Q&A: Kealoha Pisciotta, on Mauna Kea and conflicts of astronomy

Kealoha Pisciotta worked for a dozen years as a telescope technician and operator on Mauna Kea. That mountain volcano is both sacred to Native Hawaiians like Pisciotta and recognized by astronomers as the best site in the Northern Hemisphere for making visible and IR observations. But over time, some of the attitudes and behaviors she saw in the astronomy community began to conflict with her own cultural and ethical values, and in 2003 she left her job at the Joint Astronomy Centre, a British-Canadian-Dutch consortium.

Today Pisciotta devotes herself to protecting Mauna Kea. Part of taking care of the mountain, she feels, is preventing further development on it—in particular the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), an international facility spearheaded by Caltech and the University of California system. She is the spokesperson for Mauna Kea Hui, a group of individuals and organizations taking on the TMT through demonstrations, blockades, political actions, and the courts. Opposition to the TMT has been growing for years and recently prevented the start of construction. (For context and an overview of recent developments, see “Thirty Meter Telescope faces continued opposition in Hawaii ,” Physics Today online, 5 August 2019.)

“I’ve never changed my mind about astronomy,” Pisciotta says. “I do believe it’s a noble endeavor.” But the “expansionist philosophy” of the proponents of the TMT and other future telescopes is excessive, she says. “I don’t think the Native Hawaiians are going to give in this time.”

PT: What led you to work at some of the observatories, and what was your role?

PISCIOTTA: I grew up on Oahu and then on the Big Island, where Mauna Kea is. I was always interested in cosmology and the stars. My father introduced me to people who worked on the mountain. I got a tour, and I started at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory as a junior technician when I was a teenager. Because it was a university telescope, they had graduate students coming over, and there was an atmosphere of letting them do what they wanted to and could do. I got to do a lot, and I worked with some amazing people.

After a couple of years I was laid off, and then I moved over to the Joint Astronomy Centre. It had two telescopes—the UKIRT [United Kingdom Infrared Telescope] and the JCMT [James Clerk Maxwell Telescope], a submillimeter radio telescope. I worked as a telescope systems specialist. We [systems specialists] were the night-shift leaders, and for the submillimeter telescope we also worked days. We participated in testing and maintenance.

PT: How did you get the job at the Joint Astronomy Centre?

PISCIOTTA: For my interview, I had to sit in a room with about 10 people who fired questions at me. The director asked me, “What do you know about the origins of the universe?” I told him everything I knew about the Big Bang. Then I left. I really thought I was not going to get hired. But they came running after me and said they wanted me to come for a second interview. I said, “A second interview? I don’t know anything more.” And they said, “We think you have the proper temperament to handle irate astronomers.” I got the job.

The operators all got sent to a workshop called “How to handle difficult people.” Isn’t that funny?

PT: And did you have to observe with a lot of irate astronomers?

PISCIOTTA: There were certain people that my teammates didn’t want to observe with, so I was called to work with them. Our inside joke was, “The higher the frequency, the higher the neurosis.” The astronomers have a lot on the line. They are trying to get their data, and when there are problems with the telescope, they need it fixed, and they need it fixed right away. I was good at finding the right balance. For example, if someone followed me outside while I was trying to fix something, I would say, “I can take five minutes to fix it, or an hour to tell you what I’m doing.”

PT: Did you have formal training, or did you learn on the job?

PISCIOTTA: Both. I had been a physics and philosophy major before leaving school for personal reasons. Then I was trained on the job. Each telescope is unique, so you have to learn all of the intricacies of it, and as telescope operator, you have to deal with the instrumentation. You are the front line. If there is a problem, you have to be able to look at the science and make sure it’s all going okay.

PT: Did you enjoy operating the telescopes?

PISCIOTTA: Yes. One of the things I liked most was when the telescope and instrument designers came. I used to volunteer to work with them—they would experiment and test new technologies. It’s pretty amazing: Imagine that something weighs 400 tons and can stop at a specified spot on a dime. And when you are an arcsecond out of alignment, you can correct it. There is sheer human ingenuity to translate starlight into abstract frequencies and then translate that into a signal that we can read or perceive.

PT: Why did you quit?

PISCIOTTA: I liked working at the telescope, and I liked working for the British—they have a good civil service program and a strong union-ish feeling about things. They also had more Native Hawaiians working for them than did most of the other observatories.

But the sanctity of the mountain stands for protecting life, love, and compassion. And I began to witness things that put me in an ethical and cultural dilemma.

PT: In what sense?

PISCIOTTA: For example, I witnessed chemical spills. I realized that the ethylene glycol—used in refrigerator systems—or other chemicals were being squeegeed into pukas [holes] in the ground. There have been many spills, including of mercury, which some of the telescopes use to float their mirrors, and of toxic waste from aluminizing mirrors. Those are hazardous chemicals.

And I realized that antiquities on the mountain were being stolen by tourists. There was a general degradation. I remember the moment when I said to myself, “Whoa, we are making a human footprint that is greater than the natural footprint.” The University of Hawaii’s claim that it is protecting the mountain is not sustainable.

The other problem was that it became clear that the science is often limited by commercial and military interests. From the British elders at the telescope—I called them the kupunas—I started to understand that people tailor their proposals to where the money is, and if the money is from the military industry, then they tailor to that. It’s not weaponizing astronomy, but the secondary technology may be used for weapons. They patent the technology, and it gets sold to weapons contractors.

In any case, I knew it would be hard to find a new operator—the hours are strenuous, and you have to lodge up at 9000 feet for a week at a time—so I gave them three months’ notice. I left on good terms with the observatory.

PT: What have you been doing since leaving the observatory?

PISCIOTTA: First I went back to school and got my bachelor’s degree in pre-law—just to have it. I have always been a practitioner—that is a legal term that means I am a cultural and lineal religious practitioner who continues to exercise Native Hawaiian religious or cultural practices. You have to establish that you have a practice on Mauna Kea to be acknowledged by the state and federal courts in lawsuits. I have worked for some nonprofit organizations that help protect the natural areas and reserves, including the one on Mauna Kea. My other practice includes star knowledge and practices that relate to dolphins and whales and the sacred waters of Mauna Kea; I founded a marine protection group, Kai Palaoa. I also have family connections to the burials on the mountain.

PT: What is the status of the TMT?

PISCIOTTA: We [Native Hawaiians and others] are here to stop it. We are on high alert. When we hear rumors—and you can’t always tell if they are real or not—we call everyone to come, and we get a couple thousand people. There are protests on all of the islands.

None of the plans from the University of Hawaii or the telescope address removing the injury. They don’t take the TMT off the table. They don’t have anything to negotiate with us at this point.

In early October the mayor of Hawaii Island and the governor of Hawaii presented a plan that is just another request that we compromise. They said they would decommission other telescopes, but they were shady about which ones. The mayor visited the elders to plead with them to let the TMT happen. It’s pathetic. The elders said that if the plan was to desecrate the mountain further, then “we have nothing to say to you. The answer is no.”

We have legally stopped other telescopes from being built on Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea Hui and several other groups stopped the Air Force–funded Pan-STARRS and the Keck Outriggers, for example. [The outriggers were four 1.8-meter telescopes proposed to form an interferometric array with the two existing 10-meter Kecks. Pan-STARRS is now located at the Haleakala Observatory on the Hawaiian island of Maui.] An environmental impact statement by NASA on the Keck Outriggers from the early 2000s concluded that “from a cumulative perspective, the impact of past, present, and reasonably foreseeable future activities on cultural and biological resources is substantial, adverse, and significant.”

And the TMT has the same backers as earlier telescopes—the University of California and Caltech—plus Canada, Japan, China, and India. I am not sure they are ready to accept that we will continue on our path. Our priority is taking care of the mountain, restoring the mountain.

PT: How do you see things going forward on Mauna Kea?

PISCIOTTA: I think astronomy has a lot of good years. We are not against astronomy. But it should not take precedent over things such as species that make up the biodiversity of the planet. Astronomy doesn’t have a right to contaminate the water—those hazardous spills are a threat. They should also pay a fair rent to use the mountain, not the $1 per year in the state’s lease. The TMT is now saying they’d pay $1 million a year for 50 years. The TMT number is random, and the current lease runs out in 2033. They are not guaranteed to get a new lease.

Mauna Kea is greater than all money. Something’s got to give. But I don’t think it’s going to be the people this time.

PT: What are your own plans?

PISCIOTTA: I am doing what I need to do to be settled in my own cultural, spiritual, and intellectual place. We protectors of Mauna Kea are part of a greater movement around the planet that is trying to move toward a better world. All of humanity needs to roll up their sleeves and look at climate change. If governments don’t respond, we need to push, in a nonviolent way. We need to use creativity and ingenuity. I believe we can do it together.