We’re inviting you to spend time with two art pieces by Zuni Pueblo artist, Mallery Quetawki, called DNA Damage and DNA Repair. Mallery's artwork is featured on the interactive website, A People's Atlas of Nuclear Colorado.

Mallery writes, "DNA damage can occur naturally or by environmental factors such as: chemical carcinogens, reactive oxygen species, radiation, and certain atmospheric pollutants. In this painting each type of factor is a literal “wrecking-ball” causing damage to a strand of DNA. The painted designs are taken from Pendleton blankets that are used both in gift giving, trade, and ceremony. These designs are from a collection of tribes throughout the southwest and beyond, so it is used in this painting to signify how we are all connected.”

“DNA has the ability to repair itself through complex mechanisms and pathways when damage occurs. Its intricacy of repair can be compared to the creation of beaded items in Native Culture. Designs are thought out ahead and require skill and patience to be able to bead such intricate pieces. When a beaded necklace comes undone, the stones/beads are restrung by using what is already there. The design used is from the Crow Nation. The use of the flower design symbolizes the idea of regrowth.” - Mallery Quetawki

The danger posed by radiation was not well communicated or widely understood in the early 1940s. As nuclear weapons testing ramped up in the southwest, many people went to watch the tests without a sense of the danger they were in and later reflected that they were suffering from health effects that could be related to their exposure. If you missed it, check out this video and article by Ian Zabarte, Principal Man for the Western Bands of the Shoshone Nation of Indians - A message from the most bombed nation on Earth.

In the southwest, where the majority of US nuclear weapons tests occurred, Native American Tribes were exposed to fallout from weapons tests in New Mexico and Nevada. In other regions, sacred land and sites were seized by the US government for the Manhattan Project, like at Hanford, and later for siting nuclear waste repositories.

For us, DNA Damage brings our attention to the damage caused by the invisible threat of radiation exposure from nuclear weapons testing, uranium mining, and nuclear weapons production. It also makes us think about the poisoning of the land and the traditional foods and medicines of Tribes whose access to sacred land was taken away in this Manhattan Project era, and the cultural harm that was caused in the process.

DNA Repair invites us to think about resilience in the face of intergenerational trauma; how the site of harm can also be the site of healing. The artist’s use of cultural symbols like beading, flowers, and traditional patterns help us see how those same cultural traditions and practices that were injured are a key to connecting what is broken. What do you see?

Here are a few resources to learn more. Let us know if you have any favorite resources and we can add them: 

• DNA Damage and DNA Repair by Mallery Quetawki, A People's Atlas of Nuclear Colorado (interactive website)

• A message from the most bombed nation on Earth by Ian Zabarte (article and video)

• Oppenheimer’s lasting nuclear threat for tribes by Native America Calling, guest speakers Leona Morgan, Marian Naranjo, Marissa Naranjo, Ian Zabarte (podcast)

• Nuclear waste ravaged their land. The Yakama Nation is on a quest to rescue it by Hallie Golden (article)

• Reservations about Toxic Waste: Native American Tribes encouraged to turn down lucrative hazardous disposal deals, Earth Talk Scientific American (article)

• Let’s Talk about Hanford: Umatilla First Foods, Wenix Red Elk (presentation)

• Dammed by the State: Indian Fishing and the Geographies of Settler Colonialism in the Columbia River Basin by Lindsey Schneider, Chapter 2 is about Hanford (dissertation)

• Nuclear Attack on the Yakama Culture, Russell Jim, Talking Stick TV (2010, video)

• Rex Buck’s Interview, Voices of the Manhattan Project (2003, video)

• Veronica Taylor’s Interview, Voices of the Manhattan Project (2003, video)

• Nuclear Testing in Newe Segobia, Western Shoshone Lands, Nevada, US, Map on Environmental Justice Atlas (interactive website)

• A radioactive legacy haunts this Navajo village, which fears a fractured future by Will Ford (article)

• Nuclear Princeton: Tribal Nations and Communities, Princeton University (website)

• The Tainted Desert: Environmental and Social Ruin in the American West by Valerie Kuletz (book)

• Gabriel Bohnee’s Interview, Voices of the Manhattan Project (video)

• ‘We didn’t know we were poisoning ourselves’: The deadly legacy of the U.S. uranium boom, by Tracy Tullis, The Guardian (article)

• The Missiles on our Rez podcast, by Ella Weber, Scientific American (podcast Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5)