Our Goals
· Centre digital photo-filmic technologies and Oceanic storytelling methods as forms of visual nuclear justice that connect nuclear legacies with ongoing environmental issues.
· Produce films and publish writing to increase a global understanding of Oceania’s nuclear legacies and contemporary challenges.
· Analytically examine New Zealand’s nuclear-free historical accounts which have been dominated by a white-saviour narrative and used to sell alcohol, as in the recent Steinlager beer advertisement.
· Critically understand New Zealand’s contemporary contribution to nuclear imperialisms, via businesses linked to KiwiSaver, nuclear weapons investment, and Rocket Lab developments
the project
Marshallese eyewitnesses described the atomic bombs that were tested on their lands and in their skies and waters as being akin to the rising of a second sun. This oral account connects with how American Cold War propaganda naturalised atomic weapons and their devastating powers to that of the sun. Aligning this weaponry with the divine powers of nature erases the moral responsibility of nuclear technology production, testing, and waste. Such associations undermine the ongoing, horrific, and long-lasting realities of nuclear weapons testing and storage across Oceania.
Methodology
Working within this context of Indigenous-centred storytelling, this research employs methods of socio-ethical listening and witnessing with a twofold focus. Firstly, I will contribute to scholarly discourse concerning Oceanic nuclear imperialisms by questioning New Zealand’s dominant nuclear-free narratives, which are often whitewashed and commercialised. Secondly, I will explore how screen technology can be used to ethically communicate the histories of Indigenous Oceanic activism that emerged as a response to the political and environmental impact of nuclear testing. Finally, I will develop a series of critical essays and filmic documentaries that explore Indigenous activism for political sovereignty and denuclearisation throughout Oceania. Guiding question: how can experimental documentary—encompassing socio-ethical listening and witnessing methods—make visible that which is invisible, meaning radiation and imperial ideologies, while contributing to nuclear justice?
community engagement
Oceanic livelihoods and environments remain heavily impacted from fifty years of weapons testing and ongoing militarisation. The ‘Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific Movement’ was a catalyst for cross-cultural collaborations and activism that continues today. In 2018 New Zealand supported ‘The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’ which came into force on 22 January 2021. Today, there is a regenerated demand for nuclear justice and a renewed opportunity to support New Zealand’s long-standing policies opposing nuclear weapons. Communities of nuclear-impacted regions across Australia, French Occupied Polynesia and Micronesia are calling for their stories of active resistance to be told. This generation of storytellers are using digital photo-filmic technologies to capture their families’ lived realities of the legacies of nuclear imperialisms across Oceania. Accordingly, there is an urgency to research and develop ethical methods for visualising and listening to stories that promote transgenerational knowledge for nuclear justice.