For Peace!

The Nevada Test Site occupies a vast area of Newe Segobia, the homeland of the Western Shoshone Nation. Over 900 nuclear explosions were detonated there 1951-1992 and until 1991, the British government tested its nuclear weapons there. The agreement to do so was made with the US military, despite the Shoshone’s sovereign status. The Western Shoshone Solidarity Group aims to build connections with the indigenous struggle, to publicise it and the British responsibility for the nuclear harms inflicted on them. A small, informal and fluid network, most with ties to the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, the group coalesced around the three women who successfully breached the Nevada Test Site in 1990, running towards the impending explosion.

In 1992, before returning to the US for trial, the group invited and hosted two Western Shoshone women leaders (Pauline Estevez and Heidi Blackeye) on a speaking tour of Britain. Other high-profile actions followed, most notably when a group of Greenham women broke into the grounds of Buckingham Palace in 1993 to call for the Queen to recognise Western Shoshone sovereignty. Reactivated by events marking the 40th anniversary of the founding of Greenham in 2021, the group has since organised events under the banner ‘From Greenham to Nevada’.