“The history of nuclear weapons is a history of colonial exploitation….”
Ray Acheson
Nuclear-armed states have tested bombs outside their territories, often in colonies or lands they deemed inferior. When nuclear-armed governments have conducted tests on their own territories, it has primarily been on Indigenous lands. For example, the Western Shoshone Nation in the southwestern United States is the most bombed nation on Earth. In a statement to the negotiations of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in July 2017, thirty-five Indigenous groups declared, “Governments and colonial forces exploded nuclear bombs on our sacred lands—upon which we depend for our lives and livelihoods, and which contain places of critical cultural and spiritual significance—believing they were worthless.”
Delivered by Karina Lester, a Yankunytjatjara-Anangu woman from South Australia, the statement highlighted that Indigenous people “never asked for, and never gave permission to poison our soil, food, rivers and oceans. We continue to resist inhumane acts of radioactive racism.”
In the words of author and activist Arundhati Roy, “the nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that man has ever made.”