Content warning: This story includes a description of the impact of the Hiroshima bombing
As we celebrate Thanksgiving and Native American Heritage Month, I'm reflecting on an often overlooked area where Native Americans are still harmed by our nation's violent policies: the realm of nuclear weapons. As an undergrad and a researcher with Nuclear Princeton, I learned, for the first time, that there are 15 operational silos designed to host highly dangerous nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) on Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, home to my tribe: the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation. Their presence likely makes us a priority target for nuclear attack in a potential confrontation with an adversary nation — yet another consequence of the continued violence of American colonialism on our Indigenous peoples.
This was my first time grappling with the concept of nuclear colonialism and the ways it interacts with American militarism. So when I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum this summer and saw people’s first-hand accounts of what a nuclear explosion looks like, it was especially disturbing. Seeing the impacts of only a single nuclear weapon was beyond comprehension: children’s school uniforms shredded, pictures of charred skin, and the indiscriminate destruction of surrounding life.
Imagining the horror of Hiroshima and the destruction that would be caused if nuclear weapons targeted my reservation has inspired my advocacy work to fully retire America’s ICBMs and taking this target off of our land.
In total, there are 450 ICBM silos scattered across the Western United States. Up to 400 nuclear missiles are perpetually kept “on alert” in these silos, with the ability to be launched in a matter of minutes. Their locations across the American West were deliberately chosen in part because they were far from population centers on the coasts, creating a “nuclear sponge,” potentially sacrificing the populations of their host states should there be a nuclear strike on the homeland.
The theory goes: If an adversary launches a nuclear attack on the US, first they would seek to reduce the US’s ability to retaliate by taking out our ICBMs across the West. The ICBM states would then essentially “soak up” many of the adversary’s nukes, leaving fewer to strike other areas of the country considered more valuable. As retired General Jim Mattis said in his 2017 confirmation hearing for secretary of defense:
“With the ICBM force, it’s clear that they are so buried out in the central U.S. that any enemy that wants to take us on is going to have to commit two, three, four weapons to make certain they take each one out. In other words, the ICBM force provides a cost-imposing strategy on an adversary.”
What he didn’t bother to mention is that real people live on this land. The 15 ICBM silos on my reservation make us a direct target in a potential nuclear attack, despite the fact that many tribal members are unaware of their presence or the risk they pose.
It is a horrifying thought to know my family and tribe’s homelands could be destroyed in a matter of seconds if a nuclear war were to break out. To the US government, it seems like our cherished land is simply a strategic target and our lives are just a number in the game of war to which we’ve never consented.
Yet the terrifying shadow ICBMs have cast over my tribe and communities like mine across several Western states is far from the only peril of the missiles. Relics of the Cold War that have far outlived their usefulness, ICBMs — more so than other nuclear weapons — carry a higher risk of accidentally starting a nuclear war. A wide range of experts, from scientists to top generals to a former defense secretary, agree that ICBMs are the shakiest, most dangerous, and least necessary leg of the US nuclear arsenal and have called for eliminating the missiles.
Instead of prioritizing nuclear de-escalation and risk reduction, however, over the next two decades, the US military plans to “modernize” its massive nuclear arsenal in an almost $2 trillion endeavor that will continue to pull much-needed tax dollars away from far more pressing priorities like addressing climate change and economic inequality. This means that in the coming years, rather than phasing out these unnecessary weapons, all deployed ICBMs will be replaced by entirely new ones, and all of the silos will undergo major construction to ensure they remain operational for decades to come. This will force communities like ours to continue to be nuclear targets, even though we never agreed to living with the missiles in the first place.
Nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to us all, but those living in ICBM states are even more vulnerable than other Americans. Due to rising global tensions and multiple ongoing wars, global nuclear danger is now at a historic level, according to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Science and Security Board. Yet, instead of committing to diplomacy and lowering nuclear risks, our political leaders insist on maintaining US military supremacy at all costs and diving headlong into a disastrous new nuclear arms race. As young people, we have inherited these reckless policies, and we are the ones who have to live with the decisions our policymakers are making today for the rest of our lives. We can no longer treat nukes like an afterthought as we did growing up in a post-Cold War world. We have the right, the responsibility, and the power to make our voices heard and urge our policymakers to reduce the US nuclear arsenal over our lifetime, so the next generation can live in a safer world.
Congress has the ability to shape the fate of the nuclear landscape in the US. Through the “power of the purse,” our congressional representatives can control the amount of funding allocated to the ongoing nuclear “modernization” project. We as young voters must call on our representatives to focus on issues that are directly affecting our daily lives instead of pouring endless money into making our gigantic nuclear arsenal even bigger and more lethal. We have much more pressing needs — like housing, education, and economic opportunity — than “nuclear modernization,” which is undemocratic in nature and harmful to communities like mine.
These weapons have the power to destroy life as we know it on our only planet. We don’t need to accept this status quo; we need to speak up.
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