In the 1950s and '60s, the British military conducted a dozen full-scale nuclear tests in the desert of southern Australia. To the military, the region was a wasteland, the ideal place for such a project; to the Aboriginal people, who have lived in the desert for millennia, the land was their home. The military told the Aboriginals that the testing was safe, but many went blind, suffered radiation sickness, or developed cancer. Now, half a century later, the Australian government has proposed building a new radioactive-waste dump near Woomera, in the state of South Australia. For their efforts to block construction of the dump, septuagenarians Eileen Wingfield and Eileen Kampakuta Brown shared one of this year's six Goldman Environmental Prizes. Read an interview with Wingfield, part of Michelle Nijhuis's special six-part series on the winners, only on the Grist Magazine website.