This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Officials in Hawaii have said they will not call up additional national guard troops or use force on peaceful protesters who are blocking access to the state’s highest peak.

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Friday was the fifth day of protests at Mauna Kea in response to the closure of the road to the summit so construction equipment for the $1.4bn Thirty Meter Telescope, a major new international astronomy project, can be taken up. No trucks have made the trip.

The Thirty Meter Telescope obtained permits to build after a decade-long review. Last year the Hawaii supreme court ruled the permits were obtained legally.

There have been protests in other parts of Hawaii, including on Maui and at the state capitol in Honolulu.

Hawaii governor David Ige said his priority was to keep everyone in the community safe, including the activists. The 80 guard members who have been on the Big Island since the start of the protests will remain, state officials said.

“We will not be utilizing teargas, as some of the rumors have been [saying],” Ige said. “We are looking for the best way forward without hurting anyone.”

The governor said last week national guard units would be used to transport personnel and equipment as well as to enforce road closures. Ige said on Friday no more troops would be called in, but he did not remove an emergency proclamation he enacted on Wednesday. The order broadened state authority to remove protesters, including the use of national guard troops.

Big Island mayor Harry Kim, who met Ige on Friday morning as about 800 to 1,200 activists gathered on the mountain, said he hoped protesters and officials would take time to discuss a better way forward.

“We all need to step back a little bit,” Kim said. “This is still our home, this is still our family. On both sides.”

One protester, teacher and cultural practitioner Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, said the battle is bigger than the telescope.

The TMT and Mauna Kea is just the focal point. It goes back to the role foreigners played and continue to play in Hawaii Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu

“The TMT and Mauna Kea is just the focal point,” she said. “For me it’s just a galvanizing element. It goes back to the role that foreigners played and continue to play in Hawaii.”

From 18th-century explorer James Cook to laborers brought to plantations and today’s tourism, the telescope is another example of outside interests overtaking Hawaiian culture, she said.

“They capitalize and commercialize our culture,” Wong-Kalu said. “They prostitute the elements that make us Hawaiian. They make it look pretty and make it look alluring in an effort to bring more money into this state.”

But not all Native Hawaiians see the telescope as representative of past wrongs.

“My family feels that they’re trying to use the TMT to boost their sovereignty issue,” said Annette Reyes, who supports the telescope project. “I want sovereignty for the Hawaiian people. I want them to have their country back. But TMT shouldn’t be the lightning rod for it.”

Reyes pointed to telescope officials’ pledge to provide $1m every year to boost science, technology, engineering and math education. She said opponents have called her a fake Hawaiian for supporting the project.

Notable politicians have weighed in. Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard followed fellow Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in supporting protesters. Gabbard said in a statement Ige should withdraw the emergency declaration and sit down with protesters.

“Trust must be earned – it is wrong that state leaders have approved the development of a new telescope on a new site on Mauna Kea, without first ensuring the timely removal of decommissioned facilities along with full restoration of those sites,” Gabbard said.

“This failure and a history of broken promises has resulted in the standoff that we are seeing today.”

Earlier in the day, Sanders said in a tweet since deleted: “We must guarantee native people’s right to self-determination and their right to protest. I stand with Native Hawaiians who are peacefully demonstrating to protect their sacred mountain of Mauna Kea.”

Sanders’ campaign did not immediately respond to an email asking why the tweet was deleted.

Protest leader Kaho’okahi Kanuha said protesters have been bracing for law enforcement to show up in force ever since Ige signed the emergency proclamation. That was the day officers arrested 34 protesters.

Lieutenant governor Josh Green said he planned to meet with people about the issue.

“I believe that this struggle is more about the heart of Hawaii and our sense of self and dignity, especially for the Hawaiian people, than it is about a telescope. It is about cultural recognition and people’s self worth,” he said in a Facebook post.