Between 1965 and 1967, the US Government exploded nuclear weapons on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian island chain in southwest Alaska. Amchitka Island is the traditional homeland of Aleut Alaska Natives, who lived on Amchitka until the arrival of Russian settlers in the 1760s. Russian settlers forced many Aleut to move from…
Much of the United States' nuclear weapons testing has occured at the Nevada test site on Western Shoshone lands, known as Newe Sogobia. Between 1951 and 1992, the US conducted both atmospheric and underground nuclear tests, detonating more than 1,000 nuclear weapons.[1]
Not only have nuclear weapons tests been conducted directly on Indigenous lands, but nuclear fallout also disproportionately affects Indigenous communities. People living in the Arctic, predominantly Indigenous communities, are “one of the most heavily exposed populations from the global fallout from atmospheric atomic bomb…