This dialogue took place on 5 December, 2023, between the Kokatha and Nukunu sculptural artist and curator Yhonnie Scarce and the CHamoru poet and essayist Craig Santos Perez. It was facilitated by Rebecca Macklin and Susanne Ferwerda and took place as a video call. The format of this interview, which took shape as a conversation, was inspired by Maya Caspari and Ruth Daly’s special issue “Reading Otherwise: Decolonial Feminisms,” which staged a “series of encounters-in-conversation” to facilitate critical examinations of these concepts.¹ Following Caspari and Daly, this format gives space to reflect on “how ideas form through encounters in the present, how present words carry past voices with them, how conversations themselves might offer modes of thinking otherwise.”² These words are prescient in the case of Scarce and Perez’s dialogue, which mediates between past and future to reflect on the enduring presence of ancestral experiences, and the possibility of finding new kin through unexpected encounters.

Yhonnie Scarce, born in 1973 in Woomera, South Australia, is an interdisciplinary artist of Kokatha and Nukunu heritage, who works with glass and photography among other forms to reflect on the ongoing effects of colonization on Aboriginal people. Scarce’s work responds to familial and intergenerational experiences of nuclear colonialism, as well as histories of the removal and relocation of Aboriginal people from their homelands, and the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families. The legacies of nuclear violence – particularly the atomic tests at Maralinga, undertaken by the British and Australian governments between 1953 and 1963 – are recurring themes across her works, particularly “Thunder Raining Poison” (2015), “Missile Park” (2021), and “The Image Is Not Nothing” with Lisa Radford (2021).

Craig Santos Perez, born in 1980, is CHamoru from the Pacific Island of Guåhan (Guam). Perez’s poetry and writings reflect on Indigenous life and sovereignty in Guåhan, formally an “unincorporated territory” of the United States, as well as across the Pacific. Much of this work speaks to the intersecting and overlapping impacts of colonialism, militarization, nuclear colonialism, and climate change on the more-than-human communities that call these islands home. His works include the poetry collections Habitat Threshold (2020) and From Unincorporated Territory [åmot] (2024), winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, and the monograph Navigating Chamoru Poetry: Indigeneity, Aesthetics, and Decolonization.

The development of this special issue has been deeply shaped by both Perez’s writings and Scarce’s artworks. We were honored to be able to bring them together, for the first time, to reflect on the connections between their work. The conversation opened with a question on how they first came to their artistic practice.

Craig Santos Perez: I’ve been writing poetry for about 20 years, and what brought me to write poetry is really to tell the stories of my homeland of Guam, as well as the experiences of my people, the Chamorro people. And, I was really inspired growing up, especially by my elders, who, during family gatherings, often sit around the table or sit outside in a circle, just talking story. And, as a younger person, of course, I would always just listen to them and really feel engaged and enlivened by their words. And so, those kind of early memories of casual oral stories really inspired me to write and become a poet, later in my life.

Yhonnie Scarce: For me, I’ve been an artist for 18 years, and I think, well, that’s a long time for an artist. I went to art school, as, what they call in Australia, a mature aged student. I was 28. I didn’t think I was that mature at that age. But, when I went to school, being an artist was not something that was encouraged. I think I worked for a while and then thought that just even studying art would be really interesting. And I was finding glass objects quite frequently in secondhand shops in Adelaide where I’m from. And so I just started, back in maybe the late 90s, looking at YouTube. I found glassblowing. The art school in Adelaide at the University of South Australia offered it as a subject. I didn’t expect it to take as much hold on me as it has. Similarly to you, Craig, I speak a lot to my elders, my family members. And family history is really important in my artistic practice. I always work with glass, but I work with other materials and photographic material as well. In terms of nuclear history or trauma in South Australia, I’ve been aware of this since I was quite young and meeting nuclear test survivors that were affected by those tests in the 1950s. It was something that has always stayed with me. It didn’t really occur to me, until probably about ten years ago, how much of an impact it had on my community. As a child, you hear those stories, but it just stays in the back of your mind, but then reappears later, like most, most oral histories as well.

CSP: Oftentimes when I would be listening to my elders talk, they would share their experiences, confronting much of the contamination on Guam. A lot of that was caused by the US military. So, when folks talked about issues related to nuclear possession, it was often within larger critiques of US military contamination on the islands. The US military bases occupy about a third of our entire island’s landmass. Guam was also downwind from nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands, and many of the ships used during those testings were then brought to Guam to be decontaminated in our waters. And, sadly, during family gatherings, every time it seemed a new member of our family was diagnosed with some kind of cancer. And to hear my relatives talk about that, it’s often attributed to military contamination at large. But then for those who were familiar with the nuclear history, it would also be attributed to that, beyond just stories from relatives. There’s been long activism on Guam to have our people included in the Radiation and Exposure Compensation Act in the United States.³ Oftentimes those who are downwind from a lot of testing did not receive the same amount of attention or repair to use one of the words we’re going to be talking about today. And so, it’s just mainly learning about it from relatives, partly because so many of my people were getting sick as I was growing up.

YS: To add to that, for 60 years the British and Australian governments kept the nuclear test sites, Maralinga and Emu Field, under the Secrecy Act as well. So like a lot of Australians. we were not aware of those nuclear tests because even military personnel were threatened with some sort of treason if they were to speak out. So we relied a lot on community, on Aboriginal communities to talk about the effects of those tests and about downwinders and things like that too. When you think about the central west of South Australia, those tests happen over a ten-year period and it depended on where the wind blew, so it went across to Western Australia, further down South and South Australia, and then across to New South Wales and then further north into the Northern Territory. A lot of the Indigenous communities were affected and lost family members. And back then, Aboriginal people were not considered citizens of Australia until the 1967 referendum. We were under the Flora and Fauna Act and weren’t counted in the census. What I’ve found too is that these stories are so similar in every other Indigenous community that has been affected by nuclear tests. It’s the same thing: cancer, blindness, skin rashes, and stillborn death, and miscarriages and things with women. So. Yeah. It’s quite a sad topic, isn’t it?

Rebecca Macklin: It is. Thank you for being so willing to talk about these issues because they’re really difficult things to talk about. I’m interested in, before we talk more about nuclear histories, I am interested in how you encountered each other’s work for the first time and what kind of resonance this had for you when you did.

CSP: I am not too familiar with visual arts and I was introduced to your work, actually, through preparation for this conversation. So I’m really grateful for the opportunity to learn more about your work and I was really struck by your uses of found materials as well as the sculptural glass that you use. I was just really struck by your focus on darkness in some of your work, thinking about what we just said about many of these darker histories that are difficult to confront because they are so traumatic, they are intergenerational as well. For me, it was being struck by meeting another artist who addresses these issues. But of course, in a different medium, from a different cultural and geographical background and being in relation to you today, really, for me it’s like meeting another family member.

YS: Yeah, I understand what you’re saying in terms of another family member, because it’s like … kindred spirits isn’t the right way to describe it either? It’s something that goes a little bit deeper than that, I think. Like an old friend. I always believe that you meet people for a reason, I have always said, my old people – I call them my old people – the ones that have passed on but are always around to bring people together to have that conversation. I think it’s a really beautiful way for us to come together, in the sense that there are other things going on that we’re not really aware of until it happens. I noticed Craig, you’re at Poetry Foundation. That’s how I’ve found your work – and a lot of First Nations writers in Australia published on that in that foundation as well – online. And so, for me, I don’t get to read very much literature, but mostly archival material. So for me to engage with poetry is a really beautiful way for me to feel that or see it in my head, I think, or visualize it. It is another way of creativeness, in how we tell a story. It’s really wonderful to read your words and feel like I’m there, and we’re having that conversation, but we’re not actually in the room together. And I feel like I need to do that more. I get caught up in such an ongoing cycle of moving around quite a lot, but not actually sitting down and actually taking that time to read. That is what I will take away from this conversation, as well. I will go back and read more of your work and then read my fellow Aboriginal writers in Australia. I’m really keen to share those writers with you, especially Ali Cobby Eckermann who wrote a poetic response to Thunder Raining Poison, which was my first atomic fallout cloud.⁴

Susanne Ferwerda: I have a question about how family recurs in both of your work, in different ways. As you’re talking about kinship, I wondered if you could both speak to how family and other kinds of approaches to kinship and Indigenous kinship and community resonate in your work, and how this relates to the topic of arts of repair that we introduced for this conversation.

YS: I think, for me personally, it’s about retaining that history through my artistic practice and having those conversations with family, on a continual and regular basis. A lot of my elders have passed away and so have those stories with them. So it’s part of that. My artworks are a way of having archival material that people can refer to later. Not everyone is going to read a document about that history, but they’ll be able to visualize it and feel something when they see it. So it’s important for me to get those stories right and be respectful to my Aboriginal community, as well make sure they’re respected and continue to be respected even when there comes a time where I’m no longer here. It’s such a large part of my life and I think as an Aboriginal woman, as well, it’s just who we are as people, like, we talk all the time or share those conversations. Not just with family members, but also my Aboriginal peers within the art world as well. So it’s because we have that shared history of colonization and other forms of colonization, whether it’s through nuclear colonization or through disease and slavery and other forms of oppression. It’s something that we also talk about in terms of when we’re reading these documents or hearing these stories, like Craig was saying, the dark history of colonization. It is a traumatic experience. But, creating something that recognizes that is a form of healing because it means that we’re all able to talk about it in a way that is an educational tool for non-Aboriginal people or other people that may not be so ‘aware’. And I say that in inverted commas, ‘aware’ of what happened here.

CSP: That was beautiful, thanks for sharing. You know, in my work too, the family is really a major theme. In my early books, I interviewed and conducted oral interviews with my grandparents and then I would transform and contextualize their stories onto the page. And part of that was a way where I, too, could, could honor their lives and their stories and create an archive, so that my kids or future generations can learn about my own family and their experiences, particularly related to my grandparents experiences during World War II on Guam, once again related to these darker, traumatic histories caused by, of course, colonialism and militarism. Since my early books, sadly, all my grandparents have passed away. So these poems, these stories become memorials or eulogies as well to my family. And so it’s been really important to me as a Pacific Islander, to honor my genealogy and, again, to create this new archive that can live on beyond them.

Similarly, in terms of the topic of nuclear legacies, I have a poem from my book Habitat Threshold from 2020, entitled “Nuclear Family.” I was kind of playing with that idea, but expanding it outwards to think about a nuclear family as a kind of web of kinship amongst all of us peoples who have been impacted by nuclearism. And so, highlighting the global dimension of nuclear colonialism and these new relations of peoples that are brought together, in order to hopefully expose and protest and someday stop this horrible legacy.

RM: Thank you for mentioning that poem, Craig – I think when I first reached out to you, actually, it was to ask you about that poem. It’s one of the things that prompted the conversations the editors and I have had around this issue, thinking about the different cultural relations and forms of connection that bring people together through experiences of nuclear violence. Yhonnie, your work also deals with this web of kinship, to use Craig’s phrase. “The Image is Not Nothing” is one piece I’m aware of that explicitly thinks through different positionalities and how they’re related.⁵ I wonder if you want to speak to that?

YS: That project began – I’m trying to think now, it’s been a while. I think it was the conversations I had with Lisa Radford, my colleague at the Victorian College of the Arts, when I started working there. We were talking about my history of travel to other countries, or fieldwork as I call it. It had been happening since I graduated from art school, so I was looking outside of Australia, I guess for information related to how other countries were acknowledging trauma and, particularly, memorials. Because in Australia there’s still no memorial for First Nations people, in terms of frontier conflict. There are some memorials that have acknowledged massacres in certain areas in Australia. But I think a lot about the war memorials, in terms of Australia’s involvement in wars internationally. There’s one in every state, and there’s a major one in Canberra, which is the parliamentary state. I was keen to see, particularly, how Germany was remembering the Holocaust and was talking to Lisa over a long period of time about those issues. And then I was looking further, in Eastern Europe at monuments to freedom fighters and I had visited concentration camps in Poland and Germany – often by myself. So I wanted to travel with someone else who understood what I was looking for and particularly a non-Aboriginal person, so we could have that conversation and create something together. And so, we received some research funding from Creative Victoria in 2018 and then travelled internationally to the US, Ukraine, where Chernobyl – the meltdown – happened, and then Georgia, Tbilisi, Felicity, and Georgia and, Yerevan in Armenia, looking again at memorials. Then we did go to Fukushima and Hiroshima in Japan, and returned to Maralinga in South Australia and Woomera, which is my birthplace. Woomera is still very much an active military base, not testing rockets but they are testing objects that could be used as weapons. But also there’s a cemetery in Woomera that I visit quite frequently, primarily of children that died during the early years of the nuclear tests in South Australia.

So, I guess, there’s memorials everywhere, but what do you actually see as a memorial? It doesn’t have to be a massive building. These children in the cemetery and Woomera – that’s a memorial because it’s their place. I call them my friends, because I go and visit them all the time. So it’s this thing of returning to places where conflict and trauma has happened and I think it’s important to share those conversations with people. The plan for “The Image is Not Nothing” was for it to be a continuing project and during the pandemic, we created the online journal Art + Australia and included writers, poets, and then other visual material. And I found out recently, people use it a lot for educational purposes and we’re excited about that because that’s what we wanted. But it is a massive project and it’s always talking, we’re always meeting new people, and, hopefully, will receive further funding so we can continue it for a long period of time.

RM: No, that sounds ambitious but really exciting [audio is interrupted by the sound of an airplane].

YS: Sorry, you’re breaking up, and I’ve got an airplane going over us.

SF: I think the airplane is cutting into the sound. Yeah, it’s making itself very present.

YS: It’s not a big jet. It’s just like this little thing. Sorry about that.

RM: No problem.

YS: Usually copters. Yeah, it’s always police helicopters flying around.

RM: When I was learning about your work, I was struck by the spatial and architectural elements. I wondered if we could maybe turn to thinking about your artistic practice and the mediums you both use – and I wondered if memorial was a possible way into thinking about that. I don’t know if you would consider the pieces that you create memorials in some way, or if that is a term you would use to describe them?

YS: I think a lot of the works I create are. And I think, for me, when I make work about my family, they are in a sense memorials but also a celebration of them. So because a lot of the images that I use of my family, I haven’t met them before, but I feel like I know them. And I’m sad I didn’t get to meet them in person but they’re very much a part of who I am. So it’s acknowledging them in a way that, for me, acknowledges how powerful they are or that they’re always around me, whether they’re in photographs or through conversations with my aunties and my nanas, as I call them, and my grandfathers, even though, you know, my grandparents are no longer here. They’re brothers and sisters or aunties and uncles and my grandparents – that’s the way we talk. But in terms of the other works that are related to genocide, and scientific testing and nuclear history, they are very much memorials. I think because the massacres were such a horrific way of colonizing Australia that I feel like we need to discuss it in a way that there’s a place for us to go to when those artworks are on display and think about that and remember them. Because we don’t have memorials in Australia, except for those that are created by Aboriginal communities. Also, I create these works out of love for my people because I am very much in love with them. So it’s sort of my gift to them as well. I say: if it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here today or I wouldn’t have the opportunities that I have. And I’m very fortunate to be able to travel internationally and take those stories with me because they weren’t able to. They were kept prisoners in their own country. But then – this grandchild or great grandchild comes along because of their, what’s the word? Persistence. And their resistance, I think. That was passed down to me.

CSP: That was so beautifully put. You know, in my work also I do see much of it as memorial as well as I mentioned, especially when writing about these traumatic histories and the people that it impacted. But beyond that, of course, I think of memorials as a kind of tangible form of memory too, and a declaration that we will not forget what happened here and we will not forget what happened to our elders. And, you know, we want to remind the future generations, too, about what happened here and that we need to continue fighting for justice for these events. And so, in that way, a memorial is also a commemoration of strength and resistance and advocacy and respect for the dignity of our people to continue to live and to fight, despite everything that we have endured. So, yeah, kind of thinking about the connections between, of course, memorials, memory, and commemoration.

RM: And justice as well, right, which is a part of that question of repair and what it looks like in these different contexts. Would either of you like to reflect a little bit on the word repair? Craig, you mentioned about reparations earlier as one example. But I know that, also, your book åmot is thinking about repair in terms of medicine and of a different sort.⁶

CSP: In so much of the nuclear discourse, there’s often advocacy for compensation and reparations. And, of course, that also extends to war experiences as well. As I reflect upon reparations in my work, it often comes down to dollars and cents and to me that barely does anything to repair the harm, the intergenerational harm that, whether it be nuclearization or militarization or war, these events caused. And so, as a writer, I try to think beyond simple financial repair and towards more emotional, cultural, and spiritual forms of repair. And my new book, as you mentioned, takes as a central theme the concept of medicine and thinking about storytelling as a kind of medicine, as a form of healing, as a kind of community-centered reparation for these harms against us. And that’s pretty common in a lot of Indigenous literature as well, to think about how storytelling can heal us and can provide, you know, a sense of justice and dignity and empowerment as well.

YS: Oh, it’s exactly what I was just going to say. That’s exactly what I would say, Craig! It’s interesting because when Aboriginal people in Australia and Torres Strait Islanders talk about recognizing past history, particularly with stolen generations here and other wishes for acknowledgement, people always talk about how we want money. It’s all about the money. And it’s like – it’s not about the money! It’s about remembering what happened. And then, having assistance in order to work forwards and make sure it doesn’t happen again. And we still have a long way to go in terms of putting it all back together. But it’s about talking and talking together and having some form of repair in that way. We have to remember what happened, what happens, and how it keeps going generation after generation. How are we meant to heal if that’s not happening?

But we always, as a community, stick together and that’s my way of healing as well. We’re repairing, coming together as artists and sharing our history together, but also meeting others overseas. Because weirdly enough, the way the US was colonized, Canada was colonized, Australia, and New Zealand… and the history of the Holocaust as well. It was all really similar, but they were at different time periods. And they tried to oppress those First Nations people and other communities in a way that was very similar to Australia, removing them from their homelands, putting them in one place, bringing disease. And then there’s these other forms of disease like nuclear tests, radiation poisoning and all that other shit, you know? I always say we are stronger when we come together.

SF: I was also thinking about both of your work together, how both seem to be working through repair also through acts of transformation. Whether this is the transformation of making glass and the materiality of this and the reshaping, perhaps, of histories, and also of the poetry – how you’re reshaping or transforming language through the fragmented sense of language that you use, Craig.

CSP: For me, I think that is so much why I do write in a fragmented form – where I am trying to, you know, reweave a basket that has been torn asunder and take these fragments of history and remnants of culture and place and try to repair it into new stories, after the devastating impacts of colonialism. And so definitely, for me, the creative act of making poetry is a way to kind of pick up the pieces of this history. In my poem we mentioned earlier, “Nuclear Family,” I was also meditating upon how much of the discourse around nuclear weapons is apocalyptic, is total destruction, is annihilation, and the end of time. And I wanted to juxtapose those stories of doom with Indigenous and other peoples’ creation stories. We need our creation stories as well as our arts and poetry as another act of creation in order to combat all these acts of destruction that are thrust upon the world. And so for me, art making is so much about honoring our human capacity for creativity and in a sense, to contrast that with our obscene potential for violence.

YS: Yeah. I think, particularly when I’m making the glass objects, even though they start as molten in a liquified state then they become more solid, they’re always a living object. They’ve had breath that’s been used to create them. I make quite large numbers and so it’s about recreating or making this food that we eat, in a way that represents Aboriginal people. And not just as human beings but our cultural practice as well. So it’s acknowledging that our cultural practice is still very much alive, and these objects are created in a way that acknowledges that. But also for those bodies that are represented in some of my work, they are made in a way that acknowledges the ones that we don’t know about, as well. And when I go into making these works, it’s not always about a specific number. It’s kind of like there’s shadows that appear when the glass is lit in a gallery space. Or a work of mine – “Missile Park”, which is three sheds, is about the involvement of Woomera in the nuclear tests in South Australia.⁷ And looking at it architecturally, there’s no lights inside those sheds but they’re lit from outside and something else happens. It’s like these spirits are hanging around. I like to think that it’s a place where they can come to, as well, and be with us.

RM: This has been such a generous conversation. I did want to ask if you had any thoughts on this phrase that we’ve used – the nuclear relations of coloniality, which is a phrase we’re using in the special issue as a way to think about some of some of these connections that we’ve been talking about here today. Is that phrase evocative for you in any particular ways?

CSP: I know it will probably be explained more in this Special Issue Introduction. Could you tell the audience for this interview a little bit more about the concept?

RM: I think, in putting together the issue, we were drawing on important work by Indigenous scholars – people like Winona LaDuke, and Lou Cornum, who think through the relations between different experiences of nuclear colonialism. And, I suppose, in centering the nuclear relations of coloniality, we wanted to draw out the specific place of nuclearity within colonial dynamics. And reflect on that, whether in a material sense – thinking about nuclear particles and the enduring kind of toxic harms that they produce – as well in a geopolitical sense, thinking about the histories of militarization that led to all of these nuclear histories taking place – especially in the experiences of Indigenous peoples.

SF: I think how we came to the special issue is that the four of us had gathered with our research focuses in different parts of the world and the nuclear relations of coloniality really came to the fore. Because, as you’ve also both been speaking to, these similar relations recur across continents. The special issue is designed to bring together all these conversations talking about these nuclear relations of colonialism in the different parts of the world, and how indeed we see so many similarities in their differences, and what can we then say about how coloniality is a globally continuing project that has all these nuclear relations and aftermaths and this materiality that is embedded in the world that we live in.

YS: When you were talking, I was just thinking that when those tests happened in Australia, in the Marshall Islands, in Montebello Islands, which is off the coast of Western Australia and elsewhere, there was no respect for the people who lived there. And that’s what is so similar to this story – they did not care about how it was going to harm the people that lived in the islands and the Pacific in Australia. And, you know, for me personally, they still do not care. Like, that’s why there’s not adequate health care, there’s not adequate recognition. And people are still dying. And that’s such a common theme in this – there’s no respect. There has been no respect whatsoever. So I think it’s good to bring those voices together and hold people accountable. I just get angry when I think about that, for my family and others, you know?

CSP: I think this term is quite powerful, especially that you chose to use the word “relations,” which has so many important connotations in Indigenous cultures. And, you know, the way that so many of the impacts of nuclearism are invisible. With the work that you both are doing and others too, to make visible the interconnectedness of peoples in places that have experienced nuclear testing or uranium mining or nuclear war, I think it’s so important because this issue is a global issue. It’s intergenerational, multicultural. It exists on a timescale that is really difficult to comprehend. And it’s an issue that is ongoing as well, thinking about the rhetoric around the use of nuclear weapons in various wars happening right now around the world. And so, I think it is important to highlight relations, relationships, kinship, interconnections right now as society becomes much more globalized. I think we need projects like this that are multidisciplinary, as well, to think about the multiple dimensions of nuclearism, in addition to the multiple scales upon which we need to reckon with its legacy. We need to also find different ways that we can more fully understand its impacts on a spiritual, emotional, and cultural level. So we need all the artists, scholars, and activists to come together, to continue to fight for a nuclear-free world.

RM: Thank you. I think that that focus on relations is so important because it adds to the hopeful possibilities, as well as acknowledging the harms that have brought people together. As a way to wrap up, I wonder if we could think a little about the future. Craig, so much of your work is future-oriented, whether that’s thinking about a nuclear-free future or the possible futures of climate change. What are you both hoping for in the future?

CSP: It’s a difficult question, considering everything going on in the world right now. But of course, you know, I hope for a demilitarized and decolonized future. A nuclear-free future, as well. A just future for all peoples and especially for Indigenous peoples. A sustainable, or carbon-free world, fossil fuel-free world, I should say. And, you know, just a world where everyone can grow up feeling respected and dignified and valued. In my work, I do try to imagine those kinds of decolonized futures and continue to do the work, as a storyteller, educator, and activist, to help articulate that vision of the future. And also, to join the struggle for that world as well.

YS: Yeah. And just to add to Craig’s statement, we need to listen to the Indigenous people more and respect their knowledge of how they care for their land and people. And stop trying to colonize them and continue oppression because it’s not going to work. I don’t want to see any more war. No more killing. No more trying to colonize another group of people. It’s just not the way we should be. Globally, I think we need to respect one another. We’ve had enough trauma and it’s, I think, only going to get worse if we can’t work together.

Notes

1. Caspari and Daly, “Reading Otherwise: Decolonial Feminisms,” 139. [^{^}]
2. Ibid. [^{^}]
3. The Radiation and Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) is a U.S. federal law, enacted in 1990 and reauthorized in 2025. It provides one-time, lump-sum reparation payments to individuals (or the survivors of individuals) who developed specific cancers or diseases due to radiation exposure. As of 2025, it compensates “downwinders,” onsite test participants, and uranium miners/millers/transporters, who were previously excluded. However, the areas included in RECA’s downwind provisions are limited to selected states on U.S. mainland, excluding residents in Guam. Advocacy efforts to expand coverage to Guam are ongoing. [^{^}]
4. Scarce’s Thunder Raining Poison was an installation of 2,000 blown glass yams suspended from the ceiling. Together, the forms overlapped to create a cloud-like structure. The work was exhibited as part of the Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art in 2015, opening at the Art Gallery of South Australia. Eckerman’s poem, “Thunder Raining Poison” can be read on the Poetry Foundation website: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/89017/thunder-raining-poison. [^{^}]
5. The Image is not Nothing (Concrete Archives) was a group exhibition curated by Lisa Radford and Yhonnie Scarce at Adelaide Contemporary Experimental (ACE) in 2021. The exhibition explored how artists and others have memorialized acts of nuclear violence, Indigenous genocide and cultural erasure. [^{^}]
6. “Åmot” is the Chamoru word for “medicine,” commonly referring to medicinal plants. It is the fifth book in Perez’s from unincorporated territory series. [^{^}]
7. Missile Park was a major commission for the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) which opened in 2021. As noted in the exhibition Education Kit produced by ACCA, the installation carries the name of an “outdoor tourist attraction in Woomera, where Yhonnie Scarce was born, that displays a selection of the bombs, missiles and aircraft that have been tested on Scarce’s Country since the 1950s, a practice that continues today”. [^{^}]

References