“Blood Red”: Exploring Radioactive Colonialism in the Pacific through Indigenous creative writing and visual narratives.
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.This essay explores the processes and legacies of US nuclear imperialism in the Marshall Islands, situating the 67 nuclear tests undertaken in the archipelago (between 1946 and 1958) within the broader context of a US military-industrial complex that entailed the extraction of uranium from Native American and other Indigenous territory to manufacture nuclear weapons tested in Oceania; the exposure of Indigenous Pacific Islanders to nuclear fallout and other forms of radioactive contamination; the storage and disposal of nuclear weapons and waste in Indigenous Pacific environments; and despoliation of Indigenous land through non-nuclear military operations. The essay also situates US nuclear imperialism alongside French and UK nuclear testing in the Pacific: all three nations exploited their colonial spheres of influence in Oceania, detonating hundreds of nuclear bombs across a fifty-year period (1946-1996). These operations were underpinned by biological and environmental racism used to legitimise the “sacrifice” of Indigenous Pacific lands and communities in order to safeguard the health and security interests of the colonising nations. Latter sections of the essay explore a range of creative material focused on nuclear testing and environmental racism in the Marshall Islands. This includes poetry and performance art by Marshallese author activist Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner; poetry, narrative and paintings by youth authors and artists from her non-profit youth environmental organisation Jo-Jikum; and a graphic novel and paintings by Hawaiian artist Solomon Enos. This creative work has emerged from two environmental projects undertaken within the Marshall Islands: firstly, a UK-funded nuclear legacy project which I ran (along with a team of researchers, authors and artists) between 2016 and 2019; and secondly, a 2023 expedition (organised by the Cape Farewell Foundation) to Bikini and Rongelap atolls, which generated a range of creative work focused on the nexus between nuclear colonialism and climate change.
Source: Regeneration.
Author: Michelle Maria Keown
Institution: University of Edinburgh
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4413350685