A new avant-garde documentary, To Use a Mountain, examines what its makers call the "environmental violence" inflicted on Indigenous territories and rural communities by proposals to turn parts of the United States into nuclear waste disposal sites. Director Casey Carter returns to a recorded interview with a Washington state farmer who joined a class-action lawsuit over radioactive releases from the Hanford nuclear reservation — the site of the world’s first full-scale plutonium production reactor — to underline the human costs of the long-running waste problem.
The film situates contemporary disputes over disposal and storage in the larger, fraught history of nuclear power. Once promoted as a technological salvation and an economic boon, nuclear energy also brought persistent questions about safety and the management of its hazardous by-products, from high-profile reactor accidents to the unresolved issue of where to put radioactive waste. Carter’s work frames those technical and regulatory dilemmas as social and moral ones, showing how decisions about waste siting disproportionately affect Indigenous peoples and isolated rural communities.
To Use a Mountain traces both the pain caused by contamination and the ways communities have mobilised in response. By revisiting testimony collected at Hanford and other contested sites, the film highlights legal battles, grassroots organising and cultural resistance that have emerged as residents, farmers and tribal nations push back against government and corporate plans. The documentary seeks to convey not only the environmental and health anxieties involved but also the endurance and agency of those resisting disposals that would affect their lands for generations.
Carter’s approach blends documentary reportage with experimental techniques to underscore the emotional as well as legal dimensions of the story. The film speaks to broader debates about environmental justice, Indigenous sovereignty and how democratic societies decide who bears the long-term burdens of industrial and energy policies. As national authorities continue to grapple with where and how to store radioactive waste, the documentary positions community voices at the centre of a conversation that has often been shaped elsewhere.