In Episode 18 [16] of the CounterVortex podcast [17], Bill Weinberg looks back at the Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement [18] of the closing years of the Cold War, when the Western Shoshone [19] people, whose traditional lands were being contaminated by the nuclear blasts at the US government's Nevada Test Site, made common cause with the Kazakh people [20] of Central Asia who opposed Soviet nuclear testing at the Semipalatinsk site. Kazakh activists travelled to Nevada to join protests at the Test Site [21], while Western Shoshone leaders travelled to Kazakhstan to join protests at Semipalatinsk [22]. This initiative eventually evolved into the Abolition 2000 Global Network to Eliminate Nuclear Weapons [23], which as recently as 2016 held an International Conference on Building a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World [24] in Astana, Kazakhstan, again attended by Western Shoshone leaders. The story of indigenous peoples impacted by nuclear testing [27] on their usurped lands has come to us from several places around the world, including the French test site at Gerboise Bleue [28] in Algeria—known to the local Tuareg nomads as Tanezrouft. Other examples are the Chinese test site at Lop Nur [29], on lands of the Uighur people in Xinjiang, and British testing on Aboriginal lands at Maralinga [30], in the Australian outback. The Nevada-Semipalatinsk movement provides an inspiring example of indigenous peoples and their supporters building solidarity across hostile international borders and superpower influence spheres. Listen on SoundCloud [16], [16] and support our podcast via Patreon [25].
Music: Kazakh Folk Song [31] by Ardak Issataeva [32]
Production by Chris Rywalt [33]
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