Racist beliefs have often underpinned decisions concerning nuclear testing, with governments and colonial forces viewing indigenous peoples as expendable and their sacred lands as worthless and “remote”.

“Our land, our sea, our communities and our physical bodies carry the legacy of these deadly experiments with us now, and for unknown generations to come,” testified Karina Lester, a Yankunytjatjara Anangu woman from Australia, on behalf of a coalition of indigenous groups at the United Nations in 2017.

In the pursuit of “ever-deadlier weapons of mass destruction”, authorities treated indigenous peoples as “guinea pigs”, she said. Their consent was seldom sought, let alone obtained, and little or no protection was ever offered.

The toxic legacy of nuclear testing has meant that many communities have been disconnected from their traditional way of life, unable to return to ancestral sites or survive off the land and waters as they had done for centuries.