A last-ditch effort by Native Hawaiians to stop construction at a culturally significant site on Hawaii’s Big Island has begun to attract national attention — echoing in some ways the protests by Native Americans in 2016 and 2017 against the Dakota Access pipeline project.

Here is what you need to know about the dispute in Hawaii.

What are the protests all about?

Several hundred Native Hawaiians and Hawaiian rights activists have been camped for almost a week at the foot of Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano, blocking the only road to the top of the mountain. That has kept construction equipment from reaching the summit to start building a $1.4 billion scientific project, the Thirty Meter Telescope, and it has forced other scientific facilities at the summit to shut down. Though the protests have been peaceful, at least 33 people have been arrested, given citations and released.

Why do scientists want to build there?

The Thirty Meter Telescope, designed by a consortium of universities and research institutes in the United States, Canada, China, India and Japan, will use an immense mirror and some of the world’s largest sensors to peer deep into the universe, providing images at 12 times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope. At about 14,000 feet above sea level, the summit of Mauna Kea provides some of the world’s best viewing conditions of the night sky, with clear air and very little light pollution. That’s why there are already about a dozen other active telescopes there.