Indigenous People and the Nuclear Age

Of the nine nations in the world that have detonated nuclear weapons during the last 55 years, five have used the sacred land of indigenous peoples. The United States, Russia, Britain, France, and China have "tested" their nuclear might on lands held sacred by the people of First Nations. The Western Shoshone nation of North America, the Marshall and other South Pacific Islanders, Australian Aboriginals, the Kazakhs, and Tibetans are but a few of those whose land has been consistently contaminated with nuclear poison.

The Western Shoshone tribe of North America was guaranteed ownership of a huge portion of what is now Nevada, Idaho and some of California in the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley. Contrary to the expressed desires of the Shoshone people, over 700 nuclear tests were detonated at the Nevada Test Site which is part of this land. The US Department of Energy has chosen Yucca Mountain, also in Nevada - which is on the land of the Paiute nation - as a burial ground for high level radioactive waste from US civilian nuclear power plants. The mountain has at least 35 active earthquake fault lines running through it.

Native nations have been part of the story of nuclear contamination since the dawn of the atomic age. Indigenous peoples have been disportionately affected by the international nuclear weapons and power industries.

The Marshall Islanders of the South Pacific face a higher level of cancer and birth defects than normal. Bikini, Enewetak and Rongelap atolls were among the most seriously contaminated. On March 1, 1954 the Bravo Test, the first hydrogen bomb, was detonated. One thousand times more powerful than the Hiroshima explosion, its cloud rose 40 kilometers and after ten minutes, had a diameter of 120 kilometers. Immediately following the Bravo Test, many islanders were surprised to see what they interpreted as ‘snow’ on Rongelap atoll. Children began to play in the white powder that fell from the sky, although this was not the snow that they had heard stories of from the Christian missions who had already inflitrated the local islands. Later that day, the same children became sick with stomach pains and itchy eyes which, as the days followed, turned into burning, blistering skin and loss of hair. Lijon Eknilang was among them.

"My own health has suffered as a result of radiation poisoning. I cannot have children. I have had seven miscarriages. On one of these occasions, I miscarried after four months. The child I miscarried was severely deformed - it had only one eye. In 1978, I had thyroid surgery to remove nodules … I have lumps in my breasts, as well as kidney and stomach problems, for which I am receiving treatment. My eyesight is blurred, and everything looks foggy to me" (IPPNW, Radioactive Heaven and Earth: the health effects of nuclear weapons testing in, on and above the earth, p. 23).

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 that

"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.

Facts and Figures

• The Kazakhs. Of the 713 tests conducted by Russia, 467 were at the Kazakhstan Test Site.

• Tibetan people. Lop Nor, near Tibet in the Sinkiang Province is home to the Uighur people, and also the place of Chinese nuclear tests.

• The Sami. An indigenous community in Norway whose practice of life as herds-people was radically altered by their (continuing) experience of Chernobyl. Lichen, a main food source for reindeer, in their region was heavily contaminated by radioactive rain, causing the contamination of their herds.

To date, 8 countries have conducted approximately 2,051 nuclear tests under water, underground, in the atmosphere and in space. This represents an average of one nuclear test every nine days for the last 50 years.

• A total of 106 nuclear tests have been conducted by the US in the South Pacific, plus an additional 24 tests in the Christmas Islands just off Australia.

• 12 atmospheric tests were detonated in Australia between 1952 and 1957 by the UK, three at Monte Bello, two at Emu Field and seven at Maralinga.

• 14 nuclear tests were conducted in Algeria by the French, 4 atmospheric and 10 underground. From 1966 - 1990, a further 167 tests were conducted by the French on the atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa in Polynesia.

Worldwide, uranium mining has been the most hazardous step in nuclear materials production, in terms of radiation doses and numbers of people affected. It also is the step that generates the largest volumes of waste material. Uranium for nuclear weapons has been mined all over the world, from Australia to Zaire. Indigenous peoples have been disproportionately affected by the health and environmental impacts of uranium mining.

Photo by Robert Del Tredici, At Work in the Fields of the Bomb, Harper & Row 1987.

What you can do

Subscribe to the following newsletters/journals to be kept up to date on nuclear issues concerning the production of nuclear power, the manufacture of nuclear weapons and nuclear waste ‘clean-up’ and the effect on indigenous communities.

References Cited/Further Reading

Makhijani, Arjun, Howard Hu, Katherine Yih, editors. Nuclear Wastelands: a Global Guide to Nuclear Weapons Production and Its Health and Environmental Effects (written in association with the Special Commission of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1995.

Norris, Robert S. and William M. Arkin. ‘Nuclear Notebook: Known nuclear tests worldwide 1945-98’ inThe Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Educational Foundation for Nuclear Science, Nov/Dec Issue, 1998.

Stephens, Sharon. ‘Physical Reproduction in a Post-Chernobyl Norwegian Sami Community’ in Fayed D. Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp, editors. Conceiving the New World Order: the Global Politics of Reproduction. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.

The Special Commission of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. Radioactive Heaven and Earth: the health effects of nuclear weapons testing in, on and above the earth. New York: Apex Press, 1991.

The World Uranium Hearing. Poison Fire Sacred Earth: testimonies, lectures and conclusions. Munich: published in-house by The World Uranium Hearing, 1993.