When Peter Apo, the former state legislator and current Office of Hawaiian Affairs trustee, first suggested that the protests regarding Mauna Kea had the potential to be more explosive than the movement to stop the Kahoolawe bombing, I thought the usually steady author, musician and politician was exaggerating.

It turns out Apo may have nailed it.

The protests over construction of the world’s largest infrared telescope atop Mauna Kea have been continuing in one form or another since the 1960s, when the University of Hawaii and former Gov. John A. Burns launched plans to bulldoze a road to the summit area to explore the area’s suitability for a telescope.

It turned out that the summit was not just a good place, it was spectacular.

As officials with the now-controversial 30-meter telescope project have said: “The ‘best night’ at other telescope locations is just an ‘average’ night on Mauna Kea. And the ‘best nights’ on Mauna Kea cannot be found anywhere in the world.”

Native Hawaiian groups were not impressed and have been protesting the telescopes for the last 50 years.

Just last week, the Hawaii Supreme Court invalidated the TMT conservation district use (CDU) permit, saying the state Board of Land and Natural Resources gave UH a permit before holding the required contested case hearing.

It sounds like just bothersome details, but those steps really do determine the rights, duties and privileges for everyone — so as UH and state officials found out, you do have to pay attention.

While there may be ways to march a proper CDU permit through the bureaucracy, it will take time and there is a greater looming cause of action available to the protesters: the state Constitution. Article XII, Section 7 reaffirms the customary and traditional rights of those descendants of Native Hawaiians who lived here prior to to 1778.

“Mauna Kea is a very significant and sacred place. Mauna a Wakea. Wakea, sky father, under the creation story, partner to Papa- hanaumoku, earth mother,” noted Richard N. Wurdeman, winning attorney in the TMT lawsuit.

“The Mauna today represents real nation building of the Hawaiian people. Not the OHA stuff. Protecting Mauna Kea means ‘aloha aina.’ It means standing up for what it is to be Hawaiian and for what the kupuna stood for. It is where many Hawaiians, young and old, have now drawn the line,” Wurdeman said in an email.

Mauna Kea is now the locus and the cause, just as Kahoolawe forged the Hawaiian pride movements decades ago. This is not going away; it is a cause ripe to build upon and those wanting a separate Hawaiian nation will work to own the issue.

If the state’s TMT supporters have a case to build in response to the “traditional and customary” lawsuit that will be filed to block TMT, the answer may have to be in the limitations in the Constitution.

The state is directed to protect “all rights, customarily and traditionally exercised for subsistence, cultural and religious purposes,” according to the Constitution, but with the tiny hedge that the rights are “subject to the right of the state to regulate such rights.”

That is a tiny bit of wiggle room for the state to maneuver, and it will get even smaller as the protests grow louder.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.