On the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, endangered plants bloom on the shrubsteppe. The Yakama Nation signed a treaty in 1855 to cede some of its lands to the US government. The treaty promised that the Yakama people could continue to use their traditional territory to hunt and fish. But in 1943, those promises were broken, as Hanford became a secretive site for nuclear plutonium production.

Today, Hanford is one of the world’s most contaminated sites, and the cleanup will take generations. As more ceded lands have been encroached on by agriculture and development, the Hanford land is home to an ugly irony: Untouchable by outsiders — but unsafe for members of the Yakama Nation to fully practice their traditions. Now, while they fight for the most rigorous cleanup possible, they’re also finding other ways to keep those traditions alive.

Flash back to 1989, on the other side of the world lies another steppe near Semey (once Semipalatinsk), Kazakhstan. A land that’s survived famine, collectivization, and hundreds of nuclear tests. When an underground test goes wrong, Kazakhs band together with the world and say it’s time to stop nuclear testing for good.

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In addition to responding to questions we had about the Hanford site, the Department of Energy provided the following statement: “The Department is committed to continuing to work with the Yakama Nation on progressing toward our common goal of site cleanup,” it says in part. “DOE progress at Hanford is leading to a cleaner environment and additional protections for the Columbia River. This year alone Hanford … completed a protective enclosure around another former plutonium production reactor along the Columbia River and treated over 2 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater.”

GUESTS: Robert Franklin, Associate Director of the Hanford History Project; Marlene Jones, Marylee Jones, and Patsy Whitefoot, Yakama Nation members; Kali Robson, Trina Sherwood, and McClure Tosch, Yakama Nation's Environmental Restoration/Waste Management Program; Togzhan Kassenova, Senior Fellow at the Center for Policy Research, SUNY-Albany; Sarah Cameron, University of Maryland

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up The Bomb, Togzhan Kassenova

Nuclear waste ravaged their land. The Yakama Nation is on a quest to rescue it, Hallie Golden, The Guardian

How Native Land Became a Target for Nuclear Waste, Sanjana Manjeshwar, Inkstick Media

Hanford Site Cleanup Costs Continue to Rise, but Opportunities Exist to Save Tens of Billions of Dollars, GAO