What is Nuclear Colonialism?

Nuclear colonialism is a complex and on-going process, enabled by colonial exploitation of people and places in the interests of nuclear projects.

“Nuclear weapons testing is integrally linked to nuclear colonialism across many regions. Nuclear weapons production, development, testing and disposal disproportionately begin and end on Indigenous and First Nations lands, affecting many rural, marginalised, disenfranchised and colonised peoples.”

~ Dimity Hawkins, Coordinator, Nuclear Truth Project 

CRADLE TO GRAVE

The nuclear chain disproportionately affects Indigenous lands, colonised territories, and marginalised communities through:

→ Uranium mined on Indigenous land
→ Explosive nuclear devices ‘tested’ on marginalised and colonised territories and Peoples
→ Radioactive waste left behind or dumped on poorer nations

"Countries in search of a nuclear arsenal have always depended on other nations' resources."

~ Dr Anaïs Maurer, Board Member, Nuclear Truth project

This is a cradle-to-grave problem. And for many communities, the harm doesn't end when the tests do.

WHO BEARS THE COST?

“Nuclear colonialism has disproportionately impacted Indigenous Peoples and marginalised communities. Indigenous Peoples lands were taken. Bodies were used, people were bombed.”

~ Joint statement by affected community representatives to the 2nd Meeting of States Parties to the TPNW

From 1945, nuclear weapons explosive ‘testing’ took place across the Pacific, Central Asia, South Asia, North Africa, Australia, and the American Southwest. Some of these communities were treated as “nuclear sacrifice zones.” Colonising forces described many of these places as "empty", "remote," or "desolate."

But these places were not empty. For the people who live there, they are home.

Local people were too often disregarded in the calculations of those who ordered the tests. And the lines drawn on official maps bore no relation to the reality of fallout, or to the lives of the people living downwind.

WORDS HAVE POWER

Calling these places "empty" or "uninhabited" was not an accident, it was a tool. That language erased the people who lived there. It made their displacement easier to justify. And it continues today, in sealed archives, in denied claims, and in governments that still will not fully reckon with the harm they caused.

“Today, nuclear weapon states and their allies are allowing the creation, imposition, and threat of use of nuclear weapons. They wield disproportionate political power, while proving irresponsible in reckoning with the contamination they created with nuclear weapons and nuclear projects. They deny the impacts from their exploitation of people, lands and oceans.”

~ Dimity Hawkins, Coordinator, Nuclear Truth Project

This erasure of impact is a defining characteristic of nuclear colonialism. And it reaches well beyond the original testing era.

"WE ARE NOT PRIMARILY VICTIMS"

"Too often, well-meaning people say, 'I want to help the nuclear victims.' But this framing itself is part of the problem. We are not primarily victims; we are the people who survived everything you built to destroy us. We are knowledgeholders whose environmental stewardship outlasts your plutonium."

— Benetick Kabua Maddison, Co-Chair, Nuclear Truth Project

Frontline communities are sovereign authorities over their own histories, their own data, and their own futures.

THIS IS THE WORK

Understanding nuclear colonialism is the first step. But understanding isn't enough. We push back by:

→ Building networks of care between affected communities
→ Challenging nuclear secrecy
→ Educating civil society and governments
→ Centring frontline voices, not as symbols, but as leaders

The Reclaim Community Fellowship is going deeper on all of this.