Meadows 1AC

Part 1 is Framing
We should begin our discussion of nuclear power with the lens of
decolonial feminist epistemology. This requires recognizing the way
Eurocentric traditions create political frameworks that exclude certain
forms of knowledge from the start. Madden 16
Madden, Meredith, "Claiming Knowledge, Claiming Lives: Decolonial Feminist Pedagogy and the
Experiences of Low-Income Women Undergraduates in Community College" (2016). Dissertations - ALL.
Paper 443.

One significant epistemological approach that could be

applied to a decolonial pedagogical framework is
feminist standpoint epistemology which is a practice of
centering the relationship between knowledge and power .
To explore what happens when knowledge is made and
produced from the hierarchical elite vs. oppressed and
marginalized persons, scholars across academic disciplines, such as Smith (2004),
Harding (2004), and Collins (1991), have applied a feminist standpoint epistemology to their

For the sake of students staking equitable claim

to epistemic authority in the community college classroom, it is
critical that students are positioned to build knowledge
in specific and relevant ways, as demonstrated in Betters (2013)
aforementioned research, so that they may produce a new vision of
reality that pushes back against traditional Eurocentric
claims to pedagogical experiences and situated ways of
knowing. Feminist standpoint epistemology is one
approach to deeply understanding the relationship
between power and knowledge in educational contexts. As
argued before, pedagogy situated in Eurocentric traditions
serves to sustain claims to epistemic authority from
privileged groups and thereby reproduces the
colonized/dominant structure. Foucault (1980) theorizes the relation of
knowledge and power; knowledge is a machine that drives power
in Western cultures. With attention to the historical narrative of Western higher
scholarship.

education, there may be resistance to attempts to disrupt the traditional knower in Western
higher education, yet it is critical that these disruptions are engaged. The next chapter illustrates
a research design and methods for this study as it moves toward an examination of decolonial
pedagogy in the community 41 college classroom and explores if decolonial feminist pedagogy
disrupts traditional claims to knowledge in the community college classroom and the impact of
decolonial feminist pedagogy on the experiences of community college students.

Analyzing the topic through this lens as tangible impacts outside of the
debate round Madden 2
Madden, Meredith, "Claiming Knowledge, Claiming Lives: Decolonial Feminist Pedagogy and the
Experiences of Low-Income Women Undergraduates in Community College" (2016). Dissertations - ALL.
Paper 443.

student engagement with decolonial

feminist pedagogy in a sociology classroom at a community college. Student
experiences that stemmed from engagement with
This chapter looked at

pedagogical strategies for disrupting colonial legacies

included community building, critical reflexivity, and the
engaging of dissident voices. The challenges of student engagement with
decolonial feminist pedagogy were discussed. Finally, the transformative
student outcomes that resulted from the classroom
experiences presented earlier were shared in context of
a pedagogical framework grounded in the disruption of
colonial legacies anchored in eurocentrism, hierarchy,
domination, division, power and privilege. The students
interviewed recognized the classroom as a place of
community building, critical reflection, and engaging
dissident voice. These experiences illuminated the
potential for student border crossings in an educational
site of struggle such as the community college classroom. Most of the students interviewed
credited The Sociology of Gender classroom community with
redesigning the classroom as a space where students
could listen to one anothers lived experiences in context
of a decolonial feminist course curriculum and through
the engagement of dialogue. Arundhati Roy (2004) writes, We know
of course theres really no such thing as the voiceless.
There are only the deliberately silenced, or the
preferably unheard. Dialogue that centered on an antiracist, anti-sexist, and anti-capitalist curriculum
promoted hearing and bearing witness to the testimonies
of marginalized groups, while illuminating the role of 93
dominant identities (e.g., male, White, upper-class) in
maintaining and sustaining systems of gender inequality.
This experience impacted students critical
consciousness, sense of empowerment, and engaged
solidarity. These outcomes support the role of decolonial
feminist pedagogy in transforming students academic
and personal lives. The students revealed a sense of care
that came over them for one anothers wellbeing and
academic growth. They credited the role of dialogic
pedagogy in promoting the visibility of all students in the
classroom, and in making visible both oppression and
privilege. Through critical reflexivity and dialogue, the
students were able to grasp how intersectional identities
shape the complexity of female experiences, thereby
diffusing essentialist ideas about gender and promoting
gender awareness and identity development. Students
crossed classroom borders through dialogue and
critically reflexive writing that fitted them with a
decolonial feminist lens through which to view gender
experiences. The decolonial feminist lens contributed to
decentering dominant Eurocentric, patriarchal narratives

that many students had become accustomed to throughout their education, and instead

centering marginalized narratives in a space where voyeuristic learning

by dominant identities (e.g., male, White, upper-class) was rejected, and work across all social

students interpreted this as an

expectation to connect discussions on lived experiences
to historical contexts and further engage discussions on
the condition that all students were committed to doing
the work necessary to promote understanding of gender
inequality for the purpose of fostering consciousness as
well as action.
identity groups was expected. The

And, our framework starts from the point of view of those who resist
dominant norms and institutions universal principles are too abstract
and overlook historical and material realities. Lugones 10
Toward a Decolonial Feminism, Mara Lugones (Argentine feminist philosopher, Associate Professor of
Comparative Literature and Philosophy, Interpretation and Culture, and of Philosophy, and of Women's
Studies at Binghamton University), Hypatia (vol. 25, no. 4), 2010.

I am proposing in working toward a decolonial

feminism is to learn about each other as resisters to the
coloniality of gender at the colonial difference, without
necessarily being an insider to the worlds of meaning
from which resisa tance to the coloniality arises. That is, the
decolonial feminists task begins by her seeing the colonial difference,
emphatically resisting her epistemological habit of
erasing it. Seeing it, she sees the world anew, and then she
requires herself to drop her enchantment with woman,
the universal, and begins to learn about other resisters
at the colonial difference.12 The reading moves against the socialrscientific
objectifying reading, attempting rather to under- stand subjects,
the active subjectivity emphasized as the reading looks
for the fractured locus in resistance to the coloniality of
gender at a coalitional starting point. In thinking of the starting point as
coalitional because the fractured locus is in common, the histories of
resistance at the colonial difference are where we need
to dwell, learning about each other. The coloniality of gentler is sensed
What

as concrete, intricately related exercises of power, some body to body, some legal, some inside
a room as indigenous female-beasts' not-civilized-women are forced to weave day and night,

The differences in the concreteness and

intricacy of power in circulation are not understood as
levels of generality; embodied subjectivity and the
institutional are equally concrete. As the coloniality
infiltrates every aspect of living through the circulation
of power at the levels of the body, labor, law, imposition
of tribute, and the in troduction of property and land
diSpossession, its logic and efficacy are met by different concrete people whose
others at the confessional.

bodies, selves in relation, and relations to the Spirit world do not follow the logic of capital. The
logic they follow is nor countenanced by the logic of power. The movement of these bodies and
relar tions does nor repeat itself. It does not become static and ossified. Everything and
everyone continues to respond to power and responds much of the time resistantly-which is not

to say in open defiance, though some of the time there is open defiance-min ways that may or

From the fractured

locus, the movement succeeds in retaining creative ways
of thinking, behaving, and relating that are antithetical
to the logic of capital. Subject, relations, ground, and
possibilities are continually transformed, incarnating a
weave from the fractured locus that constitutes a
creative, peopled recreation. Adaptation, rejection, adoption, ignoring, and
may not be beneficial to capital, but that are nor part of its logic.

integrating are never just modes in isolation of resistance as they are always performed by an

I
want to see the multiplicity in the fracture of the locus:
active subject thickly constructed by inhabiting the colonial difference with a fractured locus.

both the enactment of the coloniality of gender and the resistant response from a subaltern
sense of self, of the social, of the seifin'relation, of the cosmos, all grounded in a peopled
memory. With out the tense multiplicity, we see only either the coloniality of gender as
accomplishment, or a freezing of memory, an ossified understanding of self in relation from a
precolonial sense of the social. Part of what i see is tense move ment, peOple moving: the
tension between the dehumanization and paralysis of the colonialigy of being, and the creative
activity of being.

And, traditional cost benefit analysis sees day to day violence as

inconsequential which allows us to refuse to recognize it. Enloe 04
Cynthia Enloe. Professor of International Relations. The Curious Feminist. 2004

we need to become more curious about the process of

trivialization. How exactly do regimes, opposition parties, judges, popular
movements, and the press go about making any incident of violence
against women appear trivial? The gendered violence can be
explained as inevitablethat is, not worth the expenditure of political
capital. Or it can be treated by the trivializers as numerically inconsequential,
so rare that it would see wasteful of scare political will or state resources to try to prevent it. Third, trivialization
can be accomplished by engaging in comparisons: how
can one spend limited political attention on, say,
domestic violence or forced prostitution when there are
market forces like global competition, structural
adjustment, or nuclear testing to deal with as if, that is,
none of those had any relationship to the incidence of
violence against women? Finally, trivialization may take the form of undermining the credibility of
Thus

the messenger. As early as the 1800s, trivializers already were labeling weomen who spoke out publicly against violence against
women as loose, prudish, or disappointed (it would be the trivializers twentieth-century successors who would think to add
lesbian).

Part 2 is Nuclear Colonialism

Countries like Russia exploit nuclear power by constructing plants in
order to preserve hegemony and drive for power. Sharkov 15
Damien Sharkov (Reporter for Newsweek Europe based in London), NUCLEAR POWER IS RUSSIA'S NEW WEAPON OF CHOICE, 4/28/15,
http://www.newsweek.com/2015/05/01/nuclear-power-russias-new-weapon-choice-326198.html VC

Russia is using cut-price nuclear energy deals as leverage

to influence EU states and shore up long-term alliances in
the Middle and Far East, according to energy analysts.
Analysis of recent deals secured by Russias state nuclear
corporation Rosatom reveals a costly drive by Moscow to
lock countries including Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovakia, the
Czech Republic, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, India,
Bangladesh, Vietnam and Argentina into arrangements
that will mean they rely on a supply of nuclear fuel from
Russia for decades. Russia recently agreed a 10 billion
loan deal to expand and supply Hungarys Paks nuclear
power plant, one of several ongoing nuclear energy
projects Russia has its sights on in Eastern Europe.
Besides the 10-year Hungarian deal, Bulgaria, Slovakia,
the Czech Republic and Ukraine rely on Russian nuclear
fuel to function. These five countries with a collective
population of 80 million are reliant on Russian nuclear cooperation for some 42% of their electricity supply. Try
Newsweek for only $1.25 per week Lili Bayer, Eurasia
analyst for global intelligence firm Stratfor, argues that
the Hungarian plant is one example of Russias distinct
strategy to maintain energy dependence in Europe on
Russia. This is both a commercial and political strategy,
Bayer says. Russia is really pushing for projects like the
one in Hungary because they will be providing 80% of the
financing and it gives the Kremlin long-term leverage
until Hungary pays the money back. According to Bayer,
lucrative deals such as the one in Hungary show that
Russia is willing to spend big to retain its monopoly in the
former Soviet-bloc though Russia's economic crisis will make this strategy more
difficult. Russia used to supply these plants with fuel
exclusively but now Western companies such as
Westinghouse have developed fuel compatible for the
Soviet-style reactors. Petr Topychkanov, analyst at the
Carnegie Endowment in Moscow, says Rosatom is also
developing nuclear projects outside Europe in the Near
and Far East to similar political ends. Elsewhere Rosatom
subsidiaries are currently developing nuclear projects in
India, Iran, Bangladesh, Turkey and Jordan, while also
currently bidding to build plants in Egypt and Vietnam. A

deal to build a new plant in Argentina was agreed at the

end of April. For this purpose Russia is ready to offer
very lucrative conditions for contracts including financial
support, says Topychkanov. Moscow understands that if
relations break down and Russia decides to stop supply,
it is extremely difficult to find alternative sources for host
countries. It believes it has a good chance to have
predictable relations with that country if it is the one
providing them with nuclear fuel, he says. This is a part
of Rosatoms big strategy and of course this big strategy
is supported by the Russian government, Topychkanov
adds. Nuclear expert John Large says he sees alarming
parallels between European over-dependence on Russian
gas and Russian nuclear fuel. Gazprom cutting Ukraines
energy just goes to show you that there is a political need
for fuel diversity away from Russia, Large says. If Putin
had the valve on nuclear fuel as well, although the effect
would be slightly longer term, it can get incredibly
uncomfortable.
We are in the midst of a global nuclear renaissance- corporate
propaganda markets nuclear power as the only solution to climate
change in order to shut down democratic deliberation about alternative
energy futures. Wasserman 16
(Harvey ] Harvey Franklin Wasserman is an American journalist, author, democracy activist, and advocate
for renewable energy. ] http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/07/29/ny-times-pushes-nukes-while-claimingrenewables-fail-to-fight-climate-change/ , 7-29)

that nuclear power might fight climate change, and that

environmentalists might support it, is a recent concoction, a disgraceful, desperate load of utility
hype meant to defend the status quo. Fukushima, unsolved waste problems
and the plummeting price of renewables have solidified the
environmental communitys opposition to nuke power. These reactors are dirty
and dangerous. They are not carbon-free and do emit
huge quantities of heated water and steam into the ecosphere. The
The idea

utility industry cant get private liability insurance for them, and relies on the1957 Price-Anderson Act to protect
them from liability in a major catastrophe. The industry continually complains about subsidies to renewable
energy but never mentions this government protection program without which all reactors would close. 7. Not

the entire centralized fossil/nuke-based grid

system is now being undermined by the massive drops in
the price of renewable energy, and massive rises in its
efficiency and reliability. The critical missing link is
battery technology. Because the sun and wind are intermittent, there needs to be energy
storage to smooth out supply. Elon Musks billion-dollar Tesla Gigafactory in Nevada and many other
industrial ventures indicate major battery breakthroughs in
storage is here today. 8. Porters NY Times piece correctly says that the massive amounts of
cheap, clean renewables flooding the grid in Europe and parts of the U.S.
are driving nuclear power plants into bankruptcy. At least a dozen
just nuke power but

reactor shut downs have been announced in the U.S. since 2012 and many more are on their way. In Japan 52 of
the 54 reactors online before the Fukushima disaster are now closed. And, Germany has pledged to shut all its

Porter attacks this by complaining that those

nukes were supplying base load power that must be
otherwiseaccording to himshored up with fossil burners. Heres his key
reactors by 2022. But

line: Renewable sources are producing temporary power gluts from Australia to California, driving out other

But as all serious

environmentalists understand, the choice has never been
between nukes versus fossil fuels. Its between
centralized fossil/nukes versus decentralized renewables.
energy sources that are still necessary to maintain a stable supply of power.

Porters article never mentions the word battery or the term rooftop solar. But these are the two key parts in
the green transition already very much in progress. So here is what the Times obviously cant bring itself to say:
Cheap solar panels on rooftops are now making the grid obsolete. The key bridging element of battery back-

there is absolutely no need for

nuclear power plants, which at any rate have long since
become far too expensive to operate. Spending billions to
prop up dying nuke reactors for base load generation is
pure corporate theft at the public expense, both in
straight financial terms and in the risk of running badly
deteriorated reactors deep into the future until they
inevitably melt down or blow up. Those billions instead
should go to accelerating battery production and
distribution, and making it easier, rather than harder, to gain energy independence using the wind
and the sun. All this has serious real-world impacts. In Ohio, for
example, a well-organized shift to wind and solar was derailed
by the Koch-run legislature. Some $2 billion in wind-power investments and a $500
up capability is on its way. Meanwhile

million solar farm were derailed. There are also serious legal barriers now in place to stop homeowners from

Meanwhile, FirstEnergy strongarmed the Ohio Public Utilities Commission into

approving a huge bailout to keep the seriously
deteriorated Davis-Besse nuke operating, even though it
cannot compete and is losing huge sums of money. Federal
putting solar shingles and panels on their rooftops.

regulators have since put that bailout on hold. Arizona and other Koch-owned legislatures have moved to tax
solar panels, ban solar shingles and make it illegal to leave the grid without still paying tribute to the utilities
who own it. Indeed, throughout the U.S. and much of the western world, corporate-owned governments are

For
an environmental movement serious about saving the
Earth from climate change, this is a temporary barrier.
The Times and its pro-nuke allies in the corporate media
will continue to twist reality. But the Solartopian
revolution is proceeding ahead of schedule and under
budget. A renewable, decentralized energy system is very
much in sight. The only question is how long corporate
nonsense like this latest NY Times screed can delay this vital transition.
Our planet is burning up from fossil fuels and being
irradiated by decrepit money-losing reactors that blow
up. Blaming renewable energy for all that is like blaming
the peace movement for causing wars. The centralized King CONG grid and
doing their best to slow the ability of people to use renewables to rid themselves of the corporate grid.

its obsolete owners are at the core of the problem. So are the corporate media outlets like the New York Times
that try to hide that obvious reality.

And, nuclear power is unique in the way it allows and justifies the
domination of citizens by legitimizing nuclear authoritarianism. Kaur 11
(Raminder, A nuclear renaissance, climate change andthe state of exception, THE AUSTRALIAN JOURNAL
OF ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 22, Issue 2)
Although Giorgio Agambens (2005) work on the normalisation of exceptional state practice has been much cited, it would appear

Jungk outlines how the

extraordinary, as it pertains to the states possession of
nuclear weapons and the development of atomic
industries since the mid-1940s, became the ordinary (Jungk
that Robert Jungk anticipated some of his main axioms.

1979: 58). When associated with nuclear weapons, the state operates under the guise of a paradigm of security which promises
peace in terms of a nuclear deterrence to other countries and also legiti-mates the excesses of state conduct whilst abrogating
citizens rights in the name of national security. Jungk adds that, in fact, state authoritarianism applied to all nation-states with
nuclear industries: Nuclear power was first used to make weap-ons of total destruction for use against military enemies, but today
it even imperils citizens in their own country, because there is no fundamental difference between atoms for peace and atoms for
war (Jungk 1979: vii). The inevitable spread of tech-nological know-how through a range of international networks and the effects
of the US atoms for peace program in the 1950s led to a greater number of nations constructing institutions for civilian nuclear

Because
of the indeterminacy between atoms for peace and atoms
for war, the nuclear industries began to play a key part in
several nations security policies, both externally with reference to other states and also
internally with reference to objec-tors and suspected anti-national contingents. Jungk notes the
important social role of nuclear energy in the decline of
the constitutional state into the authoritarian nuclear
state by focussing on a range of indicators, including a report published by the American
National Advisory Committee on Criminal Justice in 1977 which suggested
that:in view of the high vulnerability of technical civilization, emergency legislation should
be introduced making it possible temporarily to ignore
constitutional safeguards without previous congressional
debate or consultation with the Supreme Court.(1979: 135) The bio-techno-political
mode of governance encapsulates subjects into its folds
such that it becomes a technical civilisationa
civilisation that, although promis-ing favourable aspects
of modernity to the populace and development for the
coun-try, is also to be accompanied by several risks to
human and environmental safety that propel states,
including democracies further towards authoritarianism.
Big sci-encethat is, science that is centralised or at least
circumscribed by the stateand the bureaucracies
surrounding it play a critical part in the normalisation of
the state of exception, and the exercise of even more
power over their citizens. Jungk elaborates on the
routinisation of nuclear state violence, epistemological,
juridical and physical :Such measures will be justified, not
as temporary measures made necessary by an
exceptional emergency but by the necessity of
providing permanent protection for a perpetually
endangered central source of energy that is regarded as
indispensable. A nuclear industry means a permanent
state of emergency justified by a permanent threat. (1979:
135)This permanent state of emergency with respect to
power, a development that was later realised to enable uranium enrichment for the manufacture of weapons .

anything nuclear applies to restrictions on citizens

freedom, the surveillance and criminalisation of critics
and campaigners, the justification of the mobilisation of
thousands of police men and sometimes military to deal
with peaceful demonstrators against nuclear power, and a
hegemony on truth-claims where the nuclear industries
are held as the solution to growing power needs whilst
advancing themselves as climate change environmentalists. In this way, power structures and lifestyles need
not be altered where nuclear power becomes, ironically, a
powerful mascot of clean and green energy. In India, the capitalist
modality of the nuclear state was exacerbated by the ratification of the Indo-US civilian nuclear agreement in 2008, a bilateral
accord which enables those countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to provide mate-rial and technology for Indias civilian
nuclear operations even though it is nota signatory to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. This has led to an expansionof the
nuclear industries in the country where the limited indigenous resources of uranium could then be siphoned into the nuclear

imposition of the nuclear state hand-in-hand

with multinational corporations in regions such as Koodankulam in Tamil Nadu (with the
weapons industries. The

Russian nuclear com-pany, Atomstroyexport), Haripur in West Bengal (with the Russian company,Rosatom) or Jaitapur in

without due consultation with

residents around the proposed nuclear power plants, has
prompted S. P. Udayakumar (2009) to recall an earlier history of
colonization describing the contemporary scenario as an
instance of nucolonisation(nuclear + colonisation).The Indian nuclear state, with its especial
Maharashtra (with the French company, Areva),

mooring in central government, hasconducted environmental enquiries primarily for itselfand this so in only asummary fashion.
In a context where the Ministry of Environment and Forestscan override the need for an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA)
report forthe first two nuclear reactors at Koodankulam in 2001, saying that the decisionwas first made in the 1980s before the EIA
Notification Act (1994); or where theSupreme Court of India can dismiss a petition against the construction of thesereactors simply
by saying: There is no reason as to why this court should sit inappeal over the Governmental decision relating to a policy matter
more so, whencrores of rupees having (sic) been invested (cited in Goyal 2002), then there is astrong basis upon which to
consider the Indian state as a whole as a nuclearisedstatethat is, a state wherein matters relating to nuclear issues are given
inordi-nate leeway across the board. The nuclear enclave consisting of scientists, bureau-crats and politicians, is both the
exception to and the rule that underpins the rest of state practice. So even though we may be talking about a domain of distinct
governmental practice and political technology as encapsulated by the notion of a nuclear state, it is evident that its influence
spreads beyond the nuclear domain in a discourse of nuclearisation through state-related stratagems which have become
increasingly authoritarian and defence-orientated since the late 1990s. In a nut-shell, discourses about the urgency of climate
change, global warming, nuclear power and defence have converged in a draconian and oppressive manner that now parades
itself as the necessary norm for the nation. Despite their particularities, machinations of the Indian nuclear state are also nota-ble
elsewhere. Joseph Masco elaborates on the national-security state in the USA(2006: 14). Tony Hall comments upon the defencedominated, well-cushioned(nuclear) industry in the United Kingdom (1996: 10). And on the recent issue of the construction of
more nuclear power stations in Britain, David Ockwell observesthat a public hearing was only undertaken for instrumental reasons
(i.e. it was alegal requirement), as demonstrated by a public statement by then prime ministerTony Blair that the consultation
wont affect the policy at all (2008: 264). These narratives are familiar across the board where a nuclear renaissance is apparent.
But critics continue to dispute the hijacking of environmentalism by the state and argue that if climate change is the problem, then
nuclear power is by no means a solution. Moreover, the half-life of radioactive waste cannot be brushed away in a
misplacedvindication of the saying, out of sight, out of mind

This pervades the way nuclear power is represented governments

sexualize nuclear power to mask the way it affects marginalized
groups. Spiegel 09
Russia's Nuclear Bombshells, 2/19/09, Spiegel Online. http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/missatom-2009-russia-s-nuclear-bombshells-a-608703.html
Imagine, if you will,

a bikini clad beauty queen strutting out of

lake, with giant cooling towers belonging to a nuclear
power facility dominating the background. Odd perhaps?
Not, apparently, in Russia. There, women working in the country's nuclear
industry compete for the annual title of Miss Atom. The beauty
pageant, now in its sixth year, is generously financed and well
established. There are no anti-nuclear protestors who show up to sling rotten tomatoes at
the contestants. Instead, it seems that this bold strategy of fusing atomic

energy and Russian bombshells is just another part of life

-- or at least a marvelous ploy. "We want to show the general public that the
nuclear industry is an industry like any other," Ilya Platonov, who heads up Nuclear.Ru which runs
the event, told ABC News. "Ordinary

people work in it, including

young, attractive women." Platonov also admits that the
pageant is also an image campaign aimed at dispelling
the image of a dangerous and threatening nuclear power
industry. The range of contestants for "Miss Atom 2009" is vast. Many look quite ordinary,

lacking the perfect features often associated with beauty contests. Several, though, are
astonishingly beautiful. In profile photos, some sling themselves across cars and desks or strike
sexy poses in front of machines and oceanscape backgrounds while others wear silly hats or
simply sit at office desks. In personal statements, the ladies divulge passions for activities such
as dancing, growing cactuses, travel, and sports. Some, like Julia Leonova of Siberia, add a bit
more flare: "I can be a tiger, who spreads fear with a flash of my teeth, or an eagle who flies free
through the skyI can play a hundred different roles -- but choose only those I like," she writes.
Svetlana, an engineering student who goes to modeling school and won last year's "Miss
Elegance" title, seems to embody winning characteristics: Her interests included fitness, hairdos
and world peace. "I wish the world wasn't full of so many negative things, but rather with peace,
friends and love," she writes. In this competition, a good dose of patriotic love for the Fatherland
never hurts either. One contestant sent in a photo of herself enthusiastically waving a Russian
flag. Another contestant, 25-year-old Kristina Pogosjan, stated, "I don't need to go to modeling

Pageant sponsors include the

Atomenergoprom corporation, which was founded two years ago and has
close ties with Rosatom, an agency that controls both the civilian and
military branches of the industry -- and thus practically
all Russia's nuclear material. Rosatom recently announced plans to build 40
school. After all, I work for 'Atomtrudresurcy.'"

new nuclear reactors at a cost of $60 billion. With these plans, Russia will raise the share of
atomic energy in its mix from 17 percent to 25 percent. The country already has 31 active

The future of atomic energy in Russia seems

secure. Now the industry's ladies are seeing to its image.
reactors.

Nuclear power sustains hierarchal domination between those that

produce the goods for nuclear power. Spath 14
Nuclear colonialism, 4/07/14, ANDREAS SPTH, News 24.

Fans of nuclear energy love France. They habitually depict the country
which produces more than three quarters of its electricity
using atomic power as the way forward to clean, cheap
and low-carbon energy for all. In their enthusiasm they tend to
ignore the less than glamorous aspects of the French
nuclear industry. Some of these issues were thrown into sharp relief on February 18
this year, when a coup dtat in Niger, an otherwise entirely
overlooked African nation, seemed to threaten the
security of 40 to 45% of the uranium ore that fuels French
nuclear reactors. Niger, a former French colony, has the singular distinction of
being Africas biggest uranium producer. Other than that its a basket
case and has been since independence in 1960. Perpetually underdeveloped, the country has the worlds highest infant
mortality rate, 71% adult illiteracy, a life expectancy of 43
years and is regularly devastated by droughts and
famines. With between 60 and 70% of the population
surviving on less than a dollar a day Niger has long been

among the poorest countries on earth. Since the early

1970s the French have extracted some 100 000 tons of
Nigerien uranium ore and through subsidiaries of the
state-owned company Areva, they continue to control the mining
of the metal through a de facto monopoly, although in
recent years exploration licences have also been sold to
Canadian, Chinese, American, Australian, South Korean
and South African companies. Ordinary citizens of Niger
have seen precious little of their supposed uranium
wealth. What money has been spent on development has
gone primarily towards infrastructure for the uranium
industry and the rest has tended to end up in the pockets
of government officials. While their uranium delivers hundreds
of millions in profits to Areva every year, lights the
exclusive boutiques on the Champs-lyses and baths the
Eiffel Tower in a romantic glow, more than 70% of
Nigeriens themselves remain without access to
electricity. Not only have there been scant economic rewards, but the uranium
mining areas have been left with substantial
environmental and health problems: - Uranium mining and processing is
water-intensive, depriving an already arid area of a vital
resource by draining underground aquifers and leaving
behind contaminated evaporation ponds. - In 2005 French nuclear
watchdog CRIIRAD found contaminated drinking water wells with radiation
levels 10 to 110 times above World Health Organisation
limits. - Water contamination has also been caused by a coal
power plant that was build to provide electricity for the
uranium mines. - In 2005, French NGO Sherpa found that mine workers
were uninformed about the health risks associated with their jobs,
received little in the way of protective equipment and often went
untreated for cancers commonly associated with long-term exposure to uranium and its
carcinogenic daughter product, radon gas. - Local health workers have reported cases of
premature deaths and previously unobserved illnesses among poorly paid uranium miners. Some 20 million tons of uncovered radioactive mine tailings shed toxic windblown dust across the
area. - Contaminated scrap metal, pipes and plastics from the mines and their surroundings have
been turned into radioactive kitchen utensils, irrigation pipes and building materials by the
impoverished locals. - Since 2003, local and international NGOs have reported dangerous levels
of radioactive contamination in the streets of Nigers uranium mining towns on several occasions.
At the end of last year, just weeks after Areva had announced the problem fixed, Greenpeace
found radioactivity as much as 500 times above normal background levels in the streets of the

Colonialism is dead. Long live neocolonialism. Coup dtat or not, the power relations have
remained largely intact: local elites enrich themselves as
their countrys natural resources are shipped off for the
benefit of First World citizens, while the poor in the global
south bear the environmental burden of their supposedly
clean, green lifestyles. The international nuclear industry is an integral part of this
dirty scheme in France, Niger and elsewhere. Its time to stop it in its tracks
and get it to clean up the toxic mess its created.
mining town of Akokan.

Nuclear power is patriarchal and reinforces unequal social divisions.

Martin et. Al 84
(The main authors are Jill Bowling, Brian Martin, Val Plumwood and Ian Watson, with important contributions from Ray Kent, Basil Schur and
Rosemary Walters. Strategy against nuclear power http://www.bmartin.cc/pubs/86sa.html)
Why was the nuclear option taken? Nuclear power is not an automatic or inevitable development. Technology is not neutral but
develops in ways which correspond to social structures. The social structures which favour and in turn are favoured by nuclear
power include capitalism, patriarchy, the intellectual division of labour and the state. The connections and reinforcements between
these entrenched social structures is the reason why nuclear power is so hard to dislodge. In the early 1950s, nuclear power had
not yet been shown to be technologically feasible, much less economically viable. In 1952 the Paley Commission in the US
favoured heavy investment in solar technology as the energy option of the future. Despite such options, nuclear power was
promoted over solar power. Nuclear power was originally promoted by states rather than corporations or workers. Nuclear power
was attractive to governments and state bureaucracies for several reasons. Nuclear power, by virtue of its large size, centralised
production of electricity and dependence on experts, was suitable for control by state bureaucracies. Solar home heating, by
comparison, did not lend itself to such control. Nuclear power fitted neatly into the existing electricity generation and distribution
system. Like coal or oil, it was a way of producing electricity at a central location for distribution through the established grid.
Unlike oil, where there are several commercial outlets to chose from, we can only have one distributor's power points in our
houses. When that distributor is the state - and most electricity grids are either state-owned or state regulated - the consequence
for communities is a reduction of local control over their energy planning. The potential risks of nuclear power - for example from
meltdown accidents at nuclear power plants - were too large to be taken by even the largest corporations. US companies only
joined nuclear power projects after many subsidies and incentives were offered by the US state, including the Price-Anderson Act
in 1957 which limited corporate liability in the event of reactor accidents. The pro-nuclear US Department of Energy estimated that
in 1980 the US 'commercial' nuclear-power industry had been subsidised to the tune of $US37,000 million. Anti-nuclear groups
have put the figure closer to $US100,000 million. For these reasons, nuclear power has been largely state-developed, owned and
promoted. Only in the US do corporations have much of an independent role, and even there the industry is heavily regulated by
the state. Most of those countries with the greatest stake in nuclear power - United States, Japan, Soviet Union, France, West
Germany, Britain - are the most powerful economically. The state is not a unified entity. It incorporates the elected government,
the military, the police, the legal system, state bureaucracies for regulating the economy and providing welfare services, and
many other functions. Only some of these parts of the state have been active in promoting nuclear power, notably the energy
bureaucracies, parts of the military and some politicians. An important pressure within these areas has come from politically active
nuclear scientists and engineers. Nuclear weapons and nuclear power would not have been possible without the mobilisation of
scientific expertise for the purposes of the state. Especially since World War Two, an ever increasing fraction of research and
development finance has come from the state, and the orientation of science and technology has been increasingly oriented to the
requirements of large corporations and the state. This science-state interaction has given rise to the technocrats, among whom
the nuclear elites are prominent. Nuclear power simultaneously provides a power base for the nuclear elites while increasing state
power. In capitalist societies, the state is structurally tied to corporate expansion and profit making. A key role of governments in
capitalist countries is maintaining the conditions necessary for corporate profit-making. Indeed, the state has intervened in
education and health, among other things, in order to ensure that capitalism is provided with a continuing work force, that is,
healthy workers with the right skills and attitudes. Similarly, the state takes care of many of the other needs of capitalism,
particularly subsidising the infrastructure (such as ports and rail lines) of large projects. In a way, large scale 'development'
projects, such as nuclear power, can be seen as a test of the state's commitment to key corporations and to securing the
conditions necessary for capitalist profitability. Despite the intimate connections between the state and the corporate sector, there
is also a particular logic to capitalist investment. Projects which are capital intensive, large scale, centralised and suitable for
monopolisation are favoured areas of corporate investment. Thus promotion of energy efficiency, or of decentralised and locally
controlled energy sources, would do little for profits and are thus ignored (or undermined) by corporate management. Similarly,
there has been little corporate interest in biological pest control because it does not have readily monopolisable sources and
cannot be easily oriented to a single market consumer. In other words, profitability of this environmentally sound technology is
minimal. Ultimately, investment decisions in a capitalist society reflect this preoccupation with profitability at the expense of social
usefulness and environmental harmony. When corporations are confronted with the environmental pollution, concern for
profitability dictates that efforts will be made to merely clean up the mess, rather than change the structures responsible for the
pollution. Underlying the immediate role of the state and nuclear elites in promoting nuclear power are several deeper factors. One
is the hierarchy and division of labour characteristic of modern corporations and state bureaucracies. Workers are kept under
control by work organisation - such as the manufacturing division of labour - in which key decisions are made by elites and in

Technologies are often chosen or

designed to enforce hierarchical control in the workplace.
Nuclear power fits this pattern well. Other technologies besides nuclear power can
which shopfloor participation is minimised.

be assessed according to whether they lend themselves to centralised or decentralised control. For example, many simpler
weapons such as the rifle can be used either by soldiers or police on behalf of the state, or by forces opposing the state such as
guerrillas. In contrast, nuclear weapons are typical of modern technological weapons: they require training and expertise to use
and are generally inaccessible to small groups. Like nuclear weapons, nuclear power as an energy source lends itself to centralised
control. In contrast, measures such as bicycle transport, passive solar design, solar heating, wind power or biogas production lend
themselves to local community control. An emphasis on nuclear power must not obscure the fact that other energy technologies
can also fulfil the same socially destructive role that nuclear power plays. Even the much heralded solar energy has the potential
to be incorporated into these structures if it develops in certain ways. For example, one US corporation has proposed a satellite
solar power station which would orbit the earth and beam down massive amounts of microwave radiation to be collected by a
seven kilometre wide receiver on the earth's surface. Clearly a campaign which effectively does away with nuclear power does not
automatically do away with centralised systems of political and economic control. The key distinction between technologies is not
whether they are solar, fossil or nuclear, but whether they lend themselves to control by political and economic elites or to control
by individuals and local communities. Scientific research on nuclear power also illustrates the effects of this division of labour.

The isolation of social control and responsibility and

concern in the hands of political elites, together with the
structure of the scientific community, act together to
produce a system which keeps scientists locked into
socially destructive research. Science is not value-free.
Politically determined goals, like winning a real-war or cold-war situation,
can conveniently smother irksome consciences. At the same time, the

intellectual challenges which scientific research presents provide a strong driving force for the commitment of individual scientists.

scientists can work on weapons of mass destruction

because the political decisions regarding these weapons
are made at a distance, in an apparently legitimate
forum. Such scientists may not consider that they have
the right or expertise to question the political
consequences of their work. It is this intellectual division of labour which focusses scientists'
attention and their energies upon research problems which are divorced from their social consequences. Most
scientists are ominously silent about the political side of
the nuclear fuel cycle, particularly the undermining of civil liberties 'necessary' to safeguard nuclear
power. Patriarchy - the collective domination of men over women - and other major
social structures such as the state and capitalism
mutually reinforce one another. It is important here to differentiate between masculinity,
Thus some

which is socially constructed, and maleness, which has a genetic base. Most men exhibit culturally specific masculine behaviour

Within state
bureaucracies, corporations and the scientific community,
women are discriminated against through job and career
structures which concentrate men into the most powerful
positions. Commonly, to gain entry to these positions, women themselves are forced to adopt a 'masculine approach'.
and this behaviour is often expressed as domination of women and the environment.

It is at this level of power that masculine values emerge such as careerism, competitiveness, aggressiveness, the separation of
tasks from emotion, and patterns of dominance. These values foster inequalities between people, thereby further concentrating
power into the hands of an elite and forming the basis of exploitation of other people and nature. Nuclear weapons for example are
a product of aggression and dominance relations as opposed to the more feminine values of nurturing and caring. Indeed it would
be difficult to imagine the development of nuclear weapons in a society where feminine values predominated. On the one hand,

the state and corporations mobilise patriarchal relations

to serve their own domination, for example to split the
workforce and impose hierarchical relations between men
as well as between men and women. On the other band, groups of men mobilise
state and capitalist interests to maintain their domination over women, for example using job seniority rules and the legal system
to keep women in lesser occupations or the home. The intellectual division of labour, and the concept of professionalism which is
used to justify it, also are associated with deeply rooted masculine values. For example, the way in which the scientific community
is structured, particularly the impetus to continually publish ahead of rivals, promotes intellectual aggressiveness and
competitiveness. In addition many of the characteristics of modern science can be grouped under the heading of 'masculine
rationality'. This rationality sets up a dualism between society and nature, production and reproduction, the intellect and the
emotions, and the technical and the political. 1. Nature, which in the traditional metaphor is seen as feminine, is regarded by
masculine rationality as merely a resource to be exploited or an enemy to be subjugated by society. 2. Masculine elevation of the
realm of production as the most worthwhile area of life reflects the dominant presence men have in this realm. At the same time
the realm of reproduction is denigrated and so this area which women have traditionally dominated is denied status. Yet
production and reproduction are both essential for a society's survival. The failure of masculine rationality to recognise the value of
both production and reproduction rules out the possibility of a harmonious balance between current needs and long-term survival.
Not surprisingly, this is the same balance which the existence of nuclear weapons undermines. 3. Masculine rationality also
endorses the separation of the intellect and the emotions - the intellect being seen as superior - and the idea of emotional
neutrality towards objects of study. When ordinary people become actively concerned about nuclear power, this style of rationality
characterises them as emotional and ill-informed in contrast to the experts who it depicts as involved in 'responsible, objective,
scientific endeavour'. Thus too scientists are encouraged to remain detached from the social consequences of their work. 4.
Masculine rationality also connects with the sharp division between the realm of ends and that of means. This is reflected in turn in
the separation of the technical and the political, and of the technical dimensions of a problem from its political ramifications. The
separation is visible in the current division of labour. For example, it is necessary to have nuclear physicists, nuclear engineers,
plant technicians and construction workers in order to conceive, design and build a nuclear power plant. However, these people
are not required to consider the social and political consequences of their work; these 'goal' aspects are 'taken care of' by
politicians. The dominant political system makes social responsibility and the determination of ends, which should be everyone's
concern, the concern of a specialised few. This type of separation between the technical and the political is especially evident in
dominant ways of organising work such as in bureaucracies. Domination of nature is another fundamental factor underlying state
promotion of nuclear power. Modern industrialisation, science and technology are based on subjugating the environment, on
extracting resources for human requirements. The orientation is one of exploitation for short-term use rather than harmony and
understanding. Domination of nature, of women and of workers are all aspects of modern structures which maintain hierarchy and
inequality and which serve

Part 3 the Advocacy

Plan Text: All countries ought to prohibit the production of nuclear
power. Lucas 12
Caroline Lucas [an British politician, and since 2 September 2016, Co-Leader of the Green Party of England
and Wales], 2-17-2012, "Why we must phase out nuclear power," Guardian,
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/17/phase-out-nuclear-power MG
The inherent risk in the use of nuclear energy, as well as the related proliferation of nuclear technologies, can and does have

. The only certain way to eliminate this potentially

devastating risk is to phase out nuclear power altogether . Some
countries appear to have learnt this lesson. In Germany, the
government changed course in the aftermath of Fukushima and decided to go ahead with
a previously agreed phase out of nuclear power. Many scenarios now
foresee Germany sourcing 100% of its power needs from
renewables by 2030. Meanwhile Italian citizens voted against plans to go nuclear with a 90% majority.
The same is not yet true in Japan. Although only three out of its 54 nuclear reactors are online and generating power,
disastrous consequences

while the Japanese authorities conduct "stress tests", the government hopes to reopen almost all of these and prolong the working
life of a number of its ageing reactors by to up to 60 years. The Japanese public have made their opposition clear however.

Opinion polls consistently show a strong majority of the

population is now against nuclear power. Local grassroots
movements opposing nuclear power have been springing
up across Japan. Mayors and governors in fear of losing
their power tend to follow the majority of their citizens.

Rejection of nuclear power through a feminist lens opens up a space to

reject colonialist patriarchy more generally. Bryant 15
The International Handbook of Political Ecology, Raymond L Bryant, 2015.
This is unfortunate, because political ecology has much to offer here. First, it provides a useful

the uneven distribution of the costs

and benefits of nuclear power. Studies of anti-nuclear
movements have certainly analyzed them in relation to
the emergence of new social movements in the
developed economies from the 19608 (Welsh, 2013; Touraine et al., 1983;
Rudig, 1990; Joppke, 1993). However, this literature emphasizes movement
strategizing in relation to organized politics, while
paying less attention to issues of environmental justice
and global inequality in the shaping of nuclear politics. But these latter
issues are immensely important, with nuclear power long
embedded in colonial-type relationships within and
across borders. The disproportionate burden borne by
indigenous com- munities is particularly clear here, notably
in relation to uranium mining and nuclear waste disposal
(Ishiyama, 2003). Even the location of nuclear plants is concentrated
in indigenous areas (Fan, 2006), as well as other
disadvantaged communities (Alldred and Shrader-Frechette, 2009).
framework for understanding

Unequal power relations associated with the nuclear industry also requires
global analysis today insofar as nuclear firms (usually from
the global North) aggressively promote nuclear energy
exports to the global South. At multiple scales, therefore, political ecology is
well placed to analyze who benefits and who loses in a globalizing nuclear industry. Second,

expansion of nuclear energy is

intricately linked to how it has been discursively framed.
Thus, from images of peaceful atomic power use after the
Second World War to its recent framing as a low-carbon
energy solution to climate change, how nuclear power is
presented has been vital to industry fortunes (Bickerstaff et al.,
2008). Here, political ecologys attention to struggles over the
meaning attached to resources would help illuminate the
power relationships involved in shifting nuclear
discourses and practices. Third, political ecology is well placed to assess the
political ecology can document how the

perennial threat of nuclear accidents, given its long focus on disasters. Nuclear accidents are
certainly not limited to the big accidents in Three Mile Island (in 1979), Chernobyl (in 1986) and
Fukushima (in 20] 1), since there have been more than 30 significant accidents since the I95os
(Rogers, 20] I). Now, while political ecology has analyzed disasters ranging from soil erosion
(Blaikie and Brookfield, 1987) to industrial accidents (Rajan, 2001), nuclear ones are rather
neglected. Instead, analyses of nuclear disasters tend to portray the latter as a single, abnormal
and isolated event - as with Fukushima, which was caused by an unprecedented tsunami rather
than industry-related problems. Here, the historical and structural analyses found in political
ecology would be a useful antidote to such work in that they could highlight how disasters are
not freak events but are rather embedded in larger social structures and historical trajectories.

feminist analysis of nuclear power offers an even

richer understanding of the politics of nuclear energy.
Research certainly shows that nuclear power involves complicated
gender relations. First, studies suggest that women face a
greater vulner- ability to ionizing radiation than do men
Additionally,

(Olson et al., 2012). Female scientists have been pivotal in the analysis of the differentiated
health impacts of ionizing radiation. Epidemiologist Alice Stewart, for instance, established in the
195os that X-rays relationships involved in shifting nuclear discourses and practices. Third,
political ecology is well placed to assess the perennial threat of nuclear accidents, given its long

the notion of
feminism itself was appropriated by pro-nuclear factions
focus on disasters. Third, and paradoxically, scholars have shown how

that argued that womens liberation necessitated widespread uptake of nuclear energy to free

the industry targeted women as a

key partner in its public relations (Nelkin, 1981). For instance, the US
them from domestic drudgery. Indeed,

industrys Atomic Industrial Forum created a linked organization called Nuclear Energy Women
(NEW), whose slogan was newer than NOW [the National Organization for Women] to foster a
pro-nuclear feminism that would mobilize women in favor of nuclear power (Nelson, 1984).

Groups are already protesting against nuclear power the aff is an

endorsement that empowers these movements. Mack-Canty 14
ENVIRONMENTALISM AND POSTCOLONIAL FEMINISM: Examples of Third World Women's Resistance,
University of Idaho, Colleen Mack-Canty. 2014.

Studies of the Environmental Justice Movement in the United States, a movement

responding to environmental racism, show that women,
especially low-income women and women of color, make
up the preponderant number of active participants in
this movement. ( Di Chiro 1993, 109). Grass-roots movements

against toxic-waste often involve women taking actions

to close down toxic-waste dump sites, prevent the siting
of hazardous-waste incinerators, and influence chemical
companies production processes and waste disposal
practices. The womens politics, in these kinds of protests, tends to begin
with their everyday world of experience (Hamilton 1990). Many
examples of this kind of activism in the United States can be
seen in both feminist and environmentalist literature (De
Chiro 1993). One example of this phenomena can be observed in the late 1980s when
women in South Los Angeles, who, with no previous political experience and
little formal education, organized successfully to prevent the city of Los
Angeles imminent plan to build LANCER (a 13-acre incinerator that
would burn 2,000 tons a day of municipal waste) from
being located in their poor Black and Hispanic residential
community. Cynthia Hamilton (1990, 220-221) who studied this event observes that: For
these women, the political issues were personal and in that
sense they become feminist issues. These women, in the end, were
fighting for what they felt was right rather than what
men argued might be reasonable. The coincidence of the
principles of feminism and ecology ... found expression
and developed in the consciousness of these women: the
concern for Earth as a home, the recognition that all
parts of a system have equal value, [and] ... that
capitalist growth has social costs. ... They developed
their critique of patriarchy in practice. In confronting the need for
equality, these women forced the men to a new level of recognitionthat working class womens
concerns cannot be simply dismissed. One anti-LANCER activist, Robin Cannon, explained that,

[m]y husband didnt take me

seriously at first either. He just saw a whole lot of women
meeting and assumed we wouldnt get anything
done. ...After about 6 months, everyone finally took...
[us] seriously. My husband had to learn to allocate more
time for babysitting.... Another activist, Charlotte Bullock, stated Peoples jobs
in addition to the city planners,

were threatened...but I said, Im not going to be intimidated. My childs health comes

first...thats more important than my job.( Quoted in Hamilton 1990, 217 and 220 )

Environmental racism is practiced most extensively on

Indian Reservation, in the U.S. . In addition to the
adverse effects of this kind of racism suffered by African,
Hispanic, and Asian Americans in our country, over half
of all U. S. Indians live in communities with one or more
uncontrolled toxic waste sites (Warren 1997,3). Native lands are the site of
considerable environmental destruction that takes place in this country. Native American
women, who are among the leaders in these movements
for environmental justice, in particular, face immediate
health risks, (e.g., breast milk contamination) from the
presence of polluting activities, such as uranium mining
for nuclear energy on or near reservation (Warren 1997, 10).

According to Winona LaDuke (1993, 98 ) (Ojibway), co-chair of the Indigenous Women = s

Network, a grass-roots network of Native and Pacific Island women, director of the White Earth
Land Recovery Project and U.S. Green Party vice-presidential candidate, Both worldwide and in

Native people are at the center of the present

environmental and economic crisis.... Indigenous peoples
remain on front lines of the North American struggle to
protect our environment. We understand clearly that our lives and those of our
North America,

future generations are totally dependent on our ability to continue resisting colonialism and
industrialization in our lands. Native women are a positive and hopeful force in this resistence.
Women, from many different tribes, in addition to their work in the Environmental Justice
Movement, have been reasserting their place in the community = s life, reversing some colonial
effects that caused their status to seriously decline over the centuries of white dominance. In the
past few decades, Native American women's sense of themselves as a group, both on the
reservations and within the intertribal urban Indian communities, has grown (Allen 1986) (Laguna
Pueblo/Sioux). Women now function as council members and tribal chairs for at least one fourth
of the federally recognized tribes. In the urban, extra-tribal communities, there has been
widespread election of tribal women to urban Indian centers' governing bodies. Additionally,
Native women are very active in areas such as alcohol treatment, restoring cultural values, and
organizing against both the environmental degradation of tribal lands and forced sterilization.
This is work that is absolutely essential to Native Americans as they and their cultures have been
in danger of extinction since the coming of the white man. The popular college classroom video,
To Protect Mother Earth is an account of the continuing battle between Native Americans and
the U S government. In this case, the Western Shoshones are working to prevent nuclear testing
on their lands. Maintaining that the land was legally retained in the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley,
the Shoshones must stake their claim in the U. S. Supreme court At state are 24 million acres
and the survival of an ancient people. The film bears witness to the determination and strength
of the Shoshone people by focusing on the Dann sisters, Carrie and Mary, who are leading the
fight to keep the government from seizing their ancestral land to conducting underground nuclear
tests. The sisters display the deep convictions the Western Shoshone people have rooted in their
history and oral tradition. While the film is a legal account, it is really more of a personal portrait
of the traditional Shoshone people as they demonstrate their ties to the land in a confrontation

The sisters and the

Shoshone people in general are driven by their
traditional Shoshone belief that land is life, spiritually
and economically.
with U.S. government troops at the Nevada nuclear test site.