• Last updated January 31, 2006

"One does not sell the earth upon which the people walk." – Crazy Horse

"It is characteristic of the military mentality that non-human factors... are held essential, while the human being, his [or her] desires and thoughts... are considered as unimportant and secondary." - Albert Einstein

Between 1946 and 1958, a number of U.S. politicians, premier scientists, and members of the University of California Board of Regents journeyed frequently to the Marshall Islands. During these years, the U.S. conducted 67 atmospheric nuclear weapons tests on this U.S. “trust territory” in the central Pacific Ocean.(1)  The travelers wanted to witness the detonations up close and, from an atoll located upwind, revel in the spectacle of “thermonuclear fireballs rising above the Pacific Ocean.”(2) After the galas were over, many would retire to UC Regent Edwin Pauley's 25-acre estate in Hawaii, before returning home with souvenirs from the blasts in tow.(3)

As a consequence of U.S. nuclear testing in the Marshalls, hundreds of native people were killed, thousands were dislocated, and many of the islands and atolls in the region were rendered completely uninhabitable.(4) The 67 bombs’ combined “yield” of 108 megatons is equivalent to 7,000 Hiroshima bombs -- an average of 1.6 “Little Boy" detonations every day over a 12-year period.(5) Native Marshall Islanders still suffer extremely disproportionate rates of radiation-induced maladies such as birth defects, "jellyfish" babies, cancer, and thyroid problems.(6)

Unfortunately, the Marshallese are far from alone in this respect.  The poisoning, oppression, and subjugation of indigenous communities worldwide has been a brutal hallmark of the Nuclear Age.  In addition to nuclear testing, the processes of uranium mining, plutonium manufacturing, assembly of weapons and reactors, operation of reactors, and nuclear waste storage have all occurred disproportionately at the expense of indigenous peoples and their lands, a deep respect for which is a universal foundation of indigenous cultures. 

Within the borders of the world’s largest nuclear power, the United States, the nuclear industry’s exploitation of indigenous communities has been particularly acute.  University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill has labeled this complex process “the radioactive colonization of Native North America.”(7) The Dine (Navajo), Goshute, Laguna, Mescalero Apache, Oglala Lakota, Paiute, Spokane, Tewa, Western Shoshone, and other Native North American nations live everyday with its deadly effects.

Ronald Reagan consults with UC Regent Edwin Pauley while UC President Clark Kerr looks on (1967).

In glaring contrast to its benign “liberal” image, the University of California has played a decisive role in enabling “radioactive colonization” to occur.  The UC Regents have managed both the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) – the facilities that are the heart of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex – since their inceptions.  In addition, UC scientists devised many of the nuclear programs that have led to some of the most severe instances of degradation of Native North American nations and their lands.

In this context, it is worth recalling that the University of California would never have been founded if not for the mass extermination of Native American peoples in California in the 1840s-1860s.  From the outset, the UC was designed by its founders and leaders to serve the interests of the imperial United States – a society that, like it or not, was founded on the expropriation of land from indigenous peoples.  And that society continues to benefit greatly from the extraction of “natural resources” from indigenous communities both abroad and domestically. As Churchill notes:

“The history of conquest, militarily or otherwise, which has always marked the U.S./Canadian relationship to Native North America, has correspondingly transformed itself into a process of colonization, albeit of an “internal” variety peculiar to highly evolved settler-states.  The impacts of that system on American Indian environments and the people who inhabit them are in many ways best demonstrated through examination of the effects generated by the uranium mining industry… and consequent nuclear proliferation… ”(8)

What follows is an overview of radioactive colonization, as well as a critical examination of the UC’s integral role in it.  While the many UC Regents and UC scientists complicit in this process neither dropped the bombs nor, in most cases, directly poisoned the people who now suffer the inherent deadly consequences of the Nuclear Age, their guilt extends far beyond merely conducting extravagant celebrations while witnessing the decimation of the Marshall Islands.  By acting continuously over the years to ensure greater proliferation of nuclear weapons, nuclear testing, and nuclear research, these Regents and scientists have played an integral role in ensuring the perpetuation of the entire nuclear cycle, thereby making them culpable for all of its toxic effects.

Part 1 - "Manifest Destiny" and the Founding of the UC
Part 2 - Los Alamos, Livermore, and the Nuclear Testing Regime
Part 3 - Uranium Mining, the UC, and the "Privatization of Genocide"
Part 4 - Ending Nuclear Nolonization
Appendix "A" - Indigenous Nations Who Inhabited Present-Day UC Lands
Appendix "B" - Additional Reading and Resources
Works Cited

(The descriptions and analyses on the following pages are not intended as a definitive account, but instead are the author’s interpretation of a series of historical events and an effort to frame those events so as to make clear their relevancy to UC-connected communities of the present-day.)