Aural History

[ archival newsreel] 

1955 ARCHIVAL NEWSREEL: The Nevada desert in America is the scene of the latest atomic test. International observers come by invitation to join scientists, military and civil defense authorities making a study of the test. 

A whole town of specially chosen types of buildings with dummies inside them has been erected to study survival chances in an atomic explosion. Called Doom Town, the buildings and their contents will test the effects of the bomb at distances ranging from one to two miles. The extent to which food will be contaminated by radioactivity will also be studied, along with the effect of blasts on communications. Fully protected cameras concealed inside and outside the buildings will take pictures of the blast scene. The bomb itself is contained in a device at the top of a tower 500 feet high. Tanks move into the blast area...

LAYLA MUHAMMAD: This aural history comes from the Native American Forum on Nuclear Issues—an event that spanned two days at UNLV, and is now included in the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project. The project’s lead researcher, Mary Palevsky, notes that of the 1,000 nuclear weapons tests conducted during the Cold War, 928 took place at the Nevada Test Site. Researchers conducted over 300 hours of interviews with individuals affiliated with and impacted by the site. The project records the experiences of downwinders and radiation testers who reveal that wildlife, water, and weather do not obey the boundaries humans create.  

For this episode on land acknowledgment, we turn to the voice of Kenny Anderson, a tribal council member for the Southern Paiute people, who describes his experience with a mainstay of Las Vegas history: nuclear testing.

KENNY ANDERSON: My name is Kenny Anderson. I’m with the Las Vegas Paiute Tribe. I’m a council member, tribal member, I’m the environmental program manager for the tribe, and cultural representative for the tribe.

MUHAMMAD: Kenny Anderson was born in 1958; both parents are Southern Paiute people—[a tribe] who have lived along the Colorado River for at least 900 years, moving north and west into what is today called Nevada, Utah, and California.

ANDERSON:  We’re a small tribe, like maybe 53 members, plus another probably 20 more kids who, once they reach a certain age, become a member. But we’ve actually been talking with, or having meetings with, the NRC and DOE concerning our issues on the nuclear test site, and having it being a center through the Native land like [U.S.] 95 and we have the train tracks…

MUHAMMAD: Anderson grew up in Utah and Las Vegas. Now 62, Anderson works mornings for a construction company and his afternoons at the Nuwu marketplace, a Pauite cannabis shop on Main Street.  

In 1863, the Treaty of Ruby Valley recognized a large swath of land as Western Shoshone homeland. It stretches across what is known as Southern California, Nevada, and into Idaho. 

The Nevada Test Site was an outdoor laboratory used to conduct experiments for the U.S. during the Cold War. The test site exists on Western Shoshone homeland according to the Ruby Valley Treaty. In fact, ‘The 928 American nuclear explosions in Newe Sogobia have been classified by the Western Shoshone National Council as bombs rather than “tests.’

[sound: archival footage of nuclear bomb tests, explosions]

1955 ARCHIVAL NEWSREEL: Many cameras in many locations film the single blast. 

MUHAMMAD: The testing on the site affected those far beyond its boundaries and into surrounding communities. While the test site provided jobs to thousands of people, the danger of radiation continues to affect populations on farms, ranches, and communities, including Indian Reservations. 

ANDERSON: … and hopefully all the other states will try to stop this nuclear waste from coming into Nevada. But we’re a small tribe and some of the problems that we were trying to talk to the DOE about is the problem with transportation and what happens if it crashes, and all that radiation is released into the area. We’re a small tribe and our economic development will be totally devastated. 

We were telling the NRC and [DOE], the same questions: what do we do? What do we get out of it? Are we supposed to just move away like the non-Natives do? Because we’re from here, we’re from this valley, we’ve been here for over a thousand years, and our families are here, and we’re not moving. But we would like to have guarantees of what happens to us, and where we go from there. We’re talking about Moapa and Vegas, and it goes up to the Southern Utah area; those five bands up there, all those people were affected. 

The lands around there, all that radiation came over and they had seen it. They were telling everybody, they’d had to just either, one day, stay in the house, and one day they’d have to go out and do their gardens and pick—back then they did a lot of farm work, like picking vegetables and stuff like that for farmers. They were out there exposed to this radiation, all through that area.

MUHAMMAD: Kenny Anderson’s mother died of leukemia at age 65.  He has continued his work bringing awareness to Indigenous history and to the health needs of the Indigenous community.

ANDERSON: A lot of these people aren’t here no more to tell this story because they are gone. You know, they were exposed and now they have leukemia, which is sort of like strange for Native Americans to get. They die, and where’s their story? Do they tell me?

They’ve seen the big bloom of light as it came this way and they thought it was really nice, ‘Wow, look at that, we get to see something,’ but no, that’s not—they didn’t realize what it really was. The government really didn’t actually tell a lot of people either. 

Natives and non-Natives were really exposed in the Southern Utah and the Southern Nevada area, and they’re gone too. Where’s their stories? They’re not here, because they’re gone.

But what we would want to do is like, tell the people who are involved, like the DOE and the NRC, to protect the people that are here now. If something happens, Vegas is going to be—they’ll all go, they're all going to go to another—they’ll make a new Vegas somewhere else,  but we’re going to be here.