content: No need for hostility, this article is pretty shallow, there is actually a much bigger reason for the protests, and it's not about telescopes. The only reason this protest got big is because there's a lot of publicity up for grabs.  The real underlying reason for these protests is for international recognition of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Colonization of Hawaii differs from colonization of lands and displacement of peoples in the US because "Indians" were never considered to be a sovereign group.  Indians were bands of roaming people with no defined ownership of land.  Hawaiians, on the other hand, had a constitutional monarchy with established international treaties (and a flag) when the USA "colonized" them, even the whole colonization was weird, it was done by a civilian who somehow convinced the captain of a US navy warship to march on the palace...Queen Liliuokalani was like, "wtf? K, tell you what, I don't want any bloodshed here, nor do I want to engage with US soldiers acting rogue, so I will transfer both Judicial and Legislative branches of my government, with a set time for expiration, to the government of the US and let them deal with their own people, I will retain Executive powers." The US never respected the agreement and Hawaii remains, technically and legally, an occupied sovereign nation....which is a big no-no in the international community, think Crimea. The Royal Order of Kamehameha, a knighthood established by the constitution of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and tasked with protecting the sovereignty of the Hawaiian Kingdom, saw a huge opportunity to capitalize on the publicity of protesting the TMT and took a stand opposing the telescope on the grounds of "this violates our sovereignty".  Most, well quite a few, of the people in the Royal Order actually do like the idea of the telescope, but they are constitutionally bound to first and foremost protect the kingdoms sovereignty. Sound like complete bullshit? Well, most international law is.  You can't have international law and sovereignty at the same time. The country with the bigger stick tells the country with the smaller stick what to do, laws be damned.  The driving factor behind why people do what they do is personal beliefs, or lack thereof.  People growing up in the US don't know or care about the history of the Hawaiian colonization; people here (some anyway) feel it is their duty to fight for their beliefs.  Is it futile? Maybe, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and in this case, the heart of many Hawaiians want their country back. Of course, this doesn't explain why some of the protestors actually oppose the TMT based on "Sacredness".  Well, best I can do to explain that is that they're more or less sheeple.  They know there are protests, and they just align themselves with the crowd, not really understanding why they're there in the first place.  More reading, this guy, Dr. Sai, actually defended his Doctorates thesis on the subject of current Hawaiian sovereignty