The 14,000-foot summit of the dormant Mauna Kea volcano is considered a sacred place by Native Hawaiians. Now a dispute is erupting at the 14,000-foot summit of the dormant Mauna Kea volcano over the presence of those telescopes. Native Hawaiian activists call them an unwelcome intrusion on sacred Hawaiian land. They include the world's largest optical and infrared telescopes at the W.M. Keck Observatory. The University of Hawaii oversees the observatory, which is used by NASA, the California Institute of Technology and institutions from Canada, France, Japan and the United Kingdom, among others.
Natives consider it the home of the Hawaiian goddesses of snow and mist.
At a tiny mountain lake, generations of Hawaiians have offered their children's' umbilical cords to connect them to the spiritual world. The indigenous people of the Hawaiian archipelago do. Jurisdiction of Mauna Kea belongs to the Native Hawaiian. Still, the research conducted at Mauna Kea is impressive. The only alternative would be to do it in space, and that's extremely expensive.