HANFORD WAS A HOMELAND BEFORE IT WAS A NUCLEAR SITE.
Long before the Manhattan Project, the Columbia River landscape surrounding what is now Hanford was home to Indigenous communities whose relationships with the river, fisheries, gathering places, travel routes, cultural landscapes, and sacred places reach far beyond the creation of the federal nuclear reservation.
In 1943, the federal government transformed this landscape for plutonium production.Land was acquired. Communities were displaced. Indigenous access was sharply restricted. The river, hydroelectric system, land, and people were folded into a national nuclear project whose consequences would extend far beyond the war that created it.
THE STORY:
The infrastructure that made Hanford possible did not begin with nuclear reactors. It began with a political decision about what the Columbia River, its lands, and its electricity were for—and whose interests could be displaced to achieve that purpose.
SOME HISTORY LIVES IN ARCHIVES.
SOME HISTORY LIVES IN FAMILIES.
For IJT Executive Director, Johnny Buck, nuclear justice is also personal. His family carries its own history of displacement from the Priest Rapids and Hanford landscape. That story belongs first to the people who carry it. IJT does not believe Indigenous oral history becomes legitimate only when an outside institution confirms it.
Our approach is to hold both:
the public historical record
and
the living memory of families and communities.
Disclaimer:
Stories shared through this campaign remain subject to the consent, protocols, and authority of their storyholders.
DIFFERENT HISTORIES
A SHARED QUESTION OF RESPONSIBILITY
Plutonium production at Hanford and nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands are not the same history.
We should never pretend they are. But communities carrying different parts of the nuclear story can still meet one another across questions of:
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displacement;
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homeland;
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health;
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memory;
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military power;
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environmental contamination;
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consent;
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repair;
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and responsibility to future generations.
The Marshall Islands experienced 67 U.S. nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, and Bikini communities were displaced as part of that testing program. IJT’s approach is to build relationship rather than analogy between communities whose experiences remain distinct.
TRIBAL
NATIONS
ARE NOT STAKEHOLDERS.
Tribal Nations are sovereign governments. Nuclear infrastructure can intersect with:
Treaty Rights;
reserved fisheries;
First Foods;
water;
hunting and gathering;
cultural resources;
sacred places;
burial places;
traditional cultural properties;
and lands and waters carrying responsibilities far older than the infrastructure itself.
Consultation matters. But consultation is not the same thing as consent.IJT supports moving Tribal engagement upstream, before governments and corporations have already selected a preferred development pathway.
Sovereignty before siting.
IJT does not speak for any Tribal Nation. No Nation’s silence should be interpreted as consent. No community-benefit agreement replaces Treaty Rights, governmental authority, or a Nation’s own decision-making process. This distinction is central to our research and policy framework.
RECOGNITION DOES NOT CREATE RELATIONSHIP TO PLACE.
The Wanapum People are not federally recognized as a Tribal Nation.
That does not erase Wanapum history. It does not erase cultural authority. It does not erase community. And it does not erase relationships to Priest Rapids, Hanford, the Columbia River, fishing places, burial places, songs, ceremonies, or generations of responsibility. At the same time, IJT will not collapse Wanapum cultural standing into the treaty-government authority of the Yakama Nation, CTUIR, Nez Perce Tribe, or another sovereign Tribal Nation.
Each relationship requires its own protocol.
