This is a hybrid event, but please consider joining us in person at The New School if you are able!

Buddha Weeps in Jadugoda chronicles the deadly impacts of uranium mining on adivasis (South Asian Indigenous peoples) living in the community of Jadugoda in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand. Decades of unsafe mining, milling, and tailings management by the Uranium Corporation of India have contaminated the water, land, and air, destroying local ecosystems and causing cancer, congenital birth defects, and numerous other health problems among local residents. The film highlights the gross abuse of power by state authorities that has displaced the original inhabitants of the region and abrogated internationally accepted norms and safety precautions for the handling of uranium and its by-products.

Join us for a screening of the film followed by a discussion with director Shri Prakash and lifelong adivasi activists Ashish and Ghanshyam Birulee, who will explain how adivasis, farmers, and other oppressed communities have mobilized against uranium mining and its devastating consequences in Jadugoda for decades.

Shri Prakash is an award-winning filmmaker with a career spanning three decades. He has focused his lens on uranium mining's impacts on Indigenous communities in Asia, Africa, and North America. He currently teaches in the Department of Media Studies at St. Xavier's College in Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand.

Ghanshyam Birulee is a farmer and social activist from Jharkhand's Ho Adivasi community. He was one of the first activists to mobilize his community against the negative effects of uranium mining in India; in 1998, he co-founded the Jharkhandi Organization Against Radiation (JOAR), which won the Nuclear Free Future Award in 2004. In the 1990s, he was also prominently involved in the All Jharkhand Students' Union efforts to establish a separate state for Adivasis living in Bihar, which led to the creation of Jharkhand in 2000.

Ashish Birulee is a Ho Adivasi environmentalist, photojournalist, and writer from Jadugoda. He was inspired to become an activist from an early age by his father Ghanshyam. Ashish has spoken at the International Uranium Film Festival in Canada and Japan as well as TEDxRavenshawUniversity in Cuttack, Odisha (India).

Presented by Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management at the Schools of Public Engagement and Shri Prakash Films.