Abstract
Throughout the history of nuclear development in the United States, the accompanying environmental risks have been invisible to the general public. This is largely because the federal government has isolated each specific process, from the uranium mining to the radioactive waste disposal, inside the National Sacrifice Zone, which was inhabited historically by American-Indian tribes. The spatial construction of the National Sacrifice Zone, which was justified by referring to the notion of national security, has reproduced a state of exception. By looking at the historical geography of uranium mining in the Navajo Nation, this paper articulates the social processes inherent in the exclusion of indigenous land, bodies, and rights from the federal government's legal obligations to protect its own citizens. This structural colonialism over the indigenous nations, intertwined with their geographical marginalization, has formed the core of the reproduction of risks in nuclear development inside the U.S.
