Nuclear Princeton is an undergraduate-directed project that highlights the under-acknowledged impacts of nuclear science, technology, and engineering on Native lands, communities, and beyond. It locates the history of settler colonialism, environmental racism, and racial injustice in the past and contemporary technoscientific development and management of U.S. national security from the Manhattan Project onward. Princeton undergraduates interested in Native issues and culture play a key role in the project, exploring how Princeton scholars and the University— located on the unceded traditional territory of the Lenni-Lenape Tribal Nation—have made the world irreversibly nuclear.
PIAC was convened in the fall of 2019 by the Undergraduate Student Government as the Indigeneity at Princeton Task Force to advocate for Indigenous studies and students at Princeton. Since then, it has settled into its more permanent home in the PACE Center for Civic Engagement as PIAC. It is run by Keely Toledo ’22 (Navajo Nation), Jessica Lambert ’22 (Choctaw Nation), Gabriel Duguay ’22, and Kate Schassler ’21.
PIAC is structured into four committees which address specific needs. They are:
i. Academics, Coursework, and Faculty Relations. This committee spearheads the push for a certificate program and advocates for hiring more Native professors.
ii. Student Support and Resources. This committee pertains to acquiring for Native students an affinity space and a staff member focused on the needs of these students.
iii. Undergraduate Admissions: Recruitment and Retention. This committee works with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions to enhance Princeton’s recruitment of Native students to help more Native students apply to, get accepted to, and attend Princeton.
iv. Administration, Communication, and Strategic Planning. This committee works on projects that involve communicating and working with Princeton’s administration, communicating our goals and projects to Princeton’s campus and making our efforts visible, and determining approaches to solving our problems.
Office of Sustainability
Natives at Princeton has partnered with the Office of Sustainability to maintain conversation and action related to sustainability issues at Princeton. Most Sustainability Groups are registered under the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Students (ODUS) or the Pace Center for Civic Engagement. For more information about each group, check out the Office of Sustainability website (linked above). You can also contact Sustainability Outreach Assistant Claire Wayner ’22 if you or your student group would like to collaborate on a new initiative.