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Resistance: Grace Thorpe and Dorothy Purley
Solutions: The Town of Schönau
Education: Lydia Popova
Lifetime Achievement: Stewart Udall
An anti-nuclear weekend in northern New Mexico framed the second annual ceremony of the Nuclear-Free Future Award. The event connected the Rainbow Serpent of the Njamal Aborigines with Avanyu, the Water Serpent of the Tewa Pueblo. Gilbert Sanchez, a Tewa spiritual leader and ceremonial chief, told us that there are four such serpents scattered across the corners of the earth, each a vital caretaker of creation's sacred integrity. The Avanyu Petroglyph is located in the midst of the ancient Anasazu ruins of Tshroge, just below "Area G," a hollowed out mesa filled with nuclear waste - the toxic legacy of more than half a century of nuclear weapons research and development at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Tribal leaders from the area issued the warning that, "if we neglect to take care of Avanyu, the Water Serpent will transmute into the Fire Serpent".
The Award events of Saturday, September 25th, began with a sunrise service at Tsankawi Mesa. Corbin Harney, a spiritual elder of the Western Shoshone, blessed the athletes who were about to set off on, The Circle to Change the Heart - A Sacred Run Around Los Alamos. Los Alamos is the birthplace of the Nuclear Age. The brainchild of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, here in 1945 the first atomic bomb saw the light of day. Prior to the first test detonation, Project scientists were unsure whether the atomic chain reaction would "consume the earth's atmosphere entire". Yet today at the Los Alamos National Laboratories the toddler's fetish of playing God - or, aping Oppenheimer and remembering that line from Hindu scripture, playing "Bhagavad-Gita" - stuffs pay envelopes with all the essential perks any mindlessly educated, craven scientist's twisted heart might crave.
The Nuclear-Free Future Award runners, embracing a native tradition that reaches out to spiritually catalyze a radical change of heart, prayerfully laid an imaginary sling around the laboratories as they ran, a sling borne of a sacred idea: the employees of the laboratories should wake trapped to the mirror of their own self-knowledge so that they might finally be forced to make the vital leap of inward attention required in order to renounce delusion and understand their part in creation.
Saturday afternoon's showplace, north of Sante Fe, was the Powwow lands of the Pojoaque Pueblo. Hosts of the day's events - the Honor Mother Earth Gathering - were the Tewa Women United, an organization with members from the eight northern Pueblos. One focus of the event was to acquaint visitors, especially youth, with the dangers radiating from the uranium death-cycle.
The day on the grounds of the Pojoaque Pueblo was not only a demonstration against nuclear destruction, but also a celebration of the Nuclear Age's approaching end, as well as a foretaste of the consecration of the coming, saner era: the Nuclear-Free Age. Local organic farmers sold their goods, Native American potters their wares, and local storytellers shared the stage with victims of uranium mining and downwinders - an anti-nuclear cavalcade of speakers interspersed with Native American dancers and musicians from all four directions. The day ended with a benefit concert for the Nuclear-Free Future Award, a full moon, open-air happening featuring such artists as "Ulali", Arlo Guthrie, David Amram, Liam O'Moanlai, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Neil Chapman.
Sunday, September 26th, also began with a sunrise ceremony at Tsankawi Mesa led by Corbin Harney, on whose land the United States during the forties erected its largest atomic warhead proving grounds. "We are", the Western Shoshone tell us today, "the most bombed-out nation in the world."
Fuller Lodge, site of the 1999 Awards ceremony.
The Award Ceremony began at 11:00 AM in historic Fuller Lodge - the only building that existed in the area before the Manhattan Project arrived. Following Claus Biegert's introductory remarks, the five prize recipients - Grace Thorpe and Dorothy Purley, Ursula Sladek, Lydia Popova, and Stewart Udall - were presented with their awards by N. Scott Momaday, Simon Ortiz, Joseph Weizenbaum, Karl Grossman, and Buffy Sainte-Marie. During the ceremony saxophonist Peter Gordon performed two chillingly rhythmic, original compositions that interpreted the metallic, dead-machine-walking character of Los Alamos.
Following the lunch a podium discussion took place centering on the Native American theme of, "For the Seventh Generation." According to the constitution of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), before a chief takes up his duties, he must repeat an oath in which he swears to consider in all his actions and decisions the well-being of the seven generations to come. In the Spring of 1999 the Los Alamos National Laboratories published a glossy brochure entitled, "For the Seventh Generation." We, together with our American partners, the Seventh Generation Fund, considered this cynical use of traditional indigenous wisdom an invitation to sue for some dialogue. Even though we were visiting LANL's home turf, our sundry written participation entreaties were refused. One podium participant, a Native American professor and marathon runner, voiced the wish that for the sake of the seven generations to come, all LANL employees suffer agenbite of inwit, quit their jobs, pack up, and flourish some place faraway.
Priscilla Vigil, an elder of the Tesuque Pueblo, held the closing prayer.
--Craig Reishus
Update Summer 2000: Avanyu crawled the radioactive arroyos leading to Los Alamos and set the birthplace of the atomic bomb in flames, consuming 4 of the 5 historic Manhattan Project buildings.
Fuller Lodge was spared.
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