At The World Uranium Hearing held in Salzburg, Austria in September 1992, witnesses from all continents including indigenous speakers and scientists testified to the falsity of the terminology used and sanctioned by industry and governments worldwide. Fifty years of military and civilian use of nuclear power meant war for those whose homelands have been used for mining and processing of uranium and chosen for atomic weapons testing, atomic energy production, and atomic waste disposal. Every day human life and the natural world are sacrificed along the radioactive trail of our nuclear way...

One of the speakers at the 1992 event was Thomas Banycaya. He died on February 6th, 1999, at a hospital in Keane Canyon, Arizona. He was eighty-nine years old. Banycaya was one of four young men sent out into the world in 1948 by Hopi spiritual leaders to make known, in the aftermath of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the "Gourds of Ash" ancient Hopi prophecy. Click here to read Thomas Banyacya's Salzburg address.

May the teachings of the indigenous witnesses on whose lands most of the destruction has taken place remind us that the Earth is sacred.

"...the strange and almost mythic character of the poison fire -- uranium -- and our processing of it has been that at every stage of the duel chain, everything that we have employed, becomes not only contaminated but contaminating. And governments and industry and scientists themselves don't know what on earth to do with it. They say they have a final solution to bury it in the ground on deep geological disposal, hiding it out of sight and out of mind, as if the earth were dead, as if the earth were not a living being..."

Joanna Macy,
Ecologist and Lecturer, Berkeley

"An Indian Elder said in Canada three weeks ago, 'We must educate the indigenous people as well as the white people about the dangers of the ugly nuclear industry. Some are beginning to give the O.K. to mine on Aboriginal land in order to deal with the poverty. They must be told to leave the uranium in the ground." End of quote. Michael Mansell, an Australian Aboriginal activist, summed up the prospects of Aboriginal people in my country when he stated: 'The most crucial prerequisite to empowering Aboriginal people is their desire and capacity to put an end to their disadvantaged situation and take control of their own lives. Their is no other way.' The World Uranium Hearing will hopefully unite us all to achieve this and to take back our messages to our leaders and our people to leave uranium in the ground. And in closing, not is all doom and gloom. I encourage my indigenous sisters and brothers globally to continue our struggle. We have survived and we will survive, as we were all B.C. -- before Cook, Columbus and Christ."

Gracelyn Smallwood,
Aboriginal Islander Tripartite Forum

Graphics and text were taken from POISON FIRE SACRED EARTH, a work recording the testimonies and lectures given during the historic week in Salzburg.