In an unprecedented global "speak out" last September, representatives of indigenous peoples around the world gathered in Salzburg, Austria to report on the suffering and devastation inflicted on them by our nuclear adventures. Seventy-five in all, including Inuit and Cree from Canada, Adivasis from India, Cherokee, Hopi, Shoshone, and Sioux from the U.S., Tibetans, Mongolians, Kazakhs, Marshall Islanders, Namibians, Australian aboriginals, and many others, gathered at the World Uranium Hearing. They testified before an international Board of Listeners, in which I participated for the Nuclear Guardianship Project. I was also asked to describe the guardianship concept.

      The stories told by the indigenous delegates constituted an appalling indictment of nuclear colonialism. For it is their homelands, their bodies, and their ancient cultures that are most immediately victimized by nuclear power and nuclear weapons. On their lands, which they hold sacred, 70% of the world's uranium is mined, most of the testing takes place, and radioactive waste is dumped. These crimes are compounded, in virtually every case, by secrecy and deception and intimidation on the part of industry and government. So the speak out was all the more remarkable and stirring, as is generally the case, when the truth is told.

      The event was organized by Claus Biegert, a visionary German film maker, who now spearheads efforts to bring the results of the Hearing to a global audience. In the making are a film and a book of the colorful and moving testimony brought before the Hearing, a mapping project, and a Trust Fund to support educational, health and legal aid to the affected indigenous peoples.

      At the conclusion of the six day hearing, the Declaration of Salzburg was drafted and read, and the indigenous delegates took it home with them. After it has been discussed and amended in their home communities, it will be ratified in of 1993.

The following are typical examples of how indigenous peoples suffer under the new, nuclear, colonialism.

• The Marshallese people, who were evacuated and therefore not exposed to fallout from the 1954 U.S. hydrogen bomb test, were prematurely returned to their radioactive Pacific islands of Rongelap and Utirik. They were contaminated by eating coconuts, breadfruit and taro grown on their ancestral islands, as well as consuming fish from their lagoon.
• The International Committee of Lawyers for Tibet reported in 1984 that China sold the right to store radioactive waste in Tibet to West Germany for the sum of $6 billion. Unwitting Tibetan populations are subjected to radiation tolerance tests, and Tibet is the site of major uranium mines and waste dumps.
• The Prairie Island Sioux in Minnesota have lived with two nuclear reactors on their island for the last 20 years. They, along with all other Native American tribes, were invited by the Department of Energy to apply for a $100,000 grant to study the feasibility of locating a centralized Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) facility on their reservation. They accepted the grant, with the aim of gaining a voice in local Public Utilities Commission decisions regarding nuclear waste from the reactors on their island. The tribe reports a history of misinformation propaganda from state and federal agencies since 1968, when construction of the reactors began. The tribe has a cancer death risk six times higher than deemed "acceptable" by the State Health Department.
• The Prairie Island Sioux are also fighting a proposed Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installation on the adjacent reactor site, citing past flooding of the site and the presence of an earthquake fault. Despite setbacks, they continue to fight for sovereignty over their land and are using the grant to educate tribal members about the dangers of waste storage and to document the inadvisability of a Monitored Retrievable Storage facility in the area.
• Uranium miners of recently independent Namibia have been required to work 18 month shifts before returning to their families for three weeks. This resulted in workers who did not know their families, and children who did not know their fathers. Many workers had died from diseases related to their employment in the mines. The nuclear industry, as a large part of economic colonialism, has contributed significantly to the economic problems of Namibia. A basic dilemma for the Namibian govern-ment is the massive unemployment closing the uranium mines will cause.

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