This panel will explore three episodes of potential radiation exposure among indigenous group in the far north during the twentieth century. We aim to better understand Cold War anxieties about nuclear radiation and the relationship between outside experts and indigenous peoples living in contaminated regions. There are varied political dimensions to our stories as well, including state secrecy during the atomic and space ages, indigenous activism and claims for sovereignty and recompense, the temporal aspects of settler colonialism, and scientists’ uneasy campaigns to marshal native peoples as witnesses who could bolster their own claims of expertise. Another key theme uniting the papers is the migrations of radioactive pollution from the molecular to the cosmic level and across international, regional, and imaginary borders. Our three cases involve Arctic territories of Alaska and Canada and an area in subarctic Siberia. Lisa Ruth Rand will examine an episode of nuclear-powered space junk falling over the Canadian north and what it reveals about a radioactive continuum that extended from the underground to outer space. Tess Lanzarotta’s paper highlights the contestations among local politicians, outside scientists, and Alaskan natives about how to understand and cope with radioactive contamination in the Arctic at the end of the Cold War. In his presentation, Andy Bruno will discuss the efforts of amateur expeditionary scientists to detect evidence of radioactivity at the site of the mysterious Tunguska explosion in Siberia and how they solicited Evenki observers in their research.
