An Afternoon with Damian: Nuclear Colonialism Through New Mexican Literature

I will be facilitating an hour-long session of community reading on the topic titled, “Nuclear Colonialism Through New Mexican Literature”. In providing historical and cultural context for which the New Mexican Literature becomes positioned in, I will provide a brief historiography of the specified locations affected by Nuclear Waste and Nuclear Testing throughout New Mexico, with accompanying images of locationally relevant sites affected. Included with the affected sites will be a comparative topographical analysis of where numerous Ancestral peoples are located, and such communities that become affected by Nuclear Colonialism in numerous ways. 

After a short historiography to present to our community with an accompanying visual element, I will pick literary excerpts from Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Simon Ortiz It Was That Indian, and Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me Ultima to examine, read out loud, and to examine the complex literary history that embodies the topic of Nuclear Colonialism that continues to influence all Native, Hispanic, and Indo-Hispanic communities within New Mexico. Topics of discussion include: new notions of Indigeneity and New Mexican culture, how Modernity changes the New Mexican landscape, peoples, and cultures, Modernization and Tradition, Nuclear Colonialism and Nuclear De-Colonization.