The Protect Mauna Kea Movement: Since Before the Overthrow in 1893

The #ProtectMaunaKea movement started long before social media but with these new platforms a once remote audience has the opportunity, and option, to engage with a global audience. The newest Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) has been met with great opposition due to the decentralization of storytelling through social media outlets, #TMTshutdown. The Protect Mauna Kea movement is an amalgamation of individual pursuit, family recognition, and organizational support that is truly based in aloha, aloha 'aina and kapu aloha, our foundational values. Through still and moving pictures sacred songs, chants, ideas and stories are being transmitted to persons around the world with space available to discuss these ways of being. As the Mauna Kea petitioners have just had their case heard in the Hawai’i Supreme Court it would be hard to believe that as many people would be aware of this issue, so central to our people, if it were not for individual and organizational engagement of the people through social media.