Indigenous Peoples and Human Rights

February 2, 2023

American Indian Airwaves: Listen 'Nuclear Colonialism and Protecting Mother Earth'






Nuclear Colonialism Censored: Part 3 on Allyship and its Complications in Moving Forward and Peacefully Healing Mother Earth

Thursday, 2/2/2023, on American Indian Airwaves on KPFK, 7pm to 8pm (PCT)

By Larry Smith (Lumbee)
Co-host/Producer of American Indian Airwaves

Part I

Nuclear Colonialism with Leona Morgan (Dine’ Nation) is a three-part interview broadcast over three consecutive episodes of American Indian Airwaves. The series focuses on our guest’s community work since 2007, which includes combatting many aspects of nuclear colonialism.


Today’s program concludes our three-part interview on Nuclear Colonialism. In this episode, our guest covers several important issues such as working at the grassroots level and activism, addressing activist “burnout,” the complications and frustrations of working with non-Indigenous peoples in allyship, and moving forward on the denuclearization of Turtle Island, plus more.

Nuclear Colonial is one aspect of settler colonialism that remains highly censored in the American mass and digital media landscape. With approximately 11% of all abandoned uranium mines located in “Indian Country" -- nuclear power plants' average life span ranging from 40 to 50 years, the promotion of nuclear power as “green energy,” the United States Department of Defense endorses the next generation of mini-nuclear power plants (small modular reactors) to over 800 military bases throughout the world, the allocation of $1.7 trillion to reconstitute the U.S. nuclear weaponry system, and the permanent, unresolved, and enduring issue of addressing over 60 years of nuclear waste production -- Native American nations continue to be on the frontlines of nuclear colonialism and future generations are at risk unless there is immediate nuclear decolonization across Mother Earth.

Guest: Leona Morgan (Tó dich’íí’nii, Tsé nahabiłnii, Kiyaa’áanii, Tó aheedlíinii; she/her) is a Diné activist and community organizer who has been fighting nuclear colonialism since 2007. Leona Morgan co-founded and works with the Nuclear Issues Study Group www.fb.com/NuclearIssuesStudyGroup), Diné No Nukes, which contributes to the Haul No! initiative (www.fb.com/HaulNo), and Radiation Monitoring Project (www.radmonitoring.org). Our guest collaborates nationally with many groups to address the entire nuclear fuel chain in the United States and is part of the international campaign Don’t Nuke The Climate (www.dont-nuke-the-climate.org) that focuses on nuclear energy as a global climate issue.

Part 2

Mother Earth is wounded and everything she sustains is also afflicted by more pernicious forms of settler colonial violence. In addition, global current events, the possibilities of nuclear war and/or nuclear fallout, economic devastation, the unaffordability to survive for 99% of the world’s population, extreme declines in biodiversity, and the world’s Indigenous peoples on the frontlines of the intergenerational tyranny of settler colonialism, places the future of all life in uncertain situations that requires an immediate global change for peacefully healing Mother Earth. Meanwhile, the Montana state legislature is moving forward with plans to vote on legislation that would violate numerous treaties and “terminate” Native American nations within the state of Montana. Our guest for the second half of today’s program address all these critical issues, plus more.

Guest: Chief Arvol Looking Horse (Lakota Nation), 19th Keeper of the Sacred White Buffalo Calf Pipe, speaks of the forthcoming February 4th & 5th, 2023, Woope Omnic’iye (Spiritual Law Meeting) at Dakota Magic (Sesseton Wahpeton Oyate Nation) and peacefully healing Mother Earth, plus more.

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.

Photo Chief Arvol Looking Horse courtesy photo. Photo Leona Morgan by Brenda Norrell, at Dine' CARE gathering Navajo Nation.

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