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Settler killing more Country: Jacob Tropp, ‘Globalizing Diné (Navajo) Stories of Radioactive Injustice: Transnational and Settler Colonial Politics of Uranium Mining in the Late 1970s and Early 1980s’, Regeneration: Environment, Art, Culture, 2, 3, 2026

13May26

Abstract: The traumatic impacts of uranium mining on Diné (Navajo) communities in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah in the late 20th century have become well-known cases of radioactive injustice. Much less recognized is how these experiences were significant on a global stage. This paper explores how Diné uranium experiences and activism became entangled in two other particularly fraught global arenas of nuclear and settler colonial politics in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In particular, Diné experiences reverberated in two other settler colonial contexts: Northern Territory, Australia, where Aboriginal activists resisted uranium mining’s expansion on their communities’ lands; and Namibia, where opposition to uranium mining was tied to the fight for independence from apartheid South Africa. Diné and other Native American activists, along with non-Native allies, utilized a variety of transnational platforms – in Australia, the U.S., and western Europe – to share the cautionary lessons of Diné communities’ ongoing suffering from radioactive injustice, forging solidarities with Aboriginal and Namibian actors as well as activists representing other Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups facing similar uranium mining threats. This circulation of Diné uranium stories not only heightened transnational awareness of the shared nuclear vulnerabilities of Indigenous people in settler colonial contexts but also brought into sharp focus the tremendous personal suffering at stake in uranium development around the world.


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