Scales of Eden: Conservation and pristine devastation on Bikini Atoll

Abstract

Landscapes are often discursively constructed as wildernesses through an erasure of the histories of people in the landscape. Current representations of Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands as an Edenic wilderness are no different. What is unusual about conceptualizations of Bikini Atoll as a pristine wilderness is that it is the site of a recent history of colonial appropriation and massive landscape transformation through nuclear-weapons testing. Although people both outside and within the Bikinian community regularly represent the atoll as a kind of paradise, there are strong differences of opinion regarding what the future uses of the atoll should be. This is because there is a sharp division between representations of the atoll as a pristine wilderness with visually pleasing landscapes and seascapes that need to be preserved and locally produced representations of the atoll as an Eden with an abundance of useable natural resources.