In November, the Ottawa Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada invited Dr. Hilding Neilson to present “Space is part of the Land: Indigenous Knowledges and Colonization by Light and Satellite Pollution.” Apt613 interviewed Dr. Neilson about his presentation and invited him to elaborate on the ideas he shared.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Dr. Hilding Neilson. Photo provided.
Apt613: You say that just as there is no one Indigenous nation, there is no one Indigenous view of the sky. Could you explain that?
Dr. Hilding Neilson: Maybe it’s easier to talk about that if we just look at it from a different point in a broader scale of the world. We talk about cultural astronomy and the Chinese tradition or the Korean, African, Egyptian, Greek, Arabic, Serbian or Nordic traditions. And they all have different places and connections to the sky. It’s also true for Indigenous nations. Indigenous nations are all independent cultures. They have their own stories; their own relationships. For many peoples, that’s reflective of where they are in the land. It’s unlikely that someone in Mi’kma’ki or in the far North is gonna have a story about a kangaroo in the sky. They’ll have stories related to how they live and work on the land.
We have to acknowledge that Inuit, Cree, Navajo, or Mixteca—they’re all independent cultures with independent perspectives. It’s important to remember that because we’ve really adopted this word “Indigenous.” We had other words in the past that grouped everyone together. But Indigenous peoples aren’t a homogeneous group, one culture. It’s all different cultures. And so we risk creating a problem and being simplistic when we try to make all Indigenous peoples one homogeneous culture.
Auroras over northern Canada. Photo: Kwan O Chul.
Why is it important for Indigenous people to know the sky stories of their First Nation?
I don’t want to make a statement because I think that’s a personal relationship with people. I don’t want to say why everyone who’s Indigenous needs to learn their stories.
But I think it’s important in the same way it’s important to know your language. I had the benefit of meeting with an elder. She looked at me and said, “You should know, you should learn your language. Because the language is part of who you are.”
When you talk about English and say “he,” “she,” and “they,” people are always annoyed when people break those historical gender norms. But then there are the languages in which those gender norms don’t exist. It’s just not in the language. The way you speak the language is part of how you think and how you live.
I think the star stories are a part of that connection to the land, to the culture, and to the language. Knowing [Mi’kmaw] words like Muin (bear) and Jipjawej (robin) are ways of connecting with where you’re from and what the animals are like and what our ancestors did. So, I think it’s valuable to know your stars in the same way it’s valuable to know stories of the land and the water. It reminds us where we are.
Circumpolar star trails. Photo: Gabriel Funes.
Is there another question I should have asked?
Two things. One is how astronomy operates on Indigenous lands. And astronomy and space tomorrow—what we’re doing with satellites, lunar exploration, and the moon and Mars and so on.
Canadian astronomy is a big user of big telescopes. We all enjoy images from the JWST (NASA’s space telescope). All these wonderful images are helping us really see so deeply into the universe.
But, almost all telescopes that are of large size are built on Indigenous lands, whether it’s Canadian telescopes in Victoria, Penticton, Richmond Hill, or Mont-Mégantic in Quebec, as well as in Hawaii and Chile.
Canada benefits a lot from having these telescopes. Today, Canada is a member of the 30-meter telescope that is planned to be built on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. A few years ago, protests were growing and led to a blockade (because there is only one road up) in which elders were arrested.
This is eerily reminiscent of what we saw in Standing Rock, what we see today on Wetʼsuwetʼen. I think we need to, as a country and a community, recognize when we’re doing this colonialism, even if it’s for the so-called greater good of science. Part of needing more Indigenous voices in science is to help understand how we need to build relationships with telescopes on different lands.
Also, it’s important for the non-Indigenous community to understand the impacts of these telescopes on mountains that are in many cases sacred. In Hawaii, Mauna Kea is seen as a mother.
But right now, Canada is still committed to paying a quarter of a billion dollars towards this project. I think we should be asking the Canadian astronomy community, “Is this really what we want to be, and does this represent the wishes of scientists and Canadian people?”
We’re in the era of Elon Musk. Given how he’s destroying Twitter, this is not a positive sign of what SpaceX is doing in space, with thousands of satellites orbiting the earth, many of which are visible to the naked eye.
These satellites are another form of pollution, of colonialism, because there’s very limited consultation with Indigenous peoples. Nobody’s really speaking to Indigenous nations and peoples about what they want and what their rights are in this new space. This carries forward because we’re going back to the moon and eventually to Mars, and a lot of it will be for mining. The moon and Mars and other such objects are sacred in their own right. They’re part of our relationship with the land. We should, as a greater Canadian community, think about what Indigenous voices want in terms of space exploration and lunar exploration.
Apt613 readers who want to know more can watch a recording of Dr. Neilson’s full presentation here.
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