NUCLEAR GUARDIANSHIP FORUM, On The Responsible Care of Radioactive Materials
Issue # 2, Spring 1993, p. 5.
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                          WORLD URANIUM HEARINGS:
                        INDIGENOUS PEOPLES SPEAK OUT

                               by Joanna Macy

     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.

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     Joanna Macy, PhD, is a scholar of general systems theory, Buddhism
     and environmental ethics, teaching at the Graduate Theological
     Union and the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her books
     include Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age, and World
     as Lover, World as Self. She is a founding member of the Nuclear
     Guardianship Project.