was just trying to remember if it's the northern or the, but it's pristine. So those are the photographs that they have of how here it is without these observatories and part of, you know, the native Hawaiian practice. Aloha. You can join the Hawaii Farmer Series every Thursday from four to five on Think Tech. And I'm your co-host Matthew Johnson here with Justine Espirito. And we are so thankful to have this show to use as a forum to get to know all the movers and shakers in agriculture in Hawaii and hear kind of their background in history as well as their perspective on what they're doing and also the future for agriculture in Hawaii. So join us every Thursday. You can tweet in your own comments and suggestions and be a part of the conversation at Think Tech High. And we hope to see you every single Thursday. Welcome back to Hawaii is my mainland. I'm Kauai Lucas. And with me here today is Euclain Luli, who is one of the attorneys for Kauai, the Hawaiian Environmental Alliance. And she has just been through a legal marathon, truly an epic. Forty-four days of contested case hearings. Right. Okay. So in those 44 days, we know that there were some, can you kind of give us some of the things that really... Well, I first of all, I did not know how long this had all been going on. And I wanted to acknowledge the kupuna, Marty Townsend, being one of them. I mean, John Osorio, this whole group has been on this for decades that you... You know, so of course they all came and testified. But we had a woman who is with the Kanakaole Foundation. Her name was Kule Kanahele. And she's a Papahule Honua researcher. She...a two-page...well, it's actually four pages, which I'll give to you. And what she basically...you know, they have an idea of deities as being elemental. So they refer to them as elemental. So it is wao akua. She herself has never gone to the summit. There are many Hawaiians who have not for that very reason. They only go for a very specific purpose because it's literally that sacred, that mana. But it's also how it ties into water, which I had never considered. And so they've got these female deities up there, Poliyahu, who is the snow, Lillinoi, who is the mist. And that Lillinoi is a huge component of Mauna Kea as an aquifer. As the...you know, because that brings the drip that just goes into the bogs that are that high up and then go down into the aquifer and then out, you know, along the...I mean, the water dispersal through those feminine deities at the top of Mauna Kea I had never considered. And they're kind of standalone female deities, which I didn't realize that either. So I learned something there, and I thank you very much. And another thing that was unbelievable was there was an archaeologist whose name is Patrick McCoy, and he'd been doing work up there since the 70s. And finally, rather than epic piece, after all the EISs were given, this random exhibit submitted by the UH, probably by mistake, ended up being the bomb. Is this guy at UH? No, he's now retired, but he's...it's epic because he...his whole conversation was about the linkage of ascent and descent routes with these priest-ads-makers who had consecrated work and their retinue of people coming up and down that mountain. And this Pan-Hawaii Island production of ads and the meaning of it. And he just sort of put it all together. So he took it from a real, you know, like you're up like that photo of above, which we are so missing because we're just like, oh, it's not within this building pad, then we ignore it. But this just took it all into context. And he pretty much says, Monika is a pilgrimage site. Yes, and it's...it bespeaks the whole notion of how people...the leadership, you know, how the chiefs came into being, how goods...I mean, it was active for five to eight hundred years up there. That's a good long time. Yeah. And also that things never end. So he came up with this notion of post-abandonment event, which I thought, wow, that is something. Way after they stopped making ads, people were still up there making shrines, you know, and they were encountered at the end of the nineteenth century, a good hundred years after contact, they're encountered up there. And that's been the story and we've not talked about it. So that was wonderful. So remind me what his name is. His name is Patrick McCoy. Okay. And I will find a way. What I will do is I will post a link to it. I'm not sure how... Yeah. I'll give you this. ...on YouTube. So after today, when this is up on the...up on YouTube, I'll put it in the comments and then people can find a way to... It is online. So I'll just put a link to it wherever it is. Yes. Okay. Perfect. Another kind of interesting thing was, I just didn't know how much the bucks were involved. I was pretty naive, but it's big, big money. Like... Well, I mean, I guess we got to look at some of their financials. They're also online, TMT, International Observatory, LLC. I mean, between 2014 and 2015, if you look at what's on GuideStar, their asset value went from $10 million to $50 million. And then you go, show me the money. I mean, where is it? You don't even have a lease right now. It's all other stuff. It's all intellectual property. And these are all allegedly nonprofits, but it's the intellectual property that is bringing everybody to the table and they're having to make investment decisions about it based on what can I sell to defense companies, to whatever they're doing. We will never... I mean, I guess you could perhaps get to it all, but no one has the time. We're just trying to stop them from bringing it over here. So there's big money. So you're saying that that's the way they can afford to build and operate or why they want to have an observatory up there. Because the knowledge that they will get from having the observatory, they will then be able to market in the form of intellectual property. Well, thank you for connecting those guys. I know, which I never had thought about that. And I didn't realize. I mean, these guys, the top five employees are paid from TMT. None of them live here in Hawaii. They're identified in these tax filings and they're all making 300 grand apiece for some of it part-time, Caltech and UC Berkeley. So and their partners are Canada, China, India and Japan. And they all have percentage stakes in all of this. It's super interesting. Super interesting. Yeah. There's nothing inherently wrong or bad about it. It's just that they haven't done the groundwork or really from the very beginning. They haven't taken care of the INA. Of what they have already up there, this scientific community. Right. And so here we have, do you remember Libret Landcraft? Do you remember him at all? He used to be the head of the BLNR. And before that, he was a forester for the BLNR. So six years after they start building up there, buried in the file is this letter that he wrote to the big cheeses because he was a small cheese back then saying, the proposed development of a 142-inch telescope under a tri-party agreement between France, Canada and Hawaii is permissory on four other proposals and whether the BLNR will allow the presently see the sublet for the development. So he's going, it's becoming complicated. It is a difficult task to make an intelligent assessment of this proposal when it is dependent on the outcome of a previous proposal. The apparent ploy utilized by the University of Hawaii is a bombardment of information and proposals under the banner of education and scientific research. By the same guys, they seemingly are trying to ramrod these programs through forsaking controlled and wise planning. How can $2.1 million in foreign currency, which that cracked me up, and $400,000 of U.S. money justify abandonment of controlled planning? It would cost millions more to undo a mistake. Let it serve as a reminder that the land area in question is under the jurisdiction of the State Department of Land and Natural Resources. This in effect says the mountain belongs to the people for their use and enjoyment. Education and scientific research is a noble cause, but it should not be made at a loss to the people. That is it. That is it. This man wrote this in 1974. He sent it to Mayor Kimura. He sent it to Jimmy Clark, who used to be at the planning office. It's like the who's who of 40 years ago, and I am just going really. We need to put his shrine somewhere to have that. What can we say? Really, after all this time. We can't keep going. We cannot. This is beyond belief. You can put this up. This is a public record. We have about a minute left, if you can believe it. Thank you so much for shedding a little light on this mysterious process of this labyrinth and process of legal on the one side and then very not legal on the other. And heartbreaking. We all are members of the broken hearted club. Yeah. Yeah. It's heartbreaking. So it's not over. And already there have been huge wins. I think, I mean, I want to say that to you, I mean, and I read an article in an Australian business magazine that made it really clear that they've been listening to folks like you and really hearing that Hawaiians have been cut out of the discussion for way too long and that it's just not okay. It's not okay. Yeah. And it's an expenditure in defiance of modernity in another respect because this is like already nearly outdated technology that we're destroying the summit over. Five years ago was the last time I was up there at Mauna Kea and we went to the little visitor thing and they have the docent telling the story and somebody there raised their hand and said, well, what do you think about all of these protesters and so forth? This was five years ago. Like I said, who's all of the observatories that you have up here now? I don't know why. This is the guy who works at the visitor center. I don't know. Okay. Well, let's not do it then. Because those docents are all tied into the office of Mauna Kea Management, which is under the University of Hawai'i. So they are not representative of the DLNR at all and that really the DLNR should take that back because it's completely improper that they have left these lands, the seeded lands from our Ali'i to a bunch of folks who have... No appreciation for what it is. No understanding. Two of them are here on green cards. I mean, when you ask, I know, but they're not even... Yeah, I get it. They're not even permanently resident here. I mean, I guess they must be permanently resident, but there may be no commitment to... Well, who knows? They may not be here next week. I'm sorry. That wasn't funny. But anyway, Euclid, thank you so much. I can tell that this story isn't over and we'll need another chapter sooner or later. Yes. Mahalo. Thank you. Isn't that just...