Reaching Critical Will

Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)

Conference on Disarmament

General Assembly First Committee

UN Disarmament Commission

Special Session on Disarmament

Indigenous People and the Nuclear Age
Australia

Australian Aboriginals suffer from the on-going effects of British nuclear testing which was conducted in the Maralinga Lands of the Victoria Desert. Archie Barton, the administrator of the Maralinga Tjarutja (Land Rights Council) describes the experience of his people.

"In 1952, the Aboriginals who had inhabited the Maralinga Lands were placed in a mission at Yalata, several hundred miles South of their tribal land…. Elders tried to return to their land in 1955, but were sent back to Yalta by nuclear test personnel. As an alternative home for the Maralinga people the Yalata Mission failed, [it] thus caused [the] dislocating [of] traditions which resulted in the highest rate of alcohol-related illnesses and deaths in any Australian community" (see Poison Fire Sacred Earth: testimonies, lectures and conclusions, p. 175).

The Maralinga people finally returned to their land in 1990, but like the natives of the South Pacific Islands, they returned to a contaminated home, with their traditional ways of life having been forever corrupted by the age of nuclear technology.

In addition to the radioactive contamination of previous nuclear tests conducted by the UK, British Nuclear Fuels is currently involved in formal negotiations to construct the Pangea waste dump on sacred Aboriginal land. Both federal and state legislature in Australia have rejected this proposal, nevertheless, the marketing initiative of Pangea continues.

In 1977, Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabe woman, summed up the plight of indigenous people in connection to nuclear technology when she told the German journalist, Claus Biegert, "We are the target of the nuclear industry. We are the victims of a nuclear neo-colonialism. Over seventy percent of the uranium is mined on our land. If you continue as a journalist writing about us then you should focus on the uranium issue" (see "Nuclear Free Future Award" pamphlet, p. 4, Los Alamos 1999).

Many indigenous peoples recognize the sacredness of all life and the sacredness of the earth and are opposed to the poisoning of water, air and the land caused by nuclear technology. Indigenous peoples attend the Non-Proliferation Treaty process and present their case each year. Their interventions cover a spectrum of activities necessary for nuclear weapons production - from the mining of uranium to the testing of nuclear bombs to the dumping of radioactive waste - much of which takes place on native lands.