Corinne Salter, PhD

Corrine is a Reclaim Community Fellows, she shares why she is passionate about nuclear justice and what the Reclaim Fellowship has meant for her.

As a newer leader in the nuclear justice movement, I find myself connecting moments (big and small) to the grander picture of what led me to this movement.

I was born on Ebeye in the Marshall Islands, adopted and brought to the states. Before joining this movement, I hadn’t found such a deep reconnection with my community as I have now until I began digging down into the nuclear history of my homelands.

Uncovering this ugly history willed upon us by the country I was brought to…

Foisted upon the country I often wish I had never been taken from…

Thinking of the women and children of my ancestral lineage…

our atolls, our futures being affected by this war we didn’t have a soldier in…

The generational trauma of such a heinous act…

Not just being sent into ground zero for a destructive force that rots from the inside out but having your homeland grounded down to less than zero…

I was angry and hurt, I felt betrayed and lied to. All feelings I’m sure our ancestors felt and may never have been able to give voice to. These feelings threatened isolation. Yet, somehow I’ve found a greater community in sharing my story than I ever did in allowing this nuclear injustice to wreak havoc quietly withinside me.

My work is continuing to unfold and blossom in ways I never could have imagined.

Every Reclaim fellowship session I have attended, I have learned something more about another nuclear affected community, developing a bond with each community member as we entrust each other with vulnerability to share our trauma, experiences, and movement forward.

Through every community member, every story told, every vision shared, every heavy burden shouldered together, every moment in shared space, I am affected not just as a nuclear activist but as a person. After all, this nuclear history is not just the foundation of this work but, for affected community members, it is a pillar of our life stories.

When I learn something about them, I learn something about myself. I learn how to process this trauma, how to hold space for it, to advocate for it, to grieve it, to trust others with it, to speak on its consequences, how to not hold it inside me as a raging fire consuming from within but to hold it as a bright flame to light the way toward justice.