Photo: Peggy Olsen | Wikimedia Commons
More than 500 square miles large, the decommissioned Hanford nuclear site -- one of the most contaminated places in North America -- sits on the ancestral lands of the Yakama Nation in Washington state. The Yakama people spent winters fishing for sturgeon, salmon, and lamprey in the Columbia River, and gathering and trading with other families. Over 11 million acres of land was ceded to the US by treaty in 1855, but in the 1940’s, the area was cleared. Between 1943 and 1987, the site produced nearly two-thirds of the plutonium for the US’s nuclear weapons supply, leaving behind radioactive waste and a scarred landscape. The Yakama Nation is one of four local Indigenous communities dedicated to site cleanup, which is being led by the US Department of Energy. The Yakama Nation’s Environmental Restoration/Waste Management program aims to accelerate cleanup, protect culturally significant resources, and assess threats to wildlife and water.
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