Transcript
Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner: Recital - Sometimes I wonder if Marshallese women are the chosen ones. If someone selected us out from a stack drew us out slow methodical then issued the order. Give birth to nightmares, show the world what happens when the sun explodes inside you. How many stories of nuclear war are hidden in our bodies? Five hundred and seventy four the number of still births and miscarriages after the bombs of 1951. Before the bombs? Fifty two.
I have been writing a lot more about nuclear testing and a piece that I worked on recently that I am proud of personally is a poem called monster. That links the nuclear radiated birth defects, the birth defects that Marshallese women suffered from due to the nuclear weapons testing program that was conducted by the US after world war two. So it connected those birth defects with a Marshallese women even. And also my own experiences of ...(inaudible)... And so it can seem sort of convoluted the connection between the three.
Recital - Dear Matafele Peinem you are a seven-month-old sunrise of gummy smiles. You are bald as an egg and bald as the Buddha. You have thighs that are thunder, shrieks that are lightning, so excited for bananas, hugs and our morning walks along the lagoon. Dear Matafele Peineim I want to tell you about that lagoon, that lucid sleepy lagoon.
I am also proud of the piece I wrote for the United Nations obviously because it is my motto for peace. And I think everytime I, I get asked to perform that piece quite often and sometimes it does get sort of frustrating to constantly do the same poem over and over. And yet I also appreciate it because it is my most hopeful piece. And so every time I do it I feel as though I am calling it into reality. I am calling it to be, you know there's lines in it that are so, almost too hopeful like almost ridiculously optimistic. No one is drowning baby, no one will leave their homeland, no one is going to become a climate change refugee. Everytime I say that over and over I am speaking that into being. You know and I think this is a belief that is why I love spoken word you know I see some similarities to our traditional culture our traditional beliefs in the power of aurality in the power of the spoken word to create and shape the reality around us yeah.
Recital - I am coming to see you what stories will I find? Will I find an island or a tomb? To get to this tomb take a canoe. Take a canoe through miles of scattered sun. Swallow endless swirling sea. Gulp down radioactive lagoon. Do not bring flowers or speeches. There will be no white stones to scatter along this grave. There will be no songs to sing. How shall we remember you?
Sara Vui-Talitu: I did see a piece recently on youtube so you visited that dome?
KJK: Yes.
SV-T: What was it like there?
KJK: It was amazing. It was probably one of the most impactful journeys I have ever taken. And I learned so much from it. We ended up taking this canoe, which is a canoe that's been given to us from the Okeanos Foundation. It is not a traditional Marshallese canoe. It is actually a Polynesian style canoe but its a sustainable form of tansportation. It was definitely an experience you know but it made the journey even more meaningful. Because when we got there it was like wow land. And I understood the meaning of seeing land it was completely a delight. And so we got there to Enewetak and what we did is we met with the community, we performed a lot of the ceremonies that you are supposed to do when you go into the outer islands. You know you meet and then you have dinner and the speeches that are given and gifts that are given. And so we gave school supplies to the students out there and I conducted a poetry workshop. And then after interviewing and talking to more people about Runit that is the name of the dome, this nuclear waste site, we then journeyed to that nuclear waste site which is about 15 miles away from the island that the community is actually living on. So we did the poem video we shot the poem video and then after that we journeyed to Bikini which is another site of a nuclear weapons testing program. That was a two and a half day journey and then after Bikini that was a five day journey from Bikini to Majuro back to the centre. And so the dome is this massive nuclear waste site that was left from the US weapons testing program. So what they did was they tested 43 nuclear weapons in Enewetak Atoll and they took all of the radioactive waste from those tests and they ground it into a concrete slurry and filled this crater on Runit Island and capped it with some concrete and that is the nuclear waste that is there to this day. And it is massive it is huge. And so it has always kind of captured my imagination. And just like with climate change nuclear testing has so many stories and it is complicated and complex And Runit was this monstrosity this horrific tragedy that has always captured my imagination and I have always wondered what would it be like to go their and just see it for myself. You know what kinds of conversations what kinds of stories would arise from being there.
