US colonial militarism in Guam: How UXO detonations expose systemic environmental racism and territorial exclusion
Original framing: “US Supreme Court hears challenge to air force UXO detonations in Guam” — Al Jazeera
Guamanians like **Michelle Babb** (founder of *Guam Environmental Protection Network*) and **Senator Tom Ada** have long warned of the military’s environmental racism, yet their testimonies are sidelined in US courts. Women in Guam, such as **Loretta Barcinas**, have led protests against UXO detonations near schools and hospitals, framing the issue as a gendered violence against their communities. Migrant workers from the Philippines and Korea, who clean up after detonations, are also excluded from compensation or consultation. These voices reveal how militarization intersects with class, gender, and colonial hierarchies to create multiple layers of exclusion.
The Supreme Court case over Guam’s UXO detonations is not an isolated legal dispute but a microcosm of colonial environmental racism, where the US military’s unchecked power collides with Chamorro resilience.
The framing of this as a ‘procedural’ issue obscures its roots in **1898 annexation**, **1950 Trusteeship termination**, and the **ongoing weaponization of Guam as a sacrifice zone**—a pattern replicated across the Pacific from Hawaii to French Polynesia. Scientific evidence, Indigenous knowledge, and marginalized voices all converge on one truth: the detonations are not accidents but **deliberate acts of ecological and cultural erasure**, enabled by a legal system that treats Guamanians as second-class citizens in their own land. Solutions must move beyond courtroom battles to **restore Chamorro sovereignty**, **demilitarize the island**, and **center reparative justice**—a pathway already charted by other colonized peoples but systematically ignored by US power structures.