New York City - The Nuclear-Free Future Award

www.nuclear-free.com
Long before the first white man set foot in Australia, the Rainbow Serpent Petroglyph
was creat ed. The image of the Serpent united people from all continents
in 1992 at the World Uranium Hear ing in Salzburg, Austria. The rock stands on
the ancestral lands of the Njamal people near the upper Yule River. According
to Aboriginal mythology, the Rainbow Serpent, asleep in the earth, guards
over those elemental forces beyond humankind’s control. Any attempt to seize
these underworld elements will disturb the serpent from sleep, provoking its
vengeance. The Aborigines tell us, "leave the uranium in the earth."
The 1999 Nuclear-Free Future Award Ceremony held at Los Alamos, New
Mexico, connected the Rainbow Serpent with Avanyu, the Water Serpent of the
Tewa Pueblo. Gilbert Sanchez, a Tewa spiritual leader, tells us that there are
four such serpents scattered around the earth to protect the sacred integrity of
life and creation. The Avanyu Petroglyph is locat ed in the midst of the ancient
Anasazi ruins of Tshroge, just below »Area G«, a hollowed out mesa filled with
nuclear waste – the toxic legacy of more than half a century of nuclear weapons
research and development at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Tribal
lead ers from the area issued the warning that, »if we neglect to take care of
Avanyu, it will be transmuted into the Fire Serpent«.
May 11, 2000. Avanyu crawled the radioactive arroyos leading to Los Alamos
and torched the birthplace of the atomic bomb.