Downwind tells Western Shoshone story left untold by Oppenheimer film

Downwind tells Western Shoshone story left untold by Oppenheimer film

Native Community Action Council, July 29, 2023, Censored News

RENO, Nevada -- The documentary DOWNWIND won the jury prize at the Cordillera International Film Festival on Saturday, after the Nevada premiere in Reno. DOWNWIND features the victims exposed to radiation in the fallout from the testing of nuclear weapons of mass destruction and their patriotic response to bring attention to the 928 secret tests conducted between 1951-1992.

The US Atomic Energy Commission, now the Department of Energy, called the people living DOWNWIND, “a low-use segment of the population” and therefore, Americans not worthy of protection from the adverse consequences of radiation in the fallout from nuclear weapons testing.

“We are Americans, and deserve equal protection under the law,” said Principal Man Ian Zabarte of the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation. Further, he said, “Native American land binds this great nation together. The Shoshone people were never informed and never consented to the occupation and use of our sacred Mother Earth for nuclear weapons testing.”

DOWNWIND is a film that documents the effects of nuclear weapons fallout on the American people as opposed to the film Oppenheimer which focuses on the nuclear bomb test of the Manhattan Project, Trinity. The US conducted 928 nuclear weapons tests that included human radiation experimentation on humans such as Project 4.1 on the Marshallese people.

DOWNWIND is the story left untold by the film Oppenheimer of the effects and response of the Americans living DOWNWIND of nuclear bomb tests. “The Shoshone Nation is the most bombed nation in the world,” said Principal Man Ian Zabarte.

(Top photo: Western Shoshone Ian Zabarte)

Native Community Action Council, P.O. Box 46301, Las Vegas, NV 89114, Reno, Nevada