It was August 2019 when the images traveled around the entire world. Hundreds and hundreds of kiaʻi (protectors) Hawaiians blocking access to Maunakea to prevent the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope. What many saw as simple opposition to scientific progress was actually another chapter in the complex relationship between modern astronomy and indigenous peoples. A story with too many misunderstandings, but also with promising alternatives.

Indigenous astronomy is not folklore or superstition. When Mexican anthropologist Rubén Morante López describes the underground observatories of Xochicalco, he speaks of instruments that allowed recording solar movements with astonishing precision, even contemplating corrections for leap years. The Maya predicted eclipses centuries in advance. In the Andes, Quechua and Aymara communities still observe how the Pleiades appear to anticipate whether the agricultural year will be prosperous. Modern science has confirmed that this method effectively detects changes in the El Niño phenomenon.

Why then does conflict persist? The problem lies in a radically different conception of what territory means. For Western law, even in its most progressive version, indigenous territory remains fundamentally a "good," albeit an "immaterial" one, as recorded in the jurisprudential evolution of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. However, for indigenous peoples, as Charly Webster Mclean Cornelio of the Awas Tingni community stated before said Court, "the leaders have referred to their territory and have not spoken of hectares." Territory is not measured in Cartesian coordinates, but in relationships with human and non-human entities, with collective histories and memories.

This opposing vision explains why the Kitt Peak National Observatory, located on Tohono O'odham lands in Arizona, continues to generate tensions despite its educational programs and preferential hiring. Or why on Mount Graham, the statements by the Vatican Observatory director questioning the "sacred character" that would prevent the "responsible and legitimate" use of the land were received as yet another colonial offense. Father George Coyne perhaps did not know that his assertion almost textually repeated the arguments historically used to dispossess indigenous communities.

The case of astronomers at Kitt Peak illustrates the main problem. They considered obtaining land for their instruments "a simple matter," without understanding that they were negotiating something that for the Tohono O'odham was not merely a physical space. For this people, Iolkam Du'ag is the garden of I'itoi, their creator. When scientists look at the sky from there, they do so from a place with profound spiritual meanings that their equations do not contemplate.

Is it possible then to reconcile contemporary astronomy with indigenous territorial rights? The recent experience in Hawaii suggests yes. In July 2023, a law was enacted that created a new administrative authority for Maunakea with broad native representation. The shared management recognizes both the scientific and cultural value of the mountain. "I have many hopes for the new entity," declared Noe Noe Wong-Wilson, a Hawaiian elder who participated in the protests. "Where we have arrived goes beyond my imagination, because we have been fighting so long to be heard!"

This transformation has not been easy nor is it free from tensions. The process involved years of resistance, judicial conflicts, and negotiations. But as Rich Matsuda of the Keck Observatory points out, the supposed opposition between science and indigenous culture is "a false dichotomy and an offensive framing. Different knowledge systems do not have to be in opposition."

The case of the "cerritos de indios" (Indian mounds) in Uruguay demonstrates precisely this complementarity. These millennial structures, aligned with lunar movements and dark constellations of the Milky Way, allowed their builders to synchronize climate cycles and animal migrations. When astronomer César González-García studied these mounds, he discovered they were not "scattered everywhere, but in groups" systematically oriented. Indigenous science materialized in landscape modifications that we can still study today.

The new legal conception emerging in the Inter-American Court, distinguishing between the right to land and the right to territory, could offer a more adequate framework for these dialogues. As Judge Eduardo Ferrer Mac-Gregor points out, this distinction allows understanding that "many violations of that cultural life may present links with the free enjoyment of the territory, but not in all cases will it necessarily be related to property rights."

Astronomical observatories should seize the opportunity to become spaces of genuine collaboration, not only offering economic compensation or unidirectional educational programs, but integrating indigenous astronomical knowledge into their scientific practices. Experiences such as that of astronomer Gulberg, who discovered the Andean dark constellations guided by his Peruvian colleague Carlos Aranibar, demonstrate the potential of these exchanges. After completing a doctorate in astronomy, Gulberg admitted that he "had never heard of dark constellations" and that learning their history was "one of the most special experiences of his life."

Towards a Dialogue of Astronomical Knowledge

Pedro Garzón, a Chinanteco indigenous person, expresses that territory represents a "collective grammar" where all elements are conceived "on the same plane of normative importance" and in "relational and interdependent" terms. This conception of territory as a communal fabric challenges the separation between the material, cultural, and spiritual that predominates in contemporary Western astronomy.

The territory is articulated by landscapes, lakes, rivers, and mountains "that summon practices, individual and collective, in which the footprint of social memories around common goods becomes visible." When telescopes are installed on sacred mountains, they do not occupy simple observation platforms, but living places where multiple layers of meaning and collective memory converge. Observatories must be part of this fabric, not imposed upon it.

Looking at the stars from these complementary perspectives, we understand that the firmament not only harbors galaxies to discover but also constellations of meanings to share. The astronomy of the future will shine more intensely when it incorporates the light of all the traditions that for millennia have contemplated the same sky with wonder and precision.