Contaminated Country (Paperback)

During the twentieth century Australia was embroiled in the military and civilian nuclear programs of numerous global powers. From uranium extraction to weapons testing, Australia's lands became sites of imperial exploitation under the guise of national development and was subject to rampant nuclear colonialism. Aboriginal communities, bearing the brunt of these processes, persistently resisted, reclaiming their rights to Country and demanding reparations.

As Jessica Urwin shows, extraction, testing and waste disposal have caused incalculable physical, spiritual, and cultural harm to Aboriginal communities and lands. Tracking the colonial mechanisms Australia used to pursue nuclear industry, Urwin simultaneously highlights how Aboriginal peoples rejected and reshaped those same mechanisms. Contaminated Country reveals how Australia's nuclear past has been entangled with colonialism locally, nationally, and internationally.

Jessica Urwin is a Lecturer in Environmental History at the University of Tasmania interested in the intersections between nuclear processes, environmental (in)justice and colonialism. She has published in several leading history journals and her work has received numerous awards, including the American Society for Environmental History's Rachel Carson Prize, Australian National University's John Molony Prize for History, and Australian Academy of Science's Moran Award for History of Science Research.