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A Struggle Against
A
Multitude of Foes
NUCLEARISM
It is often defined as the advocacy of nuclear weapons and nuclear technology for the maintenance of national security, or a political philosophy maintaining that nuclear weapons are the best means of assuring peace and of attaining political goals.
Here is one of the definitions from our class Nuclear Introduction.
Nuclearism:
"The passionate embrace of nuclear weapons as a solution to death anxiety and a way of restoring a lost sense of immortality." (Robert Jay Lifton, 1980)
From a Native American Perspective
Inhabited by indigenous peoples of the Americas for many centuries before European exploration, New Mexico was subsequently part of the Imperial Spanish vice royalty of New Spain. Later, it was part of Mexico before becoming a U.S. Territory and eventually a U.S. state. Among U.S. states, New Mexico has a high percentage of Hispanics, including descendants of Spanish colonists. It also has a high percentage of Native Americans. The nations in the state consist of mostly Navajo, Pueblo, and Apache peoples. As a result, the demographics and culture of the state are unique for their strong Hispanic and Native American influences.
Manifest Destiny is a term for the attitude prevalent during the 19th century period of American expansion that the United States not only could, but was destined to, stretch from coast to coast.This attitude helped fuel western settlement, Native American removal and war with Mexico. John L. O’Sullivan claimed, "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions." The term and the concept were taken up by those desiring to secure Mexican land in the Southwest, and what is now New Mexico.
As a Puebloan Native American, I need to say that the oral history of the Pueblo Indians is an account of the European conquest of the New World that differs from the history books. It's the story of brutal enslavement and attempted societal destruction rather than lofty romantic ideas and heroic discovery. And it's the story of a battle for cultural survival that continues today, no longer against conquistadors seeking mythical riches but against U.S. government intrusion with their modern world of "nuclearism."
Jo Concha
Uranium and Indigeneous Activism
Native Americans and Uranium
Mining as State-Corporate Crime
Linda Robyn
After delivering a clear breakdown of white-collar crime, the author points out that we cannot allow the material advancements of our society to blind us to the fact that in many cases, these material gains have come about through great suffering on the part of marginalized people. Upon bringing to our awareness how these crimes have been committed on Native American reservations, with the prospect of large corporations bringing jobs and money to a depressed area making it easy to exploit these marginalized groups of people, the author examines the concept of state-corporate crime with the intention of focusing on treaty rights and the loss of Indian lands. This is to zero in on State-corporate crime on the Navajo reservation, and as to how it has led to "death, injury, ill health, financial loss, and … cultural destruction," as the author quotes Kramer, Michalowski, and Kauzlarich, cited in Friedrichs 2007, 145. As Robyn's turns to a case-specific examination of uranium on the Navajo Nation she points out the significance of traditional thinking in a linear world where there is a difference between the mind of Native Americans raised in a traditional way according to their culture and the Western mind of empirical evidence. Stating that in a race to create and increase nuclear weapons in the United States, since the 1940s uranium has been mined on the Navajo Nation, due to its abundance there, the author quotes, that Eichstaedt (1994, xv) writes that about a quarter of the men who labored in the uranium mines and processing mills were Navajo. Companies and the government exploited the miners who were harvesting their own death because huge profits were at stake. Besides there being the largest nuclear accident on the Navajo reservation, the author goes on to show how this is an example of State-Corporate crime. The governments response was slow and has taken years for any reasonable compensation while all the time, as the author continues, the Navajos origin stories warned them to leave the yellow dust in the ground, the "yellow monster." The author concludes by stating how the secret "doings" between mining companies and the government resulted in the Navajo mine workers and their lands being sacrificed in the pursuit of profit with a total disregard for indigenous life.
Jo Concha