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
USSR

Soviet Nuclear Testing, 1949-1990

Total Tests	715
In indigenous groups' territory	619 tests 456 Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan 33 other Kazakh test sites 130 Novaya Zemlya, Arctic
In the Russian Federation	91 tests 32 in Asia 59 in Europe
In other Soviet republics	5 tests 2 Ukraine 2 Uzbekistan 1 Turkmenia

Indigenous groups affected by nuclear testing, disasters, and waste

Kazakh
Nenet
Sami
Vepsians, Karelians, and Komi

The Kazakh people

Semipalatinsk Test Site and other smaller test facilities

1965 Chagan Nuclear Test

The Kazakh is a group indigenous to the Central Asian territory in and around the present day state of Kazakhstan, formerly a part of the USSR. Kazakhs would have formerly been qualified as an indigenous people prior to the creation of the independent state of Kazakhstan, because of their status as “distinct from other sectors of society…prevailing in those territories,” because Russians were the dominant sector of society both in the USSR and in Soviet Kazakhstan.

Although the government was fully informed of the danger of nuclear testing for inhabitants of the region, it established the test site (Semipalatinsk) in a heavily populated area in 1949.
The local population was callously exposed over and over because the government wanted to know the consequences of a possible nuclear war.
Birth defect rates are ten times those of Europe, America and Japan, he said. Staggering death and disease rates are affecting the population immune systems, leukemia, anemia, cancer - the list of horrors goes on. Water and food sources are contaminated, and the death rate from disease is triple that in other parts of the former Soviet Union.
(Source: Betty Thompson, "Declassifying disaster: ravages of nuclear testing - Kazakhstan," The Christian Century, 1 June 1994.)

Nenet

Novaya Zemlya Test Site, Kola Peninsula, and Andreyeva Bay Nuclear Facilities and Severodvinsk (Nuclear Submarine) Shipyards

Photo: Mats-Rune Bergström

The Nenet are an indigenous group from the territory of the former Soviet Union. The population of ethnic Russians in the Novaya Zemlya region is greater than that of the Nenets, who number about 200 in Novaya Zemlya, as well as a very small number of indigenous Avars. Despite being small minorities, both groups maintain their identity and livelihoods separate and distinct from their Russian neighbors. The Nenets were forcibly resettled to Novaya Zemlya by Russia to prevent Norwegian incursions in the late 19th century. In the region surrounding Novaya Zemlya, known as the Russian Nenets Autonomous Okrug, about 7,000 Nenets make their homes.

The military bases and nuclear facilities established by the Soviet Union have been the primary factor in the growth of the Russian ethnic population.

Both Nenets and Avars make a livelihood from fishing, trapping, animal husbandry, and hunting. The Nenets traditional migratory cycle was tied to that of the reindeer, which graze in the tundra region, and upon which the Nenets depended for food and clothing.

A few of the discriminatory practices suffered by the Nenets include:

Government industrial and military officials determine which settlement areas, positions, rights and privileges are available to them. Nuclear experiments have been carried out unobstructed in Novaya Zemlya.
The Arctic nuclear fleet is stationed at Severomorsk, at Severodvinsk there is the experimental nuclear base, the military city of Plesetsk (Mirnyj) has a launching site for spacecraft and an experimental nuclear base.
The Norilsknikel concern alone has polluted 5 million hectares of Nenets grazing-lands and almost l million hectares of forests. The pollution of heavy metals has been transferred to the humans through mosses and reindeer meat.
The average life expectancy of Nenets is 45-50 years.
(Source: http://www.suri.ee/eup/nenets.html)

Sami

Chernobyl and Novaya Zemlya fallout/pollution; Kola Peninsula and Andreyeva Bay Nuclear Facilities

Nuclear storage by Andreyeva Bay

The Sami are an indigenous people of the Arctic who have inhabited areas of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Russia. About 2,000 Sami live in the Murmansk region of Russia, the site of the Kola Peninsula and Andreyeva Bay Russian nuclear waste dumps that have been repeatedly deemed dangerous and contaminating of the surrounding environment and nearby fjords, including areas within Norwegian territory also inhabited by the Sami. The contamination is already apparent:

“Leaks from the region's largest nuclear waste storage facility mean no fish will ever swim in this fjord. Onshore, both the soil and the groundwater are badly contaminated. On this vast site, 32 tons of highly radioactive waste with a high uranium content is stored in crumbling concrete bunkers and rusting tanks and containers - about a third of the nuclear waste mountain that can be found on the Kola Peninsula.”
(Source: Jorn Madslien, "Nuclear Waste Poses Arctic Problem," BBC News, 19 October 2006.)

The nuclear testing carried out at Novaya Zemlya, though in Nenet territory, had devastating albeit unrecognized effects for the Sami people in Norway and Sweden. Lichen absorbed radioactive material from the air, and the radioactive materials were transferred directly to the reindeer, which had levels 10 times the currently established standards for human consumption. However, the reindeer meat industry was not regulated by the Swedish or Norwegian governments, and the contamination went unnoticed.

In addition, the Chernobyl disaster caused nuclear fallout to spread contamination to the territories inhabited by the Sami people. The fallout directly damaged the viability of traditional Sami lifestyles because of its adverse effects on the tundra ecosystem upon which the Sami depend – berries, lichen, reindeer, freshwater, fish, and small game were deemed unfit for human consumption.

The lichen plants, which take 30 years to regrow completely, absorbed toxic levels of cesium 137 that was transmitted straight to the reindeer when the reindeer consumed the lichen. Lichen in Norway and Sweden will remain contaminated for nearly 20 more years. Meanwhile, 73,000 reindeer were discarded as unfit for human consumption. The Sami were not adequately compensated for these losses, despite some remuneration from the Swedish and Norwegian governments.

Vepsians, Karelians, and Komi

Novaya Zemlya fallout/pollution; Kola Peninsula and Andreyeva Bay Nuclear Facilities

There are about 6,000 Vepsians (or Veps) living in the Republic of Karelia – between Murmansk and the Nenets Okrug, just south of the Kola Peninsula. Karelia is also home to the indigenous group, the Karelians. The Komi people live predominantly in the Russian Republic of Komi, just south of Nenets and east of Karelia.

Because of the Vepsian, Komi, and Karelian regions’ proximity to the White Sea, the Barents Sea, the Kola Peninsula, and Novaya Zemlya, the effects of Russian nuclear testing and waste disposal have been similar to those of the other indigenous people of the Barents Region, as previously described. The entire region is facing enormous environmental problems, and the various regions, states, and indigenous groups have been cooperating under the auspices of the Barents Euro-Arctic Cooperation since 1993 to address these and other issues facing the Barents Euro-Arctic Region. However, the Vepsian, Karelian, and Komi regions are slightly further from the sources of nuclear pollution than the Nenet and Sami territories.