Precarious Performances: The Thirty Meter Telescope and Settler State Policing of Kanaka Maoli

Author:

Maile, David Uahikeaikaleiohu

Title:

Precarious Performances: The Thirty Meter Telescope and Settler State Policing of Kanaka Maoli

Year:

2018

Subject:

Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) Astronomical observatories Mauna Kea controversy

Summary:

Settler states criminalize protectors of Indigenous life, land, and water by labeling them ‘threats of violence.’ But, Indigenous protectors are exposing policing to be a precarious performance of settler sovereignty. To support this argument, I explore settler state policing from the vantage of Kanaka Maoli opposition to the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT at our sacred mountain Mauna a Wākea on Hawai‘i island. Analyzing three material objects—an emergency rule, bullet hole, and knee—I track how symbolic threats of violence are manufactured to obscure and exact concrete violences.

URL:

https://abolitionjournal.org/precarious-performances/

Date:

September 9, 2018

Collection:

Monographs