Finding Space for Advocacy and Scholarship on Mauna Kea and Beyond
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jsrnc.28793Keywords:
Mauna Kea, activism, direct action, non-violent, repatriation, Paiute, Hawai’iAbstract
Reflecting upon the role and place of advocacy in realtionship to scholarship in the context of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) dispute on Mauna Kea (Hawai’i), I chart shifts in my career regarding activism and advocacy with reference to moving away from the ‘purity’ demands on scholarship common in religious studies and toward an ethics of engagement more common in Indigenous studies. This framing is in the service of addressing questions about the entailments of public engagement, including its demands, rewards, and costs. My primary argument is that in some contexts engaged scholarship is the condition of possibility for ethical and theoretically generative scholarship. I distill three basic lessons from my experiences on and around Mauna Kea: (1) the importance of foregrounding community relationships, (2) the formative role of community led decision-making for charting research and advocacy efforts, and (3) a willingness to recalibrate expectations around academic timelines and outcomes.
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