France by planting its bomb in the stomach of Moruroa, has touched us deeply. It has tainted the nourishing mother of our children and of our grandchildren. Therefore, it is a crime against future generations. You have to understand that we need no more justification to oppose this mortal stupidity. France has imposed, and it is imposing once again, its nuclear testing in complete despise of Tau, a network of non-governmental organizations in the Pacific. It has made known its opposition to this 'irrevocable' situation. What has to be undertaken so that the legitimate cries of our population be understood by the entire world? We have to shout together strong enough so that even a deaf, like the President of a great nation - France - would not find a way but to hear. Hiti Tau means in Maohi "the time has come to act". Let's begin by declaring the atomic arm illegal!

In this regard, a project called "World Court Project" has been initiated by the Lawyers' Committee on Nuclear Policy (New York). Supported by a petition, it asks the International Court of Justice (The Hague) to confirm that "the use or the threat to use a nuclear arm is an illegal action and contrary to the The Hague and Geneva Conventions."

The Earth is alive. For some, this is a spiritual reality; for others, science brings the objective evidence. "The earth is our mother", say Indigenous Peoples who all agree on this essential idea. To speak as modern global ecology specialists, we live of and in the Biosphere. Indeed, the time has come to react. - "Hiti Tau" - that is to say humanity must draw the consequences of what is obvious, which is persistently ignored by modern Man, especially in the Occident. This obstination destroys the hope and the moral fibre of the new generations who already have justified doubts on the future. In the framework of the arms race between major powers, our Shoshonee brothers from the Nevada also suffered from the fundamentally counter-nature of nuclear testing and its destructive effects (610 of them). Their lands, like in Moruroa, have been ravaged by enormous holes created in the Earth, some of it approximates the size of football fields. Other Indigenous Peoples and their environment are directly being threatened by continuous exposure to radioactivity: Haudenosaunee (six Iroquois Nations of North America) are exposed to radioactive waste left over from the Manhattan project; Inuit in Alaska; Indigenous Peoples in Australia, etc.

The Navajo from Arizona, New Mexico and Utah have their own view of the nuclear issue: they perceive uranium as a monster. The word in Navajo for monster is nayee, literally "what gets in the way to a successful life". Every bad spirit has a name: for uranium, leetso, "yellow earth". The fact that uranium is a powerful being who is against the blossoming of life is no doubt for the Navajo people. It is a monster. Some Indigenous Peoples have known since a long time the existence of uranium. A myth surrounded the site where uranium was extracted to build the first atomic bomb exploded in Alamagordo, New Mexico on 16 July 1945. This Indigenous myth forbade access to the site. In Alamagordo, only a few kilograms of plutonium was needed to release a power equivalent to 20,000 tons of classical explosive (TNT).

Mankind is being threatened by nuclear power and we consider the Occidental civilization should recognize its development as a fundamental mistake.

Finally, we should like to point out a fact. The United States, after conducting atmospheric nuclear testing on Marshall Island, were forced to compensate Indigenous Peoples of the region. Indigenous Peoples of Australia demand the clean-up on their lands used for nuclear testing by Great Britain. In spite of the fact it has conducted 46 atmospheric nuclear tests, France refuses an independent commission to evaluate the effects of nuclear testing in the Pacific. Why does France want to limit the access to medical files of people who worked on these sites under the pretext of defense secret?

Scientific inspection missions authorized by France lasted three to five days only (Tzaieff in 1982, Atkinson in 1983 and Cousteau in 1987) and access was limited to specified sites by the French military. Why so many secrets? Unless the truth is meant to be hidden... "Hiti Tau" would like to show the way towards a policy of de-nuclearisation. This would be a great contribution of Indigenous Peoples from the Pacific.
Hiti Tau.