Niels Bohr Lecture by Jean-Gabriel Cuby
Maunakea: a mountain of controversy
Title inspired by Swanner, Leandra Altha. 2013. Mountains of Controversy: Narrative and the Making of Contested Landscapes in Postwar American Astronomy. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University.
ABSTRACT
Maunakea, on Hawaiʻi Island, is a mountain of considerable cultural, natural, and ecological significance. Maunakea is a sacred site to Native Hawaiians, also known as Kānaka ʻŌiwi. In 2019, hundreds of Maunakea protectors camped for months on a lava field at an elevation of 2,000 meters, in a cold and inhospitable location, to oppose the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). These events created a deep divide within Hawaiʻi’s local communities. Elders were arrested; families were divided. This controversy did not arise out of nowhere, nor did it stem from a single project. It has its roots in sixty years of astronomical practices, occurring in parallel with the rise of the Hawaiian Renaissance movement.
In my presentation, after reviewing the main elements of this controversy and the Hawaiian Renaissance movement, I will share my perspective on the considerable difficulties that still persist within the astronomical community in fully understanding this controversy and the many misconceptions that continue to circulate. I will describe the paradigm shift currently taking place in Hawaiʻi in terms of decision-making and stewardship with the creation of the Maunakea Stewardship and Oversight Authority (MKSOA), as well as how the astronomy community in Hawaiʻi is organizing itself to address this change. But this controversy will not be resolved in Hawaiʻi alone—the profession as a whole must evolve and reflect on its professional practices and intentions.
In my presentation, after reviewing the main elements of this controversy and the Hawaiian Renaissance movement, I will share my perspective on the considerable difficulties that still persist within the astronomical community in fully understanding this controversy and the many misconceptions that continue to circulate. I will describe the paradigm shift currently taking place in Hawaiʻi in terms of decision-making and stewardship with the creation of the Maunakea Stewardship and Oversight Authority (MKSOA), as well as how the astronomy community in Hawaiʻi is organizing itself to address this change. But this controversy will not be resolved in Hawaiʻi alone—the profession as a whole must evolve and reflect on its professional practices and intentions.
BIOGRAPHY
J.-G. Cuby is the Executive Director of the Canada-France-Hawaiʻi Telescope (CFHT) in Hawaiʻi. He began his career working on astronomical instrumentation at Paris Observatory (France), then joined the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Germany and Chile as Instrument Scientist of one of the first instruments commissioned at the Very Large Telescope (VLT); he later became head of VLT instrumentation at the Paranal Observatory (Chile). He then joined the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM) in France, where he played an active role in preparing the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) project—currently under construction in Chile—the ESA/NASA Euclid space mission, launched in 2023, and other astronomical instrumentation programs. He served as director of LAM for six years and sat on numerous advisory committees and boards of directors for many years. As head of CFHT in Hawaiʻi since 2022, he has consistently emphasized the need for astronomy to engage in introspection following the events that occurred in Hawaiʻi in 2019 and earlier, and to follow the insightful recommendations of the Astro2020 report of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine on the state of the profession.