while everyone's rightfully talking about oppenheimer and its flaws regarding the erasure of japanese and native american voices regarding nuclear testing and detonations, i'd like to bring up the fact that pacific islanders have also been severely impacted by nuclear testing under the pacific proving grounds, a name given by the US to a number of sites in the pacific that were designated for testing nuclear weapons after the second world war, at least 318 of which were dropped on our ancestral homes and people. i would like if more people talked about this.

important sections are bolded for ease of reading. i would appreciate this being reblogged since it's a bit alarming how few people know about this.

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in 1946, the indigenous peoples of pikinni (the bikini atoll) were forcibly relocated off of their islands so that nuclear tests could be run on the atoll. at least 23 nuclear bombs were detonated on this inhabited island chain, including 20 hydrogen bombs. many pasifika were irreversibly irradiated, all of them were starved during multiple forced relocations, and the island chain is still unsafe to live on despite multiple cleanup attempts. there are several craters visible from space that were left on the atoll from nuclear testing.

the forced relocation was to several different small and previously uninhabited islands over several decades, none of which were able to sustain traditional lifestyles which directly lead to further starvation and loss of culture and identity. there is a reason that pacific islanders choose specific islands to inhabit including access to fresh water, food, shelter, cloth and fibre, climate, etc. and obviously none of these reasons were taken into account during the displacements.

200 pikinni were eventually moved back to the atoll in the 1970s but dangerous levels of strontium-90 were found in drinking water in 1978 and the inhabitants were found to have abnormally high levels of caesium-137 in their bodies.

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i'm going to put the rest of this post under a readmore to improve the chances of this being reblogged by the general public. i would recommend you read the entirety of the post since it really isn't long and goes into detail about, say, entire islands being fully, utterly destroyed. like, wiped off of the map. without exaggeration, entire islands were disintegrated.

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as i just mentioned, ānewetak (the eniwetok atoll) was bombed so violently that an entire island, āllokļap, was permanently and completely destroyed. an entire island. it's just GONE. the world's first hydrogen bomb was tested on this island. the crater is visibly larger than any of the islands next to it, more than a mile in diameter and roughly fifteen storeys deep. the hydrogen bomb released roughly 700 times the energy released during the bombing of hiroshima. this would, of course, be later outdone by other hydrogen bombs dropped on the pacific, reaching over 1000 times the energy released.

one attempt to clean up the waste on ānewetak was the construction of a large ~380ft dome, colloquially known as the tomb, on runit island. the island has been essentially turned into a nuclear waste dump where several other islands of ānewetak have moved irradiated soil to and, due to climate change, rising seawater is beginning to seep into the dome, causing nuclear waste to leak out. along with this, if a large typhoon were to hit the dome, there would be a catastrophic failure followed by a leak of nuclear waste into the surrounding land, drinking water, and ocean. the tomb was built haphazardly and quickly to cut costs.

hey, though, there's a plus side! the water in the lagoon and the soil surrounding the tomb is far more radioactive than the currently contained radioactive waste. a typhoon wouldn't cause (much) worse irradiation than the locals and ocean already currently experience, anyway! it's already gone to shit! and who cares, right, the only ""concern"" is that it will just further poison the drinking water of the locals with radioactive materials. this can just be handwaved off as a nonissue, i guess. /s

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at least 36 bombs were detonated in the general vicinity of kiritimati (christmas island) and johnson atoll. while johnson atoll has seemingly never been inhabited by polynesians, kiritimati was used intermittently by polynesians (and later on, micronesians) for several hundred years. many islands in the pacific were inhabited seasonally and likewise many pacific islanders should be classified as nomadic but it has always been convenient for the goal of white supremacy and imperalism to claim that semi-inhabited areas are completely uninhabited, claimable pieces of terra nullius.

regardless of the current lack of inhabitants on these islands, the nuclear detonations have caused widespread ecological damage to otherwise delicate island ecosystems and have further spread nuclear fallout across the entirety of the pacific ocean.

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while the marshall islands, micronesia, and the surrounding areas of melanesia and polynesia were (and still are) by far the worst affected by these atrocities, the entirety of the pacific has been irradiated to some extent due to ocean/wind currents freely spreading nuclear fallout through the water and air. all in all, at least 318 nuclear bombs were detonated across the pacific. i say "at least" because these are just the events that have been declassified and frankly? i wouldn't be shocked to find out they didn't stop there.

please don't leave the atomic destruction of the pacific out of this conversation. we've been displaced, irradiated, murdered, poisoned, and otherwise mass exterminated by nuclear testing on purpose and we are still suffering because of it. many of us have radiation poisoning, many of us have no safe ancestral home anymore. i cannot fucking state this enough, ISLANDS WERE DISINTEGRATED INTO NONEXISTENCE.

look, this isn't blaming people for not talking about us or knowing the extent of these issues, but it's... insidiously ironic that i haven't seen a single post that even mentions pacific islanders in a conversation about indigenous voices/voices of colour being ignored when it comes to nuclear tests and the devastation they've caused.

Melanya Baghdasaryan, displaced Artsakhtsi

Via: UNICEF Armenia

It's so weird how meat-forward American food culture is that Americans who don't eat meat every day will say to me "yeah I'm basically vegetarian I don't eat meat *every* day" like????? Please I'm begging you to consider other forms of protein the human body is not meant to only eat meat, we are omnivores.

Like. It was honestly pretty easy for me to switch to a vegetarian diet because I grew up in a kosher household and kosher meat is *expensive* so we only had meat on Shabbat (once a week). But then I'll talk to other Americans and they'll talk about eating meat every day and I'm like??? How???

I think humans are meant to eat meat and I think expecting everyone to give it up is wrong, but c'mon this is not sustainable you do not need to be eating meat every single day.

Why is America so meat obsessed?????

People who think Palestinians wanting equal rights to live on their own land equates to wanting to genocide Jewish people are actually telling on themselves

hello doctor fiddles. i am aware you are a man of the Appalachia, as a Virginia prime creature, i would like to know ur thoughts on the Great Dismal Swamp

the Great Dismal Swamp is my best friend <3

Hmm I believe I remember learning a few years ago that when one is asked to acknowledge that they’re impacted subconsciously by systemic racism/sexism/homophobia etc, or is told that they’re behaving in a way that’s bigoted/harmful, “no I’m not” is the wrong answer. So I think some of you should get less excited about saying that when Jewish people tell you you’re being antisemitic.

Repost @ ajplus

By Tewa Women United

This week, “Oppenheimer” will open, a film that centers on the creation and use of the atomic bomb through the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

Go see the movie if it calls to you. But please also take time to learn about the other side of the story and what unfolded at Tsankawi (also known as Los Alamos) and the Pajarito Plateau 80 years ago — the story that centers the Indigenous and land-based peoples who were displaced from our homelands, the poisoning and contamination of sacred lands and waters that continues to this day, and the ongoing devastating impact of nuclear colonization on our lives and livelihoods.

We’ve put together this resource list with a focus on Indigenous and land-based communities, so you can learn more about our side of the story and ways to respond.

u ever see a mildly iffy post and look at the comments and just think “wow, everyone here is so fucking unpleasant in their own special way”

no shade to brazil I guess and no making out that they’re any worse than any other country cause they’re not but 13 billion to restore the Amazon?? you just spent the last 3 years burning it down hm it doesn’t work like that. you could’ve just not burnt it and saved 13 billion hm

There is something so lonely and devastating about death in the diaspora.

How many of our grandparents died without seeing their siblings because displacement separated them for decades?

How many will be buried in a land where they did not come from? Nowhere near where their parents were buried. Nowhere near their rivers and mountains.

I am so devastated for them. For the loneliness that follows even through death.

but like fr we are not going to solve racism by reifying ‘White’ into a real, important category. all you’re doing there is solidifying the idea that what people look like is what counts, and obviously that is going to be an issue when you’re talking about displaced/colonised people, those with a history of mixing for other reasons, or about peoples within any given continent that doesn’t have basically the exact history that North America does.

Nov 2nd 1943 (79 years ago) - 70,000 from the Karachay population of the Caucasus were deported from their native lands by Stalin.

Just a portion of the crimes committed by the government.

A Ramble about St. Patrick's Day, Irish identity/diaspora & colonization

Dia duit! Cal is ainm dom. Labhraim Bearla ach táim ag foghlaim Gaeilge. Sláinte!

hope that was legible (and that I didn't just embarrass myself in front of fluent Irish speakers..). it being st. patrick's day, I was having some thoughts, and I've been trying to figure out what I want to say.

after once thinking st.pat's was nothing more then a throwaway holiday for drinking, now, after delving into my family genealogy and therefore into irish history/identity, I'm one of the people who I'm sure are pissed that a holiday meant to celebrate irish identity has been dwindled into nothing but stockphotos of leprechauns and drinking till you black out.

one could argue about how heavy drinking has been weaponized as an anti-irish sentiment for years, but I digress. instead, I would encourage anyone listening to learn a bit more about irish history beyond the stereotypes, and especially if you have irish roots yourself! irish immigrants carried this holiday and their irishness across waters, but overtime, for some that identity and cultural tie has been thinned.

identity is huge in a person's life, and for me, I've always been curious as to where I come from. I've been thinking a lot lately, about how there's this unspoken gap within the diaspora of north american white people (this really interesting post sparked it) when it comes to cultural identity. the majority of us would state first that we are canadian/american, but for some, unless you are indigenous, you have no other ties. I've always wanted to feel that - to know where my roots are, to know that my ancestors once had a language they taught their children, a shared dish, a way of dance. something that belongs to you. it's key to know where you come from, and some people on that that post were saying they come from nowhere - that is not true! my friend, you come from somewhere! your ancestors had traditions and dishes and loving terms of endearment in their own tongue, that they passed down for generations and maybe hoped, it would reach you. you have roots, friend; ancient ties came before you, and they're ready to be picked back up if you wish.

my irish roots come from my father's father's grandmother. she carried the name phelan - o’faolain, which loosely means wolf. the name carries all the way back to the ancient names of ireland, to the decies, before the normans arrived. before we even dated the year with four digits. once from the waterford area, later many moved up to kilkenny - the very place my irish ancestors lived before they immigrated in the 1800's. anyone who's looked into irish history, knows it's both beautiful and tortured. there's a lot of suffering from colonization and other tragedies that's still felt today, but there's more to learn then that. after always assuming I was bad at languages, I'm now four months into irish lessons and am learning lots! and as of last week, have ordered my own bodhram, or irish drum, with hope I can learn to play it (it's got this sick ass celtic dragon on it too). I can play it, knowing people with my cultural ties have long enjoyed tapping their toes to it's jigs, and I can (clunkily) speak the tongue, knowing it carried my ancestors for eons.

this is a great time, to reignite roots if you wish. and a great time, to know that the irish are more then the horror handed to them or the lucky charms mascot in a pot of gold.

HOWEVER,

I would feel it wrong without noting what learning about irish history has given me - and that's a deeper understanding of colonization. it would be a disservice, to celebrate my ancestors and the people who survived it, while an active genocide is going on in gaza right now.

while the minute details sometimes may be different, what I can see now, is that regardless, colonization is the same anywhere you look. the people in gaza are starving now just as the irish did over a hundred years ago - by their oppressors danging the aid they need out of reach. entire family lines have been wiped out in gaza, and right now, remnants of bones of whole irish families taken by starvation lay deep in the ground. reports of gazans left to eat nothing but animal feed, the same starvation that drove irish families to scavenge for seaweed by the shore. this isn't even to mention the troubles and irish fighters gunned down by (british) forces similar to palestinians being gunned for daring to fight for their independence; or northern ireland, irish land stolen by the british just as palestine was stolen by israel. while not wanting to center western views, there's a reason you see irish flags at palestinian protests. the leftovers of colonization don't magically disappear and a people simply don't forget.

and let me say right now - my ancestors and their people didn't survive those horrors just to allow it to happen to another. I and many others in the diaspora are here bc by chance, our ancestors survived; gazans should not be having to put their lives at the same gambling table. 31,000 deaths as last checked, and many families are already lost - this needs to stop now.

you can donate to the PCRF (aid for children) and UNRWA, who've been delivering aid on the ground. there's also e-sims you can buy to help gazans connect to their loved ones and get help. and if you're truly broke and/or simply cannot, there's daily clicks to generate aid.

Happy St. Paddy's and Phalaistín saor in aisce!

Finally got my dna test so I finally know my precolonial ancestry woo :)