Fuller Lodge, Los Alamos

Respected Award recipients, honorary guests, dear fellow activists, friends, ladies and gentlemen:

it is not only a great honor and joy to stand here and welcome you all. I must admit that I am surprised and a bit overwhelmed that we finally are gathering here at this historic place. I tell you why I am surprised: In 1992 it was my task to organize the World Uranium Hearing, a gathering of people from all continents whose lives had been seriously affected by the nuclear industry. This international hearing took place in Salzburg, Austria. It took place in Salzburg, because the city as well as the state government of Salzburg and the federal government of Austria wanted to be the hosts of this world event. All three entities gave substantial financial help and assisted us with their infrastructure. Then, six years later, in 1998 when the Nuclear-Free Future Award was presented for the first time, it was Salzburg again: the State governor personally offered to host the Award ceremony.

Now we are here in New Mexico. There is no state governor welcoming us. There is no governmental branch hosting this event. The people who called us to come here are a handful of individuals, the same ones who made it possible that this weekend became a reality. So I am surprised how effective a small group can be, how powerful they can be. I want to express my gratitude and my admiration for these individuals before I say anything else. My thanks go to Eda Gordon who gave up her legal work for this summer and gave everybody the impression that she is heading a large staff while she just put on different hats, usually from 8 a.m. to 3 a.m. the next morning. Then I want to name Willem and Marion Malten, who very generously opened their house for us - but they have to be mentioned individually: Willem decided to enrich this day with a film, and I want to include renowned artists Godfrey Reggio and Peter Gordon at this point, they both worked with Willem on this project. Then his wife Marion, tireless and creative, no matter how late - she did all the graphic work for this day and took the invasion of her home with incredible patience. My special thanks go to the artists and writers who came on their own expenses to present the awards: Simon Ortiz, Scott Momaday, Karl Grossman, Joseph Weizenbaum and Buffy Saint-Marie.

I cannot name all the friends in the audience who have been supporters for a long time, but I want to say thank you to the people I work with back home and who are here today: Craig Reishus, Tjan Zaotchnaya, and Franz Moll, the founder of the Foundation for Future Generations, our umbrella organization. In the same breath I welcome Chris Peters, executive director of the Seventh Generation Fund in California, the Award's affiliate and fiscal sponsor in the USA. Thank you Chris, for your trust and support. My thanks go also to Kathy and Gilbert Sanchez and Tewa Women United who collaborated with us and made it possible that the 1999 Nuclear-Free Future Award could be part of a rich weekend program. Finally I'd like to highlight the W. Alton Jones Foundation in Charlotteville, Virginia, the Foundation for Deep Ecology in San Francisco and the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe for their support. And of course a collective thank you goes to all the individuals on both sides of the Atlantic who made it possible to give out the prize money of $30,000. And it goes to Patrick Nagatani, who - for the second time - donated his work for the Lifetime Achievement Award. Last but not least we thank the Los Alamos Historical Society for giving us this historic space for a special price.

Well, I should not forget to give you the greetings of the ones who wanted to come but for different reasons were unable to: Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Jury members Angela Davis, Kirkpatrick Sale, Robert Venables, Chief Oren Lyons from Onondaga and Joan Wingfield from Aboriginal Australia, writers Jonathan Shell, Peter Matthiessen and Isabel Allende, and senior activist Daniel Elsberg.

Oh - I also want to let you know that my mother came all the way from Germany for this occasion.

This last couple of days I was thinking a lot about time and boundaries, of time lines and lines on the earth, of synchronicities. Now we are assembled where a few decades ago Robert Oppenheimer and his staff were gathering in the evenings. Now it's us.

Back in 1990, when we had our very first evening event in New York City at the Ramscale Gallery, announcing the upcoming World Uranium Hearing, I did not know that the building on the West Side Highway we were in, was housing the Bell Telephone laboratories fifty years ago. It was this very building where the Manhattan Project started, where General Groves and Oppenheimer went in and out, before the whole secret operation was moved to Los Alamos, New Mexico - during that time for the outside world just a post office box in Santa Fe. We are all walking the path of the fathers of the Manhattan Project. Last week I had breakfast with Robert Oppenheimer's son Peter, and we were talking about these overlays. When I went to the copy shop to pick up the posters for today's film, the customer before me was an old WW II veteran who had gotten his memoirs copied and bound and he told me, that the bombs "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" saved his life.

I see people walking through these towns and pueblos here. Passing them I think: Is he or she for the bomb or against it, for nuclear energy or against it? We are walking the same path, the same line. But there are other lines. They are boundaries. Some humans stop at this boundaries, others cross over. Some boundary lines need to be respected, others have to be stepped over. The difference is a fine line.

Avanyu, the Water Serpent of the Tewa people, like the Rainbow Serpent of the Aborigines on the opposite side of this planet, reminds us of the sacred boundaries. Not far from here, overlooking this enchanted landscape, Avanyu is carved in the rock. Behind the ancient rock the earth is poisoned and radioactive. Behind Avanyu runs the boundary of "Area G", the toxic and nuclear waste site of the Los Alamos National Laboratories. But rain and wind do not respect "No Trespassing" signs, toxic and radioactive particles do not stop at man-made borders. The poet and singer Lou Reed has this two lines in his song "The Sword of Damocles": Radiation kills good and bad, it doesn't differentiate.

The boundaries we have to respect are invisible. The boundaries, we have to question, and sometimes step over, are visible, are the ones, holding secrets and manifesting powers.

The people we honor today have risked a lot by maintaining human integrity. They stepped across borders in order to protect sacred boundaries. Their responsibility towards the living and the still unborn made is their driving force. We can imagine that it was not always easy for them to swim upstream.

With this I give the word to Simon Ortiz from Acoma Pueblo.

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