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“A Klee drawing named “Angelus Novus” shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating.  His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.  This is how one pictures the angel of history.  His face is turned toward the past.  Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe that keeps piling ruin upon ruin and hurls it in front of his feet.  The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed.  But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.” — Walter Benjamin (Ninth Thesis on the History of Philosophy)

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Alignment.

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By tracing through the lifecycle of nuclear arms, it is apparent that the effects of this operation reaches into the darkest depths of humanity. From its birth, the mining of Uranium is the exploitation of the planet itself. It is the displacement of the geological beauty that belongs to Mother Earth. Zooming in we see the exploitation of advanced machinery and most importantly, humans themselves. The First People of America, the Navajo Indians became the hands of the Government to extract raw Uranium from their own reservation in Colorado, New Mexico and Utah. This was the utilization of hungry communities that did not understand the dangers of handling radioactive materials and has affected them for generations to come. Next, we see the processing and enrichment of Uranium for weapons assembly; a multi-billion dollar industry that feeds thousands of factory workers and researchers. In the background of this operation is the exploitation of the world’s brightest physicists, scientists and engineers, entitled to help their government in the protection of its nation. Furthermore is the storage of thousands of warheads in military warehouses across the globe. This is a presence that incites fear amongst not only civilians of nations, but of governments themselves. Finally (but not finally), is the use of the weapon. Upon one single explosion is the absence of 80,000 lives of unique individuals. It is also the blood, sweat and tears of countless laboring communities, researchers, scientists and Mother Earth itself. The 120,000+ lives of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is only the tip of the iceberg in this lifecycle of nuclear arms. The real end of this lifecycle is impossible to identify - it lives on through the relatives of countless individuals affected under the umbrella of its oppression. It is: The pinnacle of a parasitic operation that reveals the darkest side of humanity. It is: The beginnings of a 4.5 billion year contamination of an Earth that does not belong solely to our generation. It is: The largest hostage takeover the Anthropocene has ever experienced with the hopes of humanity dangling from the strings of the political elite.

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Presence. Rodin Crater - James Turrell

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Absence. Uranium mining in Navajo Nation

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Geologic setting of important types of uranium deposits. Figure courtesy of Kesler, S.E., 1994, Mineral Resources, Economics and the Environment 

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Rossing Uranium Mine - Swakopmund, Namibia

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Navajo Miner Inside a Mine in the Colorado Plateaus “When uranium mining first commenced in the 1940s, the Navajo did not even have a word meaning “radioactivity” (Arnold). Rather, many Navajo saw the influx of uranium mining as a blessing, an opportunity for work that did not require them to travel away from home. Sadly, this blessing effectually acted more as a curse, bringing forth many years of contamination and many attendant negative health outcomes. In fact, jobs offered in uranium mines qualify as a form of economic blackmail, perpetuating the concept that low-income communities must choose between “financial worth and environmental protection” when seeking employment (Cox and Pezullo). George Tutt, former uranium miner, recounted his initial reaction to the influx of uranium mines, saying, “We thought we were very fortunate,” but added that “we were not told, ‘Later on this will affect you in this way'”  Environmental Health Perspectives; DOI:10.1289/ehp.122-A44 https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/122-a44/ A look at one uranium mine shows how difficult it will be to clean up the reservation's hundreds of abandoned Cold War-era mines https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/abandoned-uranium-mines-a/

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Uranite Crystals - Photo by Robert Lavinsky

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Cubes and cuboids of uranium produced during the Manhattan project U.S. Department of Energy - http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/basic_research.htm

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Monitoring the Nuclear Weapons Lifecycle NTI.org - IPNDV 4th Plenary Presentation