AN INDIGENOUS JUST TRANSITION CAMPAIGN
THE NUCLEAR STORY ISN’T OVER.
From the Columbia River to the Marshall Islands, communities are still carrying the consequences of decisions made generations ago. Nuclear justice asks what truth, repair, sovereignty, healing, and responsibility require now—and before another generation inherits the cost.
Columbia River, Hanford Reach
What is nuclear justice?
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BEFORE THERE WAS A REACTOR,
THERE WAS A PLACE.
A river.
Fishing places.
Root grounds.
Villages.
Families.
Ceremonies.
Animals.
Medicines.
Stories.
Relationships carried across generations.
The places chosen for the nuclear age were not empty.
They had histories.
They had people.
They had responsibilities.
And they had futures.
NUCLEAR JUSTICE BEGINS THERE.
It begins by refusing to treat land as an empty surface on which history starts when an industrial project arrives.
It asks who was there before.
Who was displaced.
Who benefited.
Who carried the harm.
Who still carries it.
Who was allowed to decide.
And what repair requires now.
Choose Your Path
A NUCLEAR PROJECT IS NEVER JUST ONE PLACE.
Land
Uranium
Extraction
Enrichment
+
Fuel
Reactors /
Plutonium
Production
Weapons
Testing
Contamination
Waste
Cleanup
Storage
Generations
Different communities encounter different parts of this system. Those histories should not be collapsed together. But neither should they be treated as unrelated. The nuclear age connected lands and peoples across enormous distances. And many of those relationships continue today.
OUR FRAMEWORK
WHAT NUCLEAR JUSTICE MEANS TO IJT
SOVEREIGNTY
Tribal Nations shape decisions affecting their lands, rights, waters, and cultural resources from the beginning.
TRUTH
Policy begins with an honest account of how nuclear infrastructure was created and who carried its consequences.
REPAIR
Unfinished obligations do not disappear because political attention moves elsewhere.
HEALTH
Communities carrying nuclear exposure and contamination deserve health systems capable of meeting the consequences.
ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION
Land and water are not merely sites of damage. They are living systems capable of healing when given the conditions to do so.
PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY
Private development should not quietly transfer first-of-a-kind financial, waste, cleanup, or stranded-asset risk to ratepayers and taxpayers.
FUTURE GENERATIONS
Infrastructure whose consequences span generations must be governed on a generational timescale.
CURRENT IJT NUCLEAR JUSTICE WORK
IJT is building a growing body of work rooted in relationship, accountability, sovereignty, and intergenerational responsibility.
These projects connect community knowledge, research, storytelling, policy, and organizing to help communities understand what is happening now—and shape what comes next.
From reciprocal exchange and community-controlled storytelling to project monitoring, policy research, youth engagement, and health
and healing, this work is grounded in a simple principle: the future should be shaped by the people who will live with its consequences.
Each project is part of a larger effort to strengthen knowledge, protect community authority, support repair, and ensure that decisions affecting Indigenous lands, waters, and futures do not happen without meaningful participation.
THE QUESTIONS WE ARE ASKING NOW
Who knows before the deal is made?
Who has the authority before the land is committed?
Who owns the water constraint?
When do Tribal Nations enter the decision?
What does repair look like?
These questions are about more than infrastructure. They are about sovereignty, consent, accountability, repair, and generations yet to come. At IJT, we believe the people most connected to the land and water must have a meaningful role in shaping what happens there.
Who finances the instrastructure?
Who pays when cost forecasts are wrong?
Who bears the waste obligation?
What rights cannot simply be "mitigated"?
Who gets to decide what the Columbia Basin is for?
THE STORY IS STILL BEING WRITTEN.
Follow the work.
Bring your knowledge.
Help shape what comes next.
Receive Nuclear Justice updates from IJT, including research, community stories, policy developments, exchanges, public meetings, and opportunities to participate.
FOR JOURNALISTS + RESEARCHERS
Nuclear justice requires historical precision. IJT can help journalists and researchers understand connections among Indigenous history, Hanford, Tribal sovereignty, the Columbia River, nuclear cleanup, emerging advanced nuclear development, hyperscale electricity demand, and intergenerational responsibility.
INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:
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Fact sheets
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Timeline
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Research
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Spokesperson information
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Approved photographs
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Public-source archive
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Terminology guidance