Analyze

Roughly a third of the above-ground nuclear blasts in Earth’s history have taken place on the coral reefs of the Pacific Ocean. In my paper for this conference, I argue that the US approach to weapons testing at Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the Marshall Islands drew on a long tradition of scientific visitors treating such coral formations as though they were indistinguishable from one another. I also show how this logic was subverted when the displaced islanders of Enewetak atoll mounted a successful legal challenge in the early 1970s to a US Air Force plan to continue using the reef as a site for “cratering” experiments with conventional explosives. This act of local resistance forced scientists to abandon the older conceit that atolls were interchangeable, and instead to argue that the weapons testing had transformed Enewetak from a literal “control atoll” (during the initial US blasts at Bikini) into a unique artefact of forty-three nuclear detonations. It is apt to recall this episode here in Honolulu, not only because this archipelago has also been a site of resistance to weapons testing by the U.S. military but moreover because the specific coral-cratering experiments that were blocked at Enewetak ended up being pursued on the reef of Hawai‘i Island instead.

Sponsel, Alistar. 2023. "Coral reefs of the Pacific Ocean, Marshall Island (Bikini and Enewetak Atoll) and Hawai'i." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

Sylvia Wynter (2003) suggests that our current struggles in Western colonized society regarding racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, ethnicism, climate change, environmental destruction, and the unequal distribution of resources are rooted in what she argues is the overrepresentation of the descriptive statement of Man as human, which only recognizes white, wealthy, able-bodied, heterosexual men as "human." As such, just as I argue Black feminist writers and scholars have drawn on speculative methods and Afrofuturism, the use of twentieth-century technology and speculative imagination to address issues within Black and African diasporic communities (see Dery & Dery, 1994), to insist on and explore the full humanity of Black girls, women, and femmes, so too have Black and African diasporic scholars called on Afrofuturism to imagine new ways technology and traditional knowledge practices can address environmental injustice. Suékama (2018) argues that as a form of resistant knowledge building and theorizing, an Afrofuturist approach to environmentalism “integrates speculation with the ecological and scientific, and the spiritual or metaphysical'' to make our environmental justice less European, male, human, (and I would add capitalist) centered. Thus, an Afrofuturist approach to environmental injustice asks us to think about our collective struggle for environmental justice as a part of and connected to other forms of systemic oppression rooted in the rejection of African diasporic and Indigenous people and their knowledge practices through the overrepresentation of Man as human in Western society. In this way, a speculative and Afrofuturist approach to environmental injustice draws on African diasporic knowledge practices in conjunction with modern and traditional technologies to imagine new solutions to environmental injustice that center the needs, values, and traditional practices of African diasporic people. 

Image source: Still from "Pumzi" Directed by Wanuri Kahiu

Peterson-Salahuddin, Chelsea. 2023. "An Afrofuturist Approach to Unsettling Environmental injustice." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

The policy is a disaster relief act aimed to provide governmental aid/ assistance at the local, state, and national levels for emergency preparedness and response in the event of a major disaster. 

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) drafted the policy. 

All levels of government and Indian tribal government in the United States.

The policy was created in 1988; it was created to support previous legislation, such as the Disaster Relief Act of 1970, which was amended in 1974 by President Nixon. 

The policy addresses public health in Title IV as part of the Major Disaster Assistance Programs. Section 42 states that the President may provide assistance for and coordinate emergency response to affected areas.

The policy doesn't specifically address the elderly or children, who are very vulnerable populations during disasters/ emergencies (but it does address pets and animals in Title IV).

The policy aims to provide a framework for federal and state assistance following an emergency. It details the preventative measures suggested to minimize damage during a disaster and to find alternate means of funding, as well as the response goals following a disaster and actions to be taken.

Senator Stafford, after whom the act was named, was primarily responsible for the creation of the act, although many other individuals were involved in the writing and editing of the act.