From Silence to Noise: Resisting Nuclear Colonialism with Klee Benally and Diné No Nukes

• In Event: Boogie, Silence, Sync: Sounding the End of Empire

Abstract

Klee Benally’s (Diné) “Poise/End” immerses the viewer in a virtual reality experience that begins with a countdown signaled by an atomic clock and the ominous clicks of a dosimeter. The film opens on a desert horizon, where a siren pierces the silence. Out of the horizon, a flashing white light. Then the mushroom cloud. After the aftershocks engulf the viewer, the film cuts to a sunrise on the same horizon. A figure in a hazmat suit clambers forward, pointing a dosimeter at the viewer. The clicks confirm: you are irradiated.
Benally, a lifelong anarchist-activist, dedicated his work to resisting nuclear colonialism on the Navajo Nation. This paper honors Benally and the collective efforts of Diné No Nukes by attending to their calls for justice and, more specifically, by listening for the nuclear silences—and the systemic silencing—they fought against. Drawing on the dosimeter’s noise, a technology that renders invisible radiation audible and quantifiable, this paper advocates for a similar transformation: turning nuclear silences into noise poetics (Zwintscher 2019). This act of turning silence into noise interrogates the phenomenology of sound, challenging our perceptions of environmental and relational harm.
By centering Benally’s work and the activism of Diné No Nukes, this paper argues for a politics of interruption—one that further transforms the noise of dosimeters and protest cries into actionable resistance. In doing so, it situates nuclear colonialism within the broader framework of late-stage American empire, where environmental devastation, militarism, and Indigenous erasure are intertwined. Engaging with Indigenous Studies, this paper asks how American Studies can amplify these silenced histories and imagine futures beyond the violence of empire. In the context of Puerto Rico—a site of both imperial violence and insurgent knowledge production—this work invites us to confront the intimacies of settler colonialism and to envision decolonial futures from the so-called “sacrifice zones” (Juskus 2023) of empire.

Author

• Anna B Gatdula, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill