The broad-shouldered summit of Mauna Kea holds many meanings for many people: For astronomers, it’s a high-altitude playground of stars, among the best places on Earth to explore the firmament with minimal atmospheric distortion. For environmentalists, it’s a “sky island ecosystem” that hosts rare and altitude-sensitive species, including the wekiu bug found nowhere else in the world. For Hawaiian spiritual practitioners, it is the home of gods, the most holy place on Hawaii’s big island....

Kealoha Pisciotta, one of a half dozen plaintiffs suing to stop the project, finds herself in the unusual position of having friends on both sides of the debate. She was a telescope systems specialist technician on the James Clark Maxwell radio telescope for 12 years. Meanwhile, she maintained a family shrine near the summit and led a cultural heritage group. “I descend from Polynesian navigators, people who carry the star knowledge, so in the beginning I didn’t see the conflict between telescopes and the mountain,” Pisciotta says. “I only began to see it later when there were problems—people looting antiquities from the mountain, building these bigger telescopes that really affected the landscape, and destroying important landmark features.”...

Nevertheless, the project still faces considerable opposition. In October the number of people who showed up to protest at the telescope’s groundbreaking ceremony—protesters estimate around 500—took telescope supporters by surprise, and suggests there may be resilience to the opposition. That momentum may derive in part from a renewed appreciation of Hawaiian heritage as part of a “new Hawaiian renaissance,” as protester Joshua Lanakila Mangauil put it. He says efforts to protect Mauna Kea are one vein of that renaissance. “Hawaiians are learning the laws that were used against us,” he says. “We’re learning the legal game. We’re using it to reclaim our people and our islands and our culture.”

After about 50 protesters lay across the road and later stormed the ceremony the groundbreaking was aborted. Its master of ceremonies concluded, “We do hope we’ll be able to find a common ground and proceed with this in the future.”