The Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni and the Legacy of Nuclear Colonialism across Mother Earth

American Indian Airwaves

One day before International Indigenous Peoples Day, President Joe Biden created on August 8th, 2023, a new national monument in Arizona covering close to a million acres of lands surrounding the Grand Canyon important and sacred to nearby Native American nations. The Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni (Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument) is the fifth designated monument by Biden in the past 10 months, and the new monument prohibits new uranium mining claims in the region. The legacy of Nuclear Colonialism, which is includes over a century of uranium mining, and its impacts on Native American nations, peoples, and Mother Earth remains a highly censored in the American mass and digital media. Despite the recent media attention of the film Oppenheimer (2023, dir. Christopher Nolan) released on July 21st, 2023, in the United States and August 6th, 2023, marking the 78th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima wherein 140,000 people died in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and 74,000 in Nagasaki three days later, Native Americans and settler colonial violence are absent from these stories and the American public consciousness. Guest: Ian Zabarte (Newe Sogobia [Western Shoshone] Nation), is a long-time Indigenous activist who worked tirelessly to stop the Yucca Mountain high-level nuclear waste repository in Western Shoshone Treaty lands (also known as the state of Nevada). He is also a board member of the Native Community Action Council (NCAC), works on numerous anti-nuclear colonialism projects, and is featured in 2023 documentary Downwind, the story about Mercury, Nevada in heart of the Western Shoshone nation, becoming the testing site of 928 large-scale nuclear weapons from 1951 to 1992. Archived programs can be heard on Soundcloud at: https://soundcloud.com/burntswamp American Indian Airwaves streams on over ten podcasting platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Audible, Backtracks.fm, Gaana, Google Podcast, Fyyd, iHeart Media, Player.fm, Podbay.fm, Podcast Republic, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, Tunein, YouTube, and more. American Indian Airwaves is an all-volunteer collective and Native American public affairs program that broadcast weekly on KPFK FM 90.7 Los Angeles, CA, Thursdays, from 7:00pm to 8:00pm.