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RADIOACTIVE RACISM IN AUSTRALIA
Jim Green <[email protected]>
ph 0417 318368
Friends of the Earth, Australia
February 2006
1. Introduction
Chain Reaction article
2. British nuclear
tests in Australia
3. Defeated plan for
a nuclear waste dump in South Australia
4. Current proposal for a nuclear waste
dump in the Northern Territory
5. Uranium mining
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Jabiluka &
Ranger
5.3 Beverley
5.4 Roxby Downs
6. Alliance Against Uranium
7. Further comments, quotes &
articles
======================================
Acronyms
ALRM - Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement
ANSTO - Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation
ARPANSA - Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency
CRWMB/A - Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill/Act
DEST - Department of Education, Science and Training (Australian
Government)
EIS - Environmental Impact Statement
FoEA - Friends of the Earth, Australia
ISV - in-situ vitrification (of contaminated debris at Maralinga)
LLILW - long-lived intermediate-level waste
LLW - Low-level waste
MARTAC - Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee
NLC - Northern Land Council
SLILW - Short-lived intermediate-level waste
TAG - Technical Assessment Group (advised on Maralinga rehabilitation
from 1986.)
======================================
1.
INTRODUCTION
The nuclear industry feeds off, profits from, and reinforces racism.
The industry and its political allies have a long history of forcing
uranium mines, nuclear reactors, radioactive waste dumps, and weapons
tests on the land of Indigenous peoples.
The industry also feeds off and reinforces imperialist, colonial
patterns: colonies and Third World countries are generally home to the
filthiest uranium mines, they have often been used for weapons testing,
and are sometimes used as radioactive waste dumping grounds.
This paper details some aspects of 'radioactive racism' in Australia.
The final section also includes some articles about radioactive racism
in the US and other countries.
The paper is uneven in its coverage of various issues (not to mention
issues which are not covered at all) and will hopefully be updated over
time.
===============================================
RADIOACTIVE RACISM IN AUSTRALIA
Jim Green
Chain Reaction (magazine of Friends of the Earth, Australia)
Winter 2006.
The nuclear industry feeds off, profits from, and reinforces racism.
Both the military and civil arms of the industry have a long history of
forcing uranium mines, nuclear reactors, radioactive waste dumps, and
nuclear weapons tests on the lands of Indigenous people.
The history of radioactive racism is one of oppression, but also one of struggle and, sometimes, remarkable victories.
The British bomb tests
From 1952 to 1963, a series of nuclear weapons tests took place at
Maralinga and Emu Field in South Australia, and on the Monte Bello
Islands off the coast of Western Australia. It is likely that some of
the uranium used in the weapons tests in SA came from mines on
Aboriginal land in SA.
The tests, carried out by the British government with the full support
of the Australian government, included 12 nuclear bomb tests and a
large number of 'minor' tests involving radioactive materials.
Permission was not sought for the tests from affected Aboriginal groups such as the Pitjantjatjara, Tjarutja and Kokatha.
A major test named Totem 1 was detonated on October 15th, 1953 at Emu
Field. The blast sent a radioactive cloud – which came to be known as
the Black Mist – over 250 kms northwest to Wallatinna and down to
Coober Pedy. The Totem I test is held responsible for a sudden outbreak
of sickness and death experienced by Aboriginal communities.
The 1985 report of the Royal Commission into the British Atomic Tests
in Australia found that the Totem 1 test was fired under wind
conditions which a study had shown would produce unacceptable levels of
fallout, and that the firing criteria did not take into account the
existence of people at Wallatinna and Melbourne Hill down wind of the
test site.
So-called "Native Patrol Officers" patrolled thousands of square
kilometres of land to try to ensure that Aboriginal people were removed
before nuclear tests took place. Signs were erected in some places –
written in English, which few of the effected Aborigines could
understand.
A number of Aboriginal people were moved from Ooldea to Yalata, a
mission station 150 kms west of Ceduna, prior to the 1956-57 series of
tests at Maralinga. Yalata was outside the tribal lands of the
Pitjantjatjara, who comprised the majority of the relocated people. The
trauma of forced relocation, combined with the conditions at Yalata,
drove many to rebellion, crime, violence and alcohol.
Despite the forced relocation to Yalata, movements by Aboriginal people
still occurred throughout the Maralinga region at the time of the
tests. It was later realised that a traditional Aboriginal route
crossed through the testing range. For the Aboriginal people who still
walked the Western Desert, many living traditionally, radiation
exposure caused sickness and death. There are tragic accounts of
families sleeping in the bomb craters.
In the mid- to late-1990s, the Australian government carried out a
clean-up of the Maralinga nuclear test site. It was done on the cheap
and even now, kilograms of plutonium remain buried in shallow, unlined
pits in totally unsuitable geology.
As nuclear engineer and Maralinga whistleblower Alan Parkinson said of
the 'clean-up' on ABC radio on August 5, 2002: "What was done at
Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that wouldn't be adopted on
white-fellas land."
Despite the residual contamination, the federal government is
attempting to off-load responsibility for the land onto the Maralinga
Tjarutja and the government is dressing-up this self-serving manoeuvre
as an act of reconciliation. The real agenda was spelt out clearly in a
1996 government document which states that the clean-up was "aimed at
reducing Commonwealth liability arising from residual contamination."
Talking straight out
Same Country. Same People. Same Poison. Enough is Enough.
In February 1998, the federal government announced its intention to
build a national radioactive waste dump in central South Australia.
One of the patterns of radioactive racism is that Indigenous
communities are divided, dislocated and disempowered, and thus all the
more vulnerable to the next assault from the nuclear industry. The
victory in the campaign to prevent the imposition of a nuclear waste
dump in SA was an exception to the general pattern.
The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta – a senior Aboriginal women's council,
comprising women who suffered the effects of the British nuclear
testing program – played a leading role in the campaign against the
dump, as did the Kokatha and Barngala Traditional Owners.
Aboriginal people were coerced into signing clearances for test
drilling of short-listed sites for the proposed dump. The federal
government made it clear that if clearances for test drilling were not
granted by Aboriginal groups, drilling would take place anyway.
Aboriginal people were between "a rock and a hard place" according to
Stewart Motha from the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement: "If Aboriginal
groups do get involved in clearances they face the possibility that the
Government will point to that involvement as an indication of consent
for the project. If they refuse to participate, who will protect
Aboriginal heritage, dreaming and sacred sites?"
Aboriginal groups did reluctantly engage in surveys resulting in the
signing of so-called Heritage Clearance Agreements. One risk was that
those agreements would be misrepresented by the federal government as
amounting to Aboriginal consent to the construction and operation of
the dump. That risk was in fact realised.
In 2002, the federal government tried to buy-off Aboriginal opposition
to the dump. Three Native Title claimant groups – the Kokatha, Kuyani
and Barngala – were offered $90,000 to surrender their Native Title
rights, but only on the condition that all three groups agreed. The
Kokatha and Barngala refused, so the government's ploy failed. Dr.
Roger Thomas, a Kokatha elder, said: "Our Native Title rights are not
for sale. We are talking about our culture, our lore and our dreaming.
We are talking about our future generations we're protecting here. We
do not have a "for sale" sign up and we never will."
On July 7, 2003, the federal government used the Lands Acquisition Act
1989 to seize land for the dump. Native Title rights and interests were
annulled. This took place with no forewarning and no consultation with
Aboriginal people or the South Australian government.
On July 14, 2004, the federal government abandoned the plan to build a
radioactive waste dump in SA. The decision reflected the strength and
persistence of the campaign against the dump. The victory was also
helped by the ruling of the full bench of the Federal Court in June
2004 that the government had illegally used the urgency provision of
the Land Acquisition Act.
The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta wrote in an open letter: "People said that
you can't win against the Government. Just a few women. We just kept
talking and telling them to get their ears out of their pockets and
listen. We never said we were going to give up. Government has big
money to buy their way out but we never gave up. We told Howard you
should look after us, not try and kill us. Straight out. We always talk
straight out. In the end he didn't have the power, we did."
('Talking Straight Out', a book about the Kungka Tjuta's campaign, is
available for purchase via the website: <www.iratiwanti.org>.)
Dumping on Northern Territorians
The Howard government's plan to dump nuclear waste on Aboriginal land
in SA was defeated. But now the government is attempting to impose a
nuclear waste dump on the Northern Territory.
Three sites are being considered – Hart's Range and Mt Everard near
Alice Springs, and Fisher's Ridge near Katherine. None of these sites
was short-listed when environmental and scientific criteria were used
to locate potential dump sites in the 1990s.
The federal government failed in its attempt to dump radioactive waste
in SA in large part because of its heavy-handed, undemocratic and
racist handling of the issue. But the government appears to have drawn
the opposite conclusion. It now wants to impose a nuclear waste dump on
the NT and is behaving in a still more thuggish manner than it did in
SA.
Draconian legislation was passed through the federal parliament in
December 2005 to by-pass normal decision-making processes in relation
to the proposed dump. This legislation – the Commonwealth Radioactive
Waste Management Act 2005 – undermines environmental, public safety and
Aboriginal heritage protections. It prevents the Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 from having effect during
investigation of the sites, and it excludes the Native Title Act 1993
from operating at all.
The proposed dump is opposed by a number of Aboriginal groups including
the Central Lands Council. Many were incensed by federal science
minister Brendan Nelson, who repeatedly said that the proposed dump
sites were "in the middle of nowhere".
Canberra foists nuclear waste on Aboriginal communities
Central Lands Council, July 15, 2005
The Director of the Central Land
Council, Mr David Ross said today that there had been no approach from
the Federal Government about a locating a nuclear waste dump in Central
Australia.
"I think people in Canberra just looked at a map and thought it looked remote and empty.
"However, the two proposed sites in
Central Australia – Mt Everard and Harts Range – are close to people's
homes and communities," he said.
"We have all watched the courageous
struggle of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjutas to stop this dump being built
on their country nearby in SA, and some of those women have recently
visited Alice Springs to talk about their experience. It would seem
that the Australian Government has not learnt anything from the defeat
of the waste dump proposal in SA.
Walk in the sand with us, traditional owners urge PM
ABC, October 4, 2005
Traditional owners of land near Alice
Springs earmarked for a national nuclear waste dump have called for the
Prime Minister and Science Minister to visit the area and meet with
them.
The Athenge Lhere group are
traditional owners of the Mount Everard site, which is north of Alice
Springs. It is one of three sites in the Northern Territory being
considered by the Federal Government for the dump.
Kathleen Martin Williams, who is one
of the traditional owners, says a visit may help the ministers
understand the community's reservations.
"I'd like Johnny Howard and his
sidekicks, especially that Brendan Nelson, to come here take off their
shoes and walk in the red sand with us," she said.
"Maybe they will appreciate our country. Maybe."
Traditional owners take their fight to Canberra
Central Lands Council, November 3, 2005
Traditional owners of the two proposed waste dump sites in Central Australia are taking their fight to Canberra.
Steven McCormack, who lives close to
the Mt Everard site said that a nuclear waste dump would be devastating
for him and his family.
"This land is not empty – people live
right nearby. We hunt and collect bush tucker here and I am the
custodian of a sacred site within the boundaries of the defence land.
We don't want this poison here.
Uranium mining
Racism in the uranium mining industry in Australia typically involves some or all of the following tactics:
* ignoring the concerns of Traditional Owners insofar as the legal and political circumstances permit;
* divide-and-rule tactics;
* bribery;
* humbugging Traditional Owners – exerting persistent, unwanted pressure until the mining company gets what it wants;
* providing Traditional Owners with false or misleading information; and
* threats, most commonly legal threats.
Ranger, Jabiluka and the Mirarr Traditional Owners
Mining company ERA and the Howard government were determined to
override the opposition of the Mirarr Traditional Owners to the
Jabiluka uranium mine in the NT. ERA and the government were defeated
after an extraordinary international campaign led by the Mirarr.
The Jabiluka mine site has been rehabilitated and the Mirarr have a
veto over any future development of the mine. However, ERA still hopes
to mine Jabiluka at some stage in the future, and it still operates the
Ranger uranium mine near Jabiluka.
Yvonne Margarula, Mirarr Senior Traditional Owner, wrote in a 2005
submission to a parliamentary uranium inquiry: "Along with other
Aboriginal people the Mirarr opposed uranium mining when the Government
approached us in the 1970s. The old people were worried about the
damage mining would do to country and the problems that mining would
bring for Aboriginal people.
"The Government would not listen and forced the Ranger uranium mine on
us, but the old people were right and today we are dealing with
everything they were worried about. Uranium mining has completely
upturned our lives – bringing a town, many non-Aboriginal people,
greater access to alcohol and many arguments between Aboriginal people,
mostly about money.
"Uranium mining has also taken our country away from us and destroyed
it – billabongs and creeks are gone forever, there are hills of
poisonous rock and great holes in the ground with poisonous mud where
there used to be nothing but bush.
"Mining and the millions of dollars in royalties have not improved our quality of life."
Beverley
Heathgate Resources, owned by General Atomics, succeeded in imposing
the Beverley uranium mine on the Adnyamathanha people in north-east SA
in the late 1990s.
The company negotiated with a small number of Native Title claimants,
but did not recognise the will of the community as a whole. This
divide-and-rule strategy, coupled with the joint might of industry and
government, resulted in inadequate and selective consultation with the
Adnyamathanha people.
Adnyamathanha woman Jillian Marsh wrote in a submission to a 2002-03
Senate inquiry: "Initial negotiation was misrepresentative,
ill-informed, and designed to divide and disempower the Adnyamathanha
community. ... The resulting meeting was held under appalling
conditions. The company (Heathgate Resources) censored the entire
meeting with the assistance of [a Liberal member of the SA Parliament]
and the State Police. One Adnyamathanha man that stood up and asked for
an independent facilitator from the floor to be elected was immediately
escorted by two armed Police holding him on either side (by his arms)
to the outside of the building."
The late Mr Artie Wilton, the last living Wilyaru man (Adnyamathanha
full initiate), said in June 2000 that he was never consulted about the
Beverley uranium mine and never agreed to the Beverley or Honeymoon
mining projects. "The Beverley Mine must be stopped, dead stopped," Mr
Wilton said.
Kelvin Johnson, an Adnyamathanha man from Nepabunna, said in a June
2000 statement: "We protest at the treatment of our people being forced
into an unfair process of negotiation. We protest because our land is
being damaged against our wishes. We protest because Native Title
legislation is not helping our country. We protest because the State
Government and the Mining Industry refuse to listen to our concerns. We
protest because it is our right and our responsibility to look after
this country."
In May 2000, SA's STAR Force police responded brutally to a peaceful
protest at the Beverley mine site, and used pepper spray on an 11 year
old Adnyamathanha girl.
Roxby Downs
The racism associated with the Roxby Downs uranium mine in South
Australia is enshrined in legislation. WMC Resources was granted
completely unjustifiable legal privileges under the SA Roxby Indenture
Act. This legislation overrides the Aboriginal Heritage Act, the
Environment Protection Act, the Water Resources Act and the Freedom of
Information Act. The new mine owner, BHP Billiton, refuses to
relinquish these legal privileges.
One particularly notorious incident in the history of the Roxby mine
concerned the laying of a water pipeline on Arabunna land in the
mid-1990s. The dispute over the pipeline led to violence, terrorism,
imprisonment, and the death of one person.
Jan Whyte and Ila Marks summarised the controversy in the July 1996
edition of Chain Reaction: "It appears that WMC has embarked on a
course of side-stepping consultation with the Arabunna as the
traditional custodians. It has also taken similar actions in regard to
the Kokotha, the traditional custodians for the actual mine site. One
method used by mining companies to side-step proper consultation
processes is documented in North America and Canada as well as
Australia. Mining companies incorporate small Aboriginal groups in
areas under dispute and give them financial support. These groups are
then regarded as the official representatives for that area and mining
companies proceed to consult with them. Thus, it seems as if the
companies are going through the correct legal processes whereas, in
fact, they are ignoring parties who have legitimate interests."
ABC Radio National's 'Background Briefing' program investigated the
controversy over the expansion of Roxby in the 1990s; see the
transcript at: <www.geocities.com/olympicdam/articles>.
===============================================
2. BRITISH NUCLEAR
TESTS IN AUSTRALIA
Racism and atomic testing have gone hand in hand since 1945. Examples
include US and British testing on Pacific islands, and French testing
in the Pacific and Algeria.
From 1952 to 1963, a series of nuclear weapons tests took place at
Maralinga and Emu Field in South Australia, and on Monte Bello Island
off the coast of Western Australia. It is highly likely that some of
the uranium used in the weapons tests at Maralinga came from mines on
Aboriginal land in South Australia.
The tests, primarily under the control of the British government,
included 12 atomic blasts as well as hundreds of "minor" tests. The
twelve major nuclear tests were as follows:
Operation Hurricane (Monte Bello Islands, Western Australia)
* 3 October, 1952 - 25 kilotons - plutonium
Operation Totem (Emu Field, South Australia)
* 'Totem 1' - 15 October, 1953 - 9.1 kilotons - plutonium
* 'Totem 2' - 27 October, 1953 - 7.1 kilotons - plutonium
Operation Mosaic (Monte Bello Islands, Western Australia)
'G1' - 16 May, 1956 - Trimouille Island - 15 kilotons
'G2' - 19 June, 1956 - Alpha Island - 60 kilotons
Operation Buffalo (Maralinga, South Australia)
'One Tree' - 27 September, 1956 - 12.9 kilotons - plutonium
'Marcoo' - 4 October 1956 - 1.4 kilotons - plutonium
'Kite' - 11 October, 1956 - 2.9 kilotons - plutonium
'Breakaway' - 22 October, 1956 - 10.8 kilotons - plutonium
Operation Antler (Maralinga, South Australia)
'Tadje' - 14 September, 1957 - 0.9 kilotons - plutonium
'Biak' - 25 September, 1957 - 5.7 kilotons - plutonium
'Taranaki' - 9 October, 1957 - 26.6 kilotons - plutonium
(For comparison, the bombs which destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
1945 were about 10-15 kilotons TNT equivalent.)
The general attitude of white settlers towards Aborigines was
profoundly racist; Aboriginal society was considered one of the lowest
forms of civilisation and doomed to extinction. Their land was
considered empty and available for exploitation - 'terra nullius'. The
British nuclear testing program was carried out with the full support
of the Australian government. Permission was not sought for the tests
from affected Aboriginal groups such as the Pitjantjatjara, Tjarutja
and Kokatha.
In "Fallout – Hedley Marston and the British Bomb Tests in Australia"
(Wakefield Press, 2001, p.32), Dr. Roger Cross writes: "Little mention
was made of course about the effects the bomb tests might have on the
Indigenous Australian inhabitants of the Maralinga area, a community
that had experienced little contact with white Australia. In 1985 the
McClelland Royal Commission would report how Alan Butement, Chief
Scientist for the Department of Supply wrote to the native patrol
officer for the area, rebuking him for the concerns he had expressed
about the situation and chastising him for "apparently placing the
affairs of a handful of natives above those of the British Commonwealth
of Nations". When a member of staff at Hedley Marston's division
queried the British Scientist Scott Russell on the fate of the
Aborigines at Maralinga, the response was that they were a dying race
and therefore dispensable."
Ernest Titterton, a leading member of the so-called Atomic Weapons
Tests Safety Committee and the main apologist for the British tests,
told a 1984 hearing of the Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests
in Australia that if the Aborigines objected to the tests, they could
have voted the government out. Yet Aboriginal people did not gain
voting rights until 1967. And they accounted for a very small minority
of the Australian population.
Little or no attention was paid during the British nuclear testing
program in Australia to the increased vulnerability of Aboriginal
people to the radiological effects of the tests. That increased
susceptibility was due to a range of factors including lack of clothing
and footwear, a diet conducive to biological magnification of
radioactivity, movement patterns, language barriers, and general health
status. Conversely Aboriginal people generally lacked protections
available to others such as reticulated water, hard permanent dwellings
with dust proofing, remotely sourced food, food storage facilities
which afforded some radiological protection, laundry/bathroom and
drainage facilities;
Studies of the health impacts of the weapons tests have excluded
non-urban Aboriginal people (e.g. the study by Wise and Moroney, first
presented to the Royal Commission, which states: " Two population
groups are excluded from the calculations. They are the aboriginals
living away from populations centres and personnel involved directly in
nuclear test activities ..." (Keith N. Wise and John R. Moroney,
Australian Radiation Laboratory, May 1992, "Public Health Impact of
Fallout from British Nuclear Weapons Tests in Australia, 1952 – 1957",
Dept. of Health, Housing and Community Services, ARL/TRI05 ISSN
0157-1400, p.2.)
The damage to Aboriginal people went far beyond the radiological
impacts; it was was radiological, psycho-social and cultural. The
nuclear test program contaminated great tracts of traditional land and
transformed independent and physically wide ranging peoples into
semi-static and dependent groups. Forced relocation to government- and
mission-controlled enclaves was one of the traumas.
For testimonies from the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, see
<www.iratiwanti.org>.
Monte Bello Islands
Operation Hurricane (Monte Bello Islands, Western Australia)
* 3 October, 1952 - 25 kilotons - plutonium
Operation Mosaic (Monte Bello Islands, Western Australia)
'G1' - 16 May, 1956 - Trimouille Island - 15 kilotons
'G2' - 19 June, 1956 - Alpha Island - 60 kilotons
While the Monte Bello Islands off the coast of Western Australia were
uninhabited, the nuclear tests conducted there spread radioactivity
across large portions of mainland Australia. The 1985 report of the
Royal Commission (p.261) concluded: "The presence of Aborigines on the
mainland near Monte Bello Islands and their extra vulnerability to the
effect of fallout was not recognised by either [Atomic Weapons Research
Establishment - UK] or the Safety Committee. It was a major oversight
that the question of acceptable dose levels for Aborigines was
recognised as a problem at Maralinga but was ignored in setting the
fallout criteria for the Mosaic tests."
For information on the presence of Aborigines on the mainland in the
vicinity of the Monte Bellos, the British authorities relied upon such
authoritative documents as the Pocket Book of Western Australia.
Emu Field
Operation Totem (Emu Field, South Australia)
* 'Totem 1' - 15 October, 1953 - 9.1 kilotons - plutonium
* 'Totem 2' - 27 October, 1953 - 7.1 kilotons - plutonium
"The Government used the Country for the Bomb. Some of us were living
at Twelve Mile, just out of Coober Pedy. The smoke was funny and
everything looked hazy. Everybody got sick. Other people were at Mabel
Creek and many people got sick. Some people were living at Wallatinna.
Other people got moved away. Whitefellas and all got sick. When we were
young, no woman got breast cancer or any other kind of cancer. Cancer
was unheard of. And no asthma either, we were people without sickness."
--- from <www.iratiwant.org>
At the time of the two 'Totem' nuclear tests at Emu Field in South
Australia, the area was used, as the Royal Commission reported, for:
"... hunting and gathering, for temporary settlements, for
caretakership and spiritual renewal." (p.152)
A major test named Totem 1 was detonated on October 15th, 1953.
The blast sent a radioactive cloud - which came to be known as the
Black Mist - over 250 kms northwest to Wallatinna and down to Coober
Pedy. The Totem I test is held responsible for a sudden outbreak of
sickness and death experienced by Aboriginal communities, including
members of the Kupa Piti Kunga Tjuta and their extended families. The
Royal Commission found that the Totem 1 test was fired under wind
conditions which a study had shown would produce unacceptable levels of
fallout, and that the firing criteria did not take into account the
existence of people at Wallatinna and Melbourne Hill down wind of the
test site (p.151).
In relation to the two Totem tests, the Royal Commission found that
there was a failure at the Totem trials to consider adequately the
distinctive lifestyle of Aborigines and their special vulnerability to
radioactive fallout, that inadequate resources were allocated to
guaranteeing the safety of Aborigines during the Totem nuclear tests,
and that the Native Patrol Officer had an impossible task of locating
and warning Aborigines, some of whom lived in traditional lifestyles
and were located over more than 100,00 square kilometres (p.173).
Maralinga
Operation Buffalo (Maralinga, South Australia)
'One Tree' - 27 September, 1956 - 12.9 kilotons - plutonium
'Marcoo' - 4 October 1956 - 1.4 kilotons - plutonium
'Kite' - 11 October, 1956 - 2.9 kilotons - plutonium
'Breakaway' - 22 October, 1956 - 10.8 kilotons - plutonium
Operation Antler (Maralinga, South Australia)
'Tadje' - 14 September, 1957 - 0.9 kilotons - plutonium
'Biak' - 25 September, 1957 - 5.7 kilotons - plutonium
'Taranaki' - 9 October, 1957 - 26.6 kilotons - plutonium
A number of Aboriginal people were moved from Ooldea to Yalata, a
mission station 150 kms west of Ceduna, prior to the 1956-57 series of
tests at Maralinga, and this included moving people away from their
traditional lands. Yalata was outside the tribal lands of the
Pitjantjatjara who comprised the majority of the relocated Aborigines.
Conditions drove many to rebellion, crime, violence and alcohol.
So-called "Native Patrol Officers" patrolled thousands of square
kilometres of land to try to ensure Indigenous people were removed
before nuclear tests took place. Signs were erected in some places -
written in English, which few of the effected Aborigines could
understand.
Despite the forced relocation to Yalata, movements by Aboriginal people
still occurred throughout the region at the time of the tests. It was
later realised that a traditional Aboriginal route crossed through the
Maralinga testing range. For the Aboriginal people who still walked the
Western Desert, many living traditionally, radiation exposure caused
sickness and death. There are tragic accounts of families sleeping in
the bomb craters.
In relation to the Buffalo series of tests in 1956, the Royal
Commission found that regard for Aboriginal safety was characterised by
"ignorance, incompetence and cynicism", and that the site was chosen on
the false premise that it was no longer used by the Traditional Owners.
Aboriginal people continued to inhabit the Prohibited Zone for six
years after the tests. The reporting of sightings of Aborigines was
"discouraged and ignored", the Royal Commission found. (p.323)
The British Government paid A$13.5 million compensation to the
Maralinga Tjarutja in 1995. Other Indigenous victims - including
members of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta - have not been compensated and
have received no apology.
------------------------>
Flawed Maralinga 'Clean-up'
"What was done at Maralinga was a cheap and nasty solution that
wouldn't be adopted on white-fellas land."
-- Nuclear engineer Alan Parkinson, ABC Radio National, 'Breakfast',
August 5, 2002.
In the late-1990s, yet another 'clean-up' of the contaminated Maralinga
land was carried out. As with the previous three 'clean-ups', it was
flawed and considerable radiological contamination remains. Before the
latest 'clean up', kilograms of plutonium were buried in shallow,
unlined pits in totally unsuitable geology ... and after the 'clean
up', kilograms of plutonium are still buried in shallow, unlined pits
in totally unsuitable geology.
Despite the residual contamination, the federal government is
attempting to off-load responsibility for the land onto the Maralinga
Tjarutja and the government is dressing-up this self-serving manoeuvre
as an act of reconciliation.
The real agenda was spelt out clearly in a 1996 government document
which states that the clean-up was "aimed at reducing Commonwealth
liability arising from residual contamination."
A large majority of the contamination resulted not from the nine
nuclear blasts at Maralinga and Emu but from so-called minor trials
from the early 1950s to 1963. The purpose of the trials was to
physically test the safety and security of nuclear weapons in case of
accident, and some experiments were designed to improve the trigger
mechanisms. The trigger mechanisms of the weapons were subjected to
chemical explosions, heat and other tests. The resultant destruction
produced plumes of radioactive material in the form of fine particles.
These particles fell to earth over a wide area of the test range and in
some cases, beyond it. The 'minor trials' contaminated Maralinga with
approximately 8,000 kg of uranium, 24 kg of plutonium, and 100 kg of
beryllium.
In March 2000, the then Minister for Industry, Science and Resources,
Senator Nick Minchin, declared Maralinga safe after $108 million had
been spent on the clean-up. However, the clean-up generated a great
deal of controversy, most of it generated by scientists who worked on
the project, namely:
* Mr. Alan Parkinson. In 1989, Mr. Parkinson, a nuclear engineer,
developed some 30 options for rehabilitation of the Maralinga atomic
bomb test site. In August 1994, he was appointed the Government's
Representative to oversee the whole of the clean-up project and was
also a member of the government's advisory committee (MARTAC). In
December 1997, he was removed from both appointments for questioning
the management of the project.
* Mr. Dale Timmons, a geochemist involved in the in-situ vitrification
(ISV) of contaminated debris at Maralinga.
* Professor Peter Johnston, adviser to the traditional owners, the
Maralinga Tjarutja, and Professor of Applied Nuclear Physics at the
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
Parkinson's view is that the clean-up was significantly flawed,
especially the shallow burial of plutonium-contaminated debris. Prof.
Johnston's view is that the clean-up was successful overall despite
poor project management by the Australian Government. Mr. Timmons has
not commented on the overall status of the clean-up, restricting his
comments to the ISV component in which he was heavily involved.
The federal Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST)
clearly failed to properly manage the Maralinga clean-up. This is of
concern because DEST is responsible for ongoing projects such as
nuclear dumping proposals. Professor Johnston wrote in a submission to
ARPANSA:
"In the Maralinga Rehabilitation Project, DEST had no in-house capacity
for engineering or scientific assessment of its contractors for a
substantial part of the project. It had internal engineering support
for the early part of the project but that individual was removed. As a
consequence, DEST contracted for services in extremely deficient ways,
e.g. the Geosafe contract contained no performance criteria." (The
Geosafe contract was for vitrification of contaminated debris.)
"In the case of Maralinga, there were mitigating circumstances that
kept the project going forward but in a sub-optimal way. These were the
MARTAC [Maralinga Rehabilitation Technical Advisory Committee] advisory
group, the Maralinga Consultative Group as well as ad-hoc advice sought
from ARPANSA at various times. While these groups greatly aided in the
successful completion of the project, there were still very large
expenditures and significant hazards resulting from the deficient
management of the project by DEST." (Johnston, written submission)
Inevitably the poor project management had adverse consequences for the
clean-up. Professor Johnston's presentation for a February 2004 ARPANSA
forum in Adelaide listed some examples:
"DEST concluded a contract with Geosafe Australia for technical
services that contained no performance criteria. Draft documents
prepared by DEST have often been technically wrong due to a lack of
technical input. Non-technical public servants made decisions where
technical expertise was needed. Technical advice often not sought
except from a contractor."
Mr. Parkinson illustrates DEST's inadequate project management
capabilities in his submission to ARPANSA (cited below):
"A glaring example of the lack of expertise in project management is
provided by the appointment by the department of GHD to manage the ISV
phase of the Maralinga project. In spite of the fact that several
aspects of GHD's performance on the earlier phases of the project were
less than satisfactory, and the fact that they had absolutely no
knowledge or experience of the complex process and equipment of ISV,
the department appointed them Project Manager and Project Authority.
And those responsible cannot claim they were not aware of GHD's
ignorance in the ISV technology; it was spelled out in writing to them.
It is almost a fundamental requirement for the project manager to have
a good knowledge and some experience of the project - in this case GHD
had none. To emphasise the department's lack of project management
skills, they also appointed GHD Project Authority, in which position
they should have had a detailed knowledge of the process and equipment.
No wonder the Maralinga project became such a failure."
Consultation with the Maralinga Tjarutja was inadequate. Prof. Johnston
et al note in the conference paper (cited below):
"The Australian Government responded to these [Royal Commission]
recommendations by forming in February 1986, a Technical Assessment
Group (TAG) to address the technical conclusions stemming from the
Royal Commission and a Consultative Group was formed as a forum for
discussion of the program. TAG's task was to provide the Australian
Government with options for rehabilitation rather than a
recommendation. Membership of the Consultative Group was as envisaged
by the Royal Commission for the Maralinga Commission but with
additional representatives of the West Australian Government. Notably
this structure which formed the basis for the entire rehabilitation
project left the traditional owners and the South Australian Government
out of direct decision making. It ensured that real authority remained
with bureaucrats within the Department of Primary Industries and Energy
which obtained advice from TAG and later the Maralinga Rehabilitation
Technical Advisory Committee (MARTAC)."
The roles of these groups is explained in the same paper by Johnston et
al :
"The Maralinga Consultative Group met on an ad hoc basis during the TAG
investigations in order to provide information on the progress of
scientific studies, planning the rehabilitation work, during the
rehabilitation work and in the preparation of the final reports. The
consultative group was established to discuss and monitor the TAG
studies was re-established in 1993 involving South Australian
Government and Maralinga Tjarutja to discuss the MRP. It first met in
March 1994. During 1997 and 1998, while a great deal of the
rehabilitation work was done, there were few meetings of either MARTAC
or the consultative group."
The most problematic aspect of the project was the decision to abandon
ISV in favour of shallow burial of plutonium contaminated debris in
totally unsuitable geology. The Australian Government claims that ISV
was abandoned because of safety concerns following an explosion on
March 21, 1999. However, the use of ISV was curtailed even before the
explosion and the decisions to curtail and then abandon ISV were
clearly motivated by cost-cutting objectives. This is revealed by
numerous statements in the project documentation. To give some examples:
* an October 1998 paper by MARTAC said: "The recent consideration of
alternative treatments for ISV for these outer pits has arisen as a
result of the revised estimate for ISV being considerably above the
project budget."
* a July 17, 1998 paper written by the chair of MARTAC gives the
following criteria for considering options for the Taranaki pits: time
savings; cost savings; nature of waste form; potential for exposure of
waste; and efficiency of operation.
* at an April 13, 1999 meeting, Garth Chamberlain from GHD, the
construction company which was appointed as project manager (despite
having little knowledge about ISV and no experience with the
technology), said it was a much easier, quicker and cheaper option to
exhume and bury debris rather than using ISV.
As Prof. Johnston et al. note in their conference paper (cited below),
the decision to abandon ISV: "... was announced to the Maralinga
Consultative Group in the middle of a meeting in July 1999 without the
consent of the other members of the Consultative Group, particularly
Maralinga Tjarutja and South Australia. ... The Consultative Group has
continued to meet through 2000 and 2001, but there was diminished
confidence in the consultative process as a result of the Commonwealth
unilateral decision to abandon ISV."
The unilateral decision to abandon ISV was taken despite previous
agreement that no changes to the clean-up methodology would be taken
without discussing the proposed changes with the Maralinga Tjarutja.
Senator Minchin said in a May 1, 2000 media release that: "As the
primary risk from plutonium is inhalation, all these groups have agreed
that deep burial of plutonium is a safe way of handling this waste." By
"these groups" the Minister meant ARPANSA, the Maralinga Tjarutja and
South Australian Government. The Minister's statement was false on two
counts. Firstly, the burial of plutonium-contaminated debris was not
'deep' no matter how loose the definition - the soil cover is just 5
metres. Secondly, the Maralinga Tjarutja certainly did not agree to the
decision to abandon ISV in favour of burial - in fact they wrote to the
Minister disassociating themselves from the decision (Senate Estimates,
May 3, 2000).
The Australian Senate passed a resolution on August 21, 2002, which
reads as follows:
That the Senate-
(a) notes:
(i) that the clean up of the Maralinga atomic test site resulted in
highly plutonium-contaminated debris being buried in shallow earth
trenches and covered with just one to two metres of soil,
(ii) that large quantities of radioactive soil were blown away during
the removal and relocation of that soil into the Taranaki burial
trenches, so much so that the contaminated airborne dust caused the
work to be stopped on many occasions and forward area facilities to be
evacuated on at least one occasion, and
(iii) that americium and uranium waste products are proposed to be
stored in an intermediate waste repository and that both these
contaminants are buried in the Maralinga trenches;
(b) rejects the assertion by the Minister for Science (Mr McGauran) on
14 August 2002 that this solution to dealing with radioactive material
exceeds world's best practice;
(c) contrasts the Maralinga method of disposal of long-lived, highly
radioactive material with the Government's proposals to store low-level
waste in purpose-built lined trenches 20 metres deep and to store
intermediate waste in a deep geological facility;
(d) calls on the Government to acknowledge that long-lived radioactive
material is not suitable for near surface disposal; and
(e) urges the Government to exhume the debris at Maralinga, sort it and
use a safer, more long-lasting method of storing this material.
The Australian Senate passed another resolution on October 15, 2003,
which inter alia condemned the Maralinga clean-up. The resolution was
as follows:
That the Senate:
(a) notes:
(i) that 15 October 2003 marks the 50th anniversary of the first
atomic test conducted by the British government in northern South
Australia;
(ii) that on this day "Totem 1", a 10 kilotonne atomic bomb, was
detonated at Emu Junction, some 240 kilometres west of Coober Pedy;
(iii) that the Anangu community received no forewarning of the test;
(iv) that the 1984 Royal Commission report concluded that Totem 1 was
detonated in wind conditions that would produce unacceptable levels of
fallout, and that the decision to detonate failed to take into account
the existence of people at Wallatinna and Welbourn Hill;
(b) expresses its concern for those indigenous peoples whose lands and
health over generations have been detrimentally affected by this
and subsequent atomic tests conducted in northern South Australia;
(c) congratulates the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta – the Senior Aboriginal
Women of Coober Pedy - for their ongoing efforts to highlight the
experience of their peoples affected by these tests;
(d) condemns the Government for its failure to properly dispose
of radioactive waste from atomic tests conducted in the Maralinga
precinct; and
(e) expresses its continued opposition to the siting of a low-level
radioactive waste repository in South Australia.
DEST's mishandling of the Maralinga project complicated its attempt to
build a nuclear waste dump in SA from 1998-2004. Prof. Johnston argued
in his written submission to ARPANSA that DEST had failed to
demonstrate an ability to properly manage the dump project:
"The applicant for a licence [DEST] does not have the technical
competence required to manage the contracts of a proposed operator. The
operator who may have the necessary technical competence is not a
co-applicant. I am not convinced the applicant will have effective
control of the project. I believe the application has not demonstrated
that the applicant has the capacity to ensure that it can abide by the
licence conditions that could be imposed under Section 35 of the ARPANS
Act because of a lack of technical competence in managing its
contractors."
Mr. Parkinson's statements include:
* "The Maralinga Rehabilitation Project: Final Report", Medicine,
Conflict and Survival, Vol.20, 2004, pp.70-80, London: Frank Cass.
* "Maralinga: The Clean-Up of a Nuclear Test Site", Medicine and Global
Survival, Volume 7, Number 2, February 2002,
<www.ippnw.org/MGS/V7N2Parkinson.html>
* Maralinga Rehabilitation Project, 2000,
<www.mapw.org.au/conferences/mapw2000/papers/parkinson.html>.
* "Maralinga: Clean-Up or Cover-Up?" Australasian Science, July, 21
(6), 2000, p.16.
* comments in ABC Radio National, Background Briefing program,
"Maralinga: The Fall Out Continues", April 16, 2000,
<www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s120383.htm>
* numerous articles posted at <www.geocities.com/jimgreen3>
* Comments on the MARTAC report, April, 2003,
<www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/martac.html>.
* second-round submission to ARPANSA repository inquiry, which used to
be posted at: <www.arpansa.gov.au/reposit/nrwr.htm>.
Prof. Johnston's statements include:
* written submission number 256 to ARPANSA repository inquiry, which
used to be posted at: <www.arpansa.gov.au/reposit/nrwr.htm>.
* presentation to ARPANSA repository forum, February 26, 2004, which
used to be posted at <www.arpansa.gov.au/reposit/nrwr.htm>.
* P.N. Johnston, A.C. Collett, T.J. Gara, "Aboriginal participation and
concerns throughout the rehabilitation of Maralinga", presented at the
Third International Symposium on the Protection of the Environment from
Ionising Radiation, Darwin, 22-26 July 2002, IAEA-CSP-17, IAEA, Vienna,
2003, p.349-356. (Posted on the IAEA website.)
Statements from Mr. Timmons are posted at:
* <www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/martac.html>
* <www.geocities.com/jimgreen3/timmons.html>
===============================================
3. DEFEATED PLAN FOR
A NUCLEAR DUMP IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA
Same Country. Same People. Same Poison. Enough is Enough.
In February 1998, the federal government announced its intention to
build a national nuclear waste dump in central South Australia.
There were parallels between the atrocities inflicted on Aboriginal
people during the British nuclear testing program and the plan for a
national radioactive waste dump:
* the dump represented another forced imposition of radiological toxins.
* Aboriginal land was seized in support of the dump just as it was for
the weapons tests. This alienation included but went beyond the
annulment of formal Native Title rights and interests over the dump
site, as part of the the Federal Government's compulsory acquisition of
land for the dump.
One of the patterns of radioactive racism is that Indigenous
communities are divided, dislocated and disempowered, and thus all the
more vulnerable to the next assault from the nuclear industry. The
victory in the campaign to prevent the imposition of a nuclear waste
dump in SA was a welcome exception to the general pattern. The Kupa
Piti Kungka Tjuta - a senior Aboriginal women's council, comprising
women who had suffered the effects of the British nuclear testing
program - played a leading role in the campaign against the dump, as
were the Kokatha and Barngala Native Title claimant groups.
The campaign of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta was widely supported and
celebrated.
In 2000, the Kungka Tjuta were awarded the Jill Hudson Award for
Environmental Protection from the Conservation Council of SA
(<www.ccsa.asn.au/esa/hudson.htm>).
The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta also received a regional 'SA Great' award
for contribution to the environment. (Advertiser, December 16, 2000.)
Mrs. Eileen Kampakuta Brown, a member of the Kungka Tjuta, was awarded
an Order of Australia on Australia Day, January 26, 2003 for her
service to the community "through the preservation, revival and
teaching of traditional Anangu (Aboriginal) culture and as an advocate
for indigenous communities in Central Australia". On March 5, 2003, the
Australian Senate passed a resolution noting "the hypocrisy of the
Government in giving an award for services to the community to Mrs.
Brown but taking no notice of her objection, and that of the
Yankunytjatjara/Antikarinya community, to its decision to construct a
national repository on this land."
Representatives of the Kungka Tjuta, Mrs. Eileen Kampakuta Brown, a
Yankunytjatjara/Antikarinya elder, and Mrs. Eileen Wani Wingfield, a
Kokatha elder, were awarded the prestigious international Goldman Prize
in 2003 for their campaign to prevent the dump
(<www.goldmanprize.org>).
Commenting on the Goldman Award, The Adelaide Advertiser argued in an
April 15, 2003 editorial:
"Award of the Goldman Environmental Prize to Aboriginal elders Eileen
Kampakuta Brown and Eileen Wani Wingfield for their dogged opposition
to the planned radioactive waste dump is recognition and inspiration.
The two women are survivors of the atomic tests at Maralinga in the
1950s. They are also a timely rebuff to the Federal Government's
continued message that opposition to the low level dump is synonymous
with hysteria and ignorance.
Half a century on, these two women have lived with the lethal impact
and the Berlin Wall of denial that followed Maralinga.
Their misgivings [about the dump] are the misgivings of the
overwhelming majority of their fellow South Australians.
If only this award would be accompanied by Federal Government
acceptance that their dump decision is unfair and unwarranted."
The dump was opposed by Native Title claimant groups, the Kokatha and
the Barngala. It was opposed by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Commission. (ATSIC). Acting Chair of ATSIC, Lionel
Quartermaine, argued in a submission to ARPANSA: "The Nulla Wimila
Kutju Regional Council is fully supportive of the Kupa Piti Kungka
Tjuta ... who have been vocal in their opposition to the proposed
[repository] siting. Many witnessed the effects on their people of the
Atomic Tests conducted in their country in the 1950s. It is patently
unfair that these should now once again face the prospect of being at
risk of radiation exposure." (Submission No.242, previously posted at
<www.arpansa.gov.au/reposit/nrwr.htm>. See also: "ATSIC in fear
of N-dump leakage", by Rebecca DiGirolamo, The Australian, December 16,
2003, p.4.)
An April 14, 2003 letter from the Federal Environment Department's
Indigenous Advisory Committee states:
"The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, senior Aboriginal women of north SA,
fundamentally oppose this nuclear waste dump which they see as the
imposition of poison ground onto their traditional lands.
The Kokatha people, as registered native title claimants, oppose the
nuclear waste dump and the intended acquisition and annulment of their
native title rights and interests.
Throughout the EIS process under the EPBC Act, the Native Title
claimants and other community members feel that there has not been
adequate consultation. Traditional owners have also not been able to
find out about the intended legal approach of the Commonwealth
Government in carrying out key aspects of the proposed project."
Those concerns were ignored in the federal Environment Department's
Environmental Assessment Report Report (March 2003) and by the
Environment Minister David Kemp, who approved the dump project. Kemp's
approval was the final stage of an Environmental Impact Assessment
process under the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Convention
Act 1999 - a farcical process whereby Federal Government departments
wrote, 'reviewed' and approved the Environmental Impact Statement.
The Federal Government's Government's approach to 'consultation' was
spelt out in a document leaked in 2002 (Department of Education,
Science and Training, 2002, "Communication Strategy: Announcement of
Low Level Radioactive Waste Site in SA"). The document states: "Tactics
to reach Indigenous audiences will be informed by extensive
consultations currently being undertaken ... with Indigenous groups."
In other words, sham 'consultation' was used to fine-tune the
government's pro-dump propaganda.
Aboriginal groups were coerced into signing agreements consenting to
test drilling of short-listed sites for the proposed dump. The Federal
Government made it clear that if consent for test drilling was not
granted by Aboriginal groups, that drilling would take place anyway. A
clear signal of the Government's intent to proceed regardless of
Aboriginal support for or engagement in the process came on April 30,
1999, when the Federal Government issued a Section 9 notice under the
1989 Land Acquisition Act which gave the government legal powers to
conduct work on land that it might acquire to site the dump.
Aboriginal groups were put in an invidious position:
* they could attempt to protect specific cultural sites by engaging
with the Federal Government and signing agreements, at the risk of
having that engagement being misrepresented or misunderstood as consent
the dump per sé; or
* they could refuse to engage in the process, thereby having no say in
the process whatsoever.
Aboriginal groups were between "a rock and a hard place" according to
Stewart Motha from the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement, which
represented the Antakirinja, Barngarla, and Kokatha people in
negotiations over the dump. Mr. Motha said, "If Aboriginal groups do
get involved in clearances [for test drilling] they face the
possibility that the Government will point to that involvement as an
indication of consent for the project. If they refuse to participate,
who will protect Aboriginal heritage, dreaming and sacred sites?" (ALRM
newsletter, 1999.)
According to Parry Agius, manager of the ALRM's Native Title Unit, "The
nuclear waste repository issue highlights the inadequacy of native
title rights as they are currently constituted under the Native Title
Act and is a showcase for the consequences of the 10 Point Plan. While
native title purports to recognise Aboriginal peoples' particular
relationship to the land, and the negotiations we are currently
undertaking are aimed at protecting Aboriginal heritage, the
commonwealth government may extinguish these rights by compulsory
acquisition." (ALRM newsletter, 1999.)
Dr. Roger Thomas, a Kokatha man, told an ARPANSA forum on February 25,
2004:
"The Commonwealth sought from the native title claim group the
opportunity to carry out site clearances. They presented to us, as a
native title group, some 58 sites that they would like us to consider
for the purpose of cultural significance clearance. Of the 58, there
were seven sites that they saw as being the priority locations for
where they had intentions to want to locate the waste repository. I
would like it to be registered that, of the 58, the senior law men and
women had difficulty and made it quite clear that there was no intent
on their part to want to give any agreement to any of those sites. ...
The point of concern and controversy for us is that we were advised -
and we were told this by the various agencies involved - 'If you don't
proceed with signing the agreement, the Federal Government will acquire
it under the constitution legislation.' From our point of view, we not
only had the shotgun at our head, we also were put in a situation where
we were deemed powerless. If this is an example of the whitefella
process and system that we've got to comply with as Indigenous
Australians, then we attest that this whole process needs to be
reviewed and looked at and we need to be given under the convention of
the United Nations the appropriate rights as Indigenous first nation
people. Our bottom line position is that we do not agree with any waste
material of any level being dumped, located or deposited in any part of
this country."
Aboriginal groups did reluctantly engage in surveys resulting in the
signing of so-called Heritage Clearance Agreements. Heritage assessment
surveys were conducted by three groups:
* Antakirinja, Barngala and Kokotha Native Title Claimant Groups,
working jointly and with the same legal representatives;
* Andamooka Land Council Association, with separate legal
representation;
* Kuyani Association, represented by an adviser.
One risk was that those agreements would be misrepresented by the
Federal Government as amounting to Aboriginal consent to or even
support for the dump per sé. That risk was in fact realised.
Federal Government politicians and bureaucrats repeatedly made
reference to the surveys and the resulting Agreements without noting
that those Agreements in no way amount to consent to the dump. The
following excerpt from Senate Hansard provides an example of this type
of misrpresentation-by-omission (30 October, 2003, p.16813, question
2118):
Senator Allison (Australian Democrats) asked the Minister representing
the Minister for Science, upon notice, on 18 September 2003:
(e) have any Indigenous groups consented to the construction and
operation of the repository at the site known as Site 40a; if so, which
groups;
(f) have any Indigenous groups stated that Site 40a has no particular
Indigenous heritage values; if so, which groups.
Senator Vanstone — The Minister for Science has provided the following
answer to the honourable senator's question:
(e) The site has been cleared for all works associated with the
construction and operation of a national repository, with regard to
Aboriginal heritage, by the Aboriginal groups with native title claims
over the relative site as well as other groups with heritage interests
in the region. These groups are the Antakirinja, Barngala and and
Kokotha Native Title Claimant Groups, the Andamooka Land Council
Association and the Kuyani Association.
(f) See answer to (e).
There is no recognition whatsoever in the above statement from the
Federal Government of Aboriginal opposition to the dump.
Likewise, a DEST official told an ARPANSA forum on December 17, 2001
that: "... those Aboriginal groups that have heritage interests in
those lands we have consulted extensively with them, and each of the
three sites that are going through environmental impact assessment has
been inspected by these Aboriginal groups and have cleared for the
construction and operation of the repository." (Transcript at
<www.arpansa.gov.au/rrrp_for.htm>).
The same misrepresentation-by-omission occurs in the Environment
Department's Environmental Assessment Report regarding the planned dump
(<www.ea.gov.au>) and in numerous other Federal Government
statements.
This misrepresentation-by-omission has occurred repeatedly despite the
fact that the Heritage Clearance Agreements specifically note
Aboriginal opposition. One such Agreement, between the Federal
Government and the Antakarinja Native Title Group, the Barngarla Native
Title Group and the Kokatha Native Title Claimant Group, dated May 12,
2000, includes the following clauses:
E. The agreement to undertake Work Area Clearances is not to be deemed
as consent, and the COMMONWEALTH do not under this Agreement seek such
consent, by the Claimants to the establishment of a NRWR in the Central
North Region of South Australia.
I. The COMMONWEALTH acknowledges that there is "considerable
opposition" to the NRWR within the Aboriginal community of the region,
but notwithstanding that the Claimants have made a commitment that the
heritage clearance and the contents of the Work Area Clearance Report
will not be influenced by such opposition.
The Federal Government never publicly released those clauses of the
Agreement.
Federal government politicians and bureaucrats acknowledged Aboriginal
opposition to the dump - but infrequently, and generally only when
attention was drawn to their attempts to misrepresent Heritage
Clearance Agreements as amounting to consent to the dump.
DEST stated in the Draft Environment Impact Assessment (ch.11): "The
preferred site and two alternatives have been identified by Aboriginal
groups as not containing areas of significance for Aboriginal cultural
heritage, and have been cleared for all works associated with the
construction and operation of the national repository." That statement
assumes that the cultural significance of northern SA region can be
reduced to relatively small, discrete sites of significance - a false
assumption. It conflicts with the true significance of the region to
Aboriginal people.
Ironically, the Draft Environment Impact Assessment (ch.11) also
expresses a clearer understanding:
"As described in two of the work area clearance reports, many of the
region's landscape features have important spiritual associations.
Numerous spiritual pathways or Tjukurrpa trails extend for hundreds of
kilometres, linking this region with the central desert areas and to
cultural areas north and west. They also link to the eastern lakes and
Flinders Ranges region. In this respect the area of investigation
straddles an area of particular cultural interest. The interconnected
nature of the cultural environment means that to the Aboriginal groups
concerned, the locations proposed for the potential repository sites,
even though very small, cannot be viewed as isolated entities, but need
to be considered within the broader cultural perspective of Aboriginal
beliefs. The gibber plains are commonly associated with significant
Tjukurrpa and the fact that almost all of the work areas (including the
three under consideration) were located on gibber plains made their
clearance for development more difficult."
Likewise, the Draft Environment Impact Assessment (ch.11) also states:
"Of specific concern to Aboriginal groups was the potential of the
project to adversely affect the values that the landscape of the
central–north region of South Australia has for them. These values
include most importantly cultural heritage values, not expressed solely
as sites or places that might be physically avoided, but in a number of
religious narratives, generically called Tjukurrpa, that incorporate
different parts of the regional landscape."
Since DEST evidently had some appreciation of the nature of Aboriginal
cultural connections to the land, it was unfortunate that DEST
consistently expressed - even in the same chapter of the Draft EIS -
the contrary view that cultural significance attaches only to discrete
sites.
Native Title Rights and Interests
In 2002, the Federal Government tried to buy-off Aboriginal opposition
to the dump. Three Native Title claimant groups - the Kokatha, Kuyani
and Barngala - were offered $90,000 to surrender their Native Title
rights, but only on the condition that all three groups agreed. Two of
the groups - the Kokatha and Barngala - refused, so the government's
ploy failed.
Dr. Roger Thomas, a Kokatha man, told an ARPANSA forum on February 25,
2004: "The most disappointing aspect to the negotiations that the
Commonwealth had with us, as Kokatha, is to try to buy our agreement.
This was most insulting to us as Aboriginal people and particularly to
our elders. For the sake of ensuring that I don't further create any
embarrassment, I will not quote the figure, but let me tell you, our
land is not for sale. Our Native Title rights are not for sale. We are
talking about our culture, our lore and our dreaming. We are talking
about our future generations we're protecting here. We do not have a
"for sale" sign up and we never will."
According to The Age, the meetings took place at a Port Augusta motel
in September 2002 and the Commonwealth delegation included
representatives of the Department of the Attorney-General, the
Department of Finance and the Department of Education and Science and
Training. (Penelope Debelle, "Anger over native title cash offer", The
Age, May 17, 2003.)
The Age article quotes Dr. Thomas saying: "The insult of it, it was
just so insulting. I told the Commonwealth officers to stop being so
disrespectful and rude to us by offering us $90,000 to pay out our
country and our culture."
The Age article quotes Kokatha Land Council representative Andrew
Starkey saying "It was just shameful. They were wanting people to sign
off their cultural heritage rights for a minuscule amount of money. We
would not do that for any amount of money."
"Our heritage is not for sale", said Andrew Starkey (The Australian,
27/2/03).
The Australian quoted solicitor Philip Teitzel, representing the
Barngala people, said they had rejected the $90,000 because many South
Australians objected to a radioactive waste dump in their state.
("Blacks veto cash for N-dump site rights", Rebecca DiGirolamo, The
Australian, February 27, 2003.)
On July 7, 2003, the Federal Government used compulsory land
acquisition powers under the Lands Acquisition Act 1989 (Senator Nick
Minchin, Minister for Finance and Administration, Media Release, July
7, 2003). By so doing, Native Title rights and interests were annulled.
This took place with no forewarning and no consultation with Indigenous
groups, the South Australian Government, the holders of the pastoral
lease on the dump site, or with any other section of the Australian
community.
The victory
On July 14, 2004, the federal government abandoned the plan to build a
radioactive waste dump in SA. The decision reflected the strength and
persistence of the campaign against the dump. The victory was also
helped by the ruling of the full bench of the Federal Court in June
2004, that the government had illegally used the urgency provision of
the Land Acquisition Act.
The government could still have used the Land Acquisition Act (though
not the urgency provision) to once again seize control of the land. But
with an election approaching, the government decided to cut its losses.
Open letter from the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta after the victory
August 2004
People said that you can't win against the Government. Just a few
women. We just kept talking and telling them to get their ears out of
their pockets and listen. We never said we were going to give up.
Government has big money to buy their way out but we never gave up. We
told Howard you should look after us, not try and kill us. Straight
out. We always talk straight out. In the end he didn't have the power,
we did. He only had money, but money doesn't win.
Happy now – Kungka winners. We are winners because of what's in our
hearts, not what's on paper. About the country, bush tucker, bush
medicine and Inma (traditional songs and dances). Big happiness that we
won against the Government. Victorious. And the family and all the
grandchildren are so happy because we fought the whole way. And we were
going away all the time. Kids growing up, babies have been born since
we started. And still we have family coming. All learning about our
fight.
We started talking strong against the dump a long time ago, in 1998
with Sister Michelle. We thought we would get the Greenies to help us.
Greenies care for the same thing. Fight for the same thing. Against the
poison.
Since then we been everywhere talking about the poison. Canberra,
Sydney, Lucas Heights, Melbourne, Adelaide, Silverton, Port Augusta,
Roxby Downs, Lake Eyre. We did it the hard way. Always camping out in
the cold. Travelling all over with no money. Just enough for cool drink
along the way. We went through it. Survivors. Even had an accident
where we hit a bullock one night on the way to Roxby Downs. We even
went to Lucas Heights Reactor. It's a dangerous place, but we went in
boldly to see where they were making the poison - the radiation. Seven
women, seven sisters, we went in.
We lost our friends. Never mind we lost our loved ones. We never give
up. Been through too much. Too much hard business and still keep going.
Sorry business all the time. Fought through every hard thing along the
way. People trying to scare us from fighting, it was hard work, but we
never stopped. When we were going to Sydney people say "You Kungkas
cranky they might bomb you", but we kept going. People were telling us
that the Whitefellas were pushing us, but no everything was coming from
the heart, from us.
We showed that Greenies and Anangu can work together. Greenies could
come and live here in Coober Pedy and work together to stop the dump.
Kungkas showed the Greenies about the country and the culture. Our
Greenie girls are the best in Australia. We give them all the love from
our hearts. Family you know. Working together – that's family. Big
thank you to them especially. We can't write. They help us with the
letters, the writing, the computers, helped tell the world.
Thank you very much for helping us over the years, for everything.
Thank you to the Lord, all our family and friends, the Coober Pedy
community, Umoona Aged Care, the South Australian Government and all
our friends around Australia and overseas. You helped us and you helped
the kids. We are happy. We can have a break now. We want to have a rest
and go on with other things now. Sit around the campfire and have a
yarn. We don't have to talk about the dump anymore, and get up and go
all the time. Now we can go out together and camp out and pick bush
medicine and bush tucker. And take the grandchildren out.
We were crying for the little ones and the ones still coming. With all
the help - we won. Thank you all very much.
No Radioactive Waste Dump in our Ngura – In our Country!
Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta
Ivy Makinti Stewart
Eileen Kampakuta Brown
Eileen Unkari Crombie
Emily Munyungka Austin
Angelina Wonga
Tjunmutja Myra Watson
Coober Pedy, South Australia
('Talking Straight Out', a wonderful book about the Kungka Tjuta's
campaign, is available for purchase, check the website for details:
<www.iratiwanti.org>.)
===============================================
4.
CURRENT PROPOSAL FOR A NUCLEAR WASTE DUMP IN THE NORTHERN TERRITORY
The Howard government's plan to dump nuclear waste on Aboriginal land
in SA was defeated. But now the government is attempting to impose a
nuclear dump on the Northern Territory - despite having made
unequivocal promises not to do so before the 2004 federal election.
Three sites are being considered - Hart's Range and Mt Everard in
Central Australia, and Fisher's Ridge near Katherine. None of these
sites was short-listed when environmental and scientific criteria were
used to locate potential dump sites in the 1990s.
Along with low and intermediate level waste from around Australia, the
dump would take highly radioactive waste from reprocessed spent fuel
rods from the nuclear reactor at Lucas Heights in Sydney.
The federal government failed in its attempt to dump radioactive waste
in SA in large bart because of its heavy-handed, undemocratic and
racist handling of the issue. But the government appears to have drawn
the opposite conclusion. It now wants to impose a nuclear waste dump on
the Northern Territory and is behaving in a still more heavy-handed and
undemocratic manner.
Draconian legislation was passed through the federal parliament in 2005
to by-pass normal decision-making processes in relation to the proposed
nuclear waste dump. This legislation undermines environmental, public
safety and Aboriginal heritage protections.
The proposed dump is opposed by a number of Indigenous groups including
the Central Lands Council.
The Northern Land Council (NLC) has expressed conditional support for
the dump but the conditions have not been met. As the Senate report
into the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill 2005 said
(paragraph 1.41): "It is clear that the NLC's support for the
legislation is conditional on traditional owners retaining a final veto
right concerning the location of a waste facility on the basis of
sacred site and environmental considerations. The bill in its current
form does not appear to meet this requirement." (Senate Employment,
Workplace Relations and Education Legislation Committee, November 2005.)
Nor did the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act in its final
form meet the NLC's requirement.
The limited support for a dump in the NT (Indigenous and
non-Indigenous) appears to be predicated on the assumption that there
will be appropriate compensation. But when the plan was to build a dump
in South Australia, there was never any offer of compensation ... just
one attempt to buy off Indigenous opposition to the dump which was
rejected by the Kokatha and Barngala Native Title claimants.
More information on the NT nuclear dump plan:
* Nuclear Territory News <www.ntnews.info/breaking.php>
* Environment Centre Northern Territory <www.ecnt.org>
* Alice Action <groups.yahoo.com/group/aliceaction>
* NT nuclear dump wiki: <en.wikinews.org/wiki/
Opposing_a_nuclear_waste_dump_in_the_Northern_Territory>
* Friends of the Earth <www.foe.org.au>
Contact: Alice Action
E: <[email protected]>
Alice Action meets every Wednesday 6pm at ALEC, 39 Hartley St, Alice
Springs.
Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act 2005
The federal government states that the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste
Management Act (CRWMB) 2005 is intended, in the government's words, to
"provide legislative authority to undertake the various activities
associated with the proposed facility; override or restrict the
application of laws that might hinder the facility's development and
operation; and provide for the acquisition or extinguishment of rights
and interests related to land on which the facility may be located."
The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act (CRWMA) 2005 was
passed through the federal parliament in December 2005. It excludes
State and Territory laws where they would 'regulate, hinder or prevent'
investigation of sites, construction of the nuclear waste dump and
transportation of nuclear waste. It prevents the Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984 and the Environment
Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 from having effect
during investigation of the sites. The Act excludes the Native Title
Act 1993 and the Lands Acquisition Act 1989 from operating at all. The
government ignored requests from the Central and Northern Land Councils
that Traditional Owners retain a right to veto specific sites on
environmental or heritage grounds.
Section 3D of the CRWMB 2005 states that: "No person is entitled to
procedural fairness in relation to a Minister's approval."
Section 6 of the CRWMB 2005 states:
"Application of Commonwealth laws
(1) The following laws have no effect to the extent that they would,
apart from this section, regulate, hinder or prevent the doing of a
thing authorised by section 4:
(a) the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act
1984;
(b) the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.
(2) The regulations may prescribe another law, or a provision of
another law, of the Commonwealth for the purposes of this subsection.
The prescribed law or provision has no effect to the extent that it
would, apart from this subsection, regulate, hinder or prevent the
doing of a thing authorised by section 4."
Then science minister Brendan Nelson said in Parliament on 1/11/05:
"the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984
and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999
will not apply to the site investigation phase of the project."
Part 3 of the CRWMB 2005 states that: "The Minister may, in his or her
absolute discretion, declare in writing that all or specified rights or
interests in land in the Northern Territory specified in the
declaration are required for providing all-weather road access to the
selected site (or selected part of a site)."
Part 3 makes further provision for procedural fairness to be ignored:
"No person is entitled to procedural fairness in relation to the
Minister's making of a declaration."
Part 3, section 9 (Acquisition or extinguishment) states that:
"... any rights or interests in the selected site (or selected part of
a site) that have not already been acquired by the Commonwealth, or
extinguished, are by force of this section:
(a) acquired by the Commonwealth or extinguished; and
(b) freed and discharged from all other rights and interests and from
all trusts, restrictions, dedications, reservations, obligations,
mortgages, encumbrances, contracts, licences, charges and rates."
Part 4 - Conducting activities in relation to selected site - provides
for another raft of exemptions from state/territory laws.
------------------------>
Dumping Ground
By Eve Vincent
Signature
January 2006
<http://s7digital.com/signature/sig-stories.php?id=532>
Julius Bloomfield, a traditional landowner from Mount Everard, north of
Alice Springs, hands me a yellow felt circle, carefully cut out. It's
an imperfect shape, but an eloquent piece of felt. The yellow dot, an
attached note explains, is for "the sun on our flag, and renewable
energy". It also symbolises yellow cake, and a target. Bull's eye.
When EVE VINCENT met Julius in mid-September 2005, the Arrente people
of Mount Everard suspected that when it came to a decision about where
to put a national radioactive waste repository, their views would count
for very little. By December, they were proved right.
In July 2005 Dr Brendan Nelson, Federal Minister for Education, Science
and Training, finalised a list of possible sites for a nuclear waste
dump: Mount Everard, on the Tanami Road 40 kilometres north west of
Alice; Harts Range, on the Plenty Highway 165 kilometres north east of
Alice; and Fishers Ridge on the Stuart Highway 47 kilometres south of
Katherine. All three sites are on Commonwealth-owned Defence Department
land. According to Nelson, the three potential sites will be assessed
for their suitability over the next three years.
Public opposition to the waste dump runs high in the Territory, and
enjoys the bipartisan support of Clare Martin's Labor Government and
the Country Liberal Party Opposition. Currently, various State and
Territory regulatory laws and prohibitions apply to the transporting
and dumping of nuclear waste, reflecting strong community concern about
the practice.
However, in October 2005 Nelson unveiled a Bill that puts beyond doubt
the Commonwealth's power to proceed with their plans. The Bill was
subsequently passed in December.
The Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Bill strips the powers of
both the Northern Territory Government and the relevant Aboriginal Land
Councils, which represent traditional owners, to oppose the dump.
The Bill decrees that all relevant Aboriginal heritage legislation and
the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999
"will not apply to the site investigation phase of the project".
It confers discretionary powers on the responsible minister, who may
declare one of the three sites as suitable. The Bill also extinguishes
all interests — such as Native Title — that the Commonwealth does not
already hold in the site.
Finally, just in case any confusion remains, the Bill ensures the
Commonwealth has the express authority to do anything "necessary or
incidentally required to proceed with the establishment and operation
of the facility, as well as the transport of waste".
By this stage of the Bill's initial October reading, Warren Snowden,
Labor member for the Territory seat of Lingiari, had been kicked out of
the House of Representatives chamber. Snowden could not help himself
from interjecting. "Outrageous!" he interrupted. "This is outrageous.
[Nelson]'s outrageous."
The Northern Territory's Chief Minister, Clare Martin, was also furious
with the Federal Government's radical move. The NT Parliament
immediately moved a resolution condemning their inability to
scrutinise, review or appeal the dump proposal.
It's certainly an extraordinarily heavy-handed power grab. (Or it would
be, if the arrogant, anti-democratic thrust of so much Government
comment and legislation hadn't rendered the extraordinary, very
ordinary.)
Territorians are angry that they've been lied to about the dump. In the
lead up to the 2004 Federal election, Environment Minister Ian Campbell
made this statement in Darwin: 'The Commonwealth is not pursuing any
options anywhere on the mainland ... Northern Territorians can take
that as an absolute categorical assurance.' The things you say, when
you're trying to win votes.
Nelson's justification for the Bill was highly emotive.
The Government needs to have finalised its plan for the disposal of
radioactive waste before the regulatory body ARPANSA will license the
construction of a new nuclear research reactor at Lucas Heights in
suburban Sydney. The closing passages of the Bill's reading stated that
Lucas Heights, which produces medical isotopes, saves people's lives
everyday. This is grossly misleading.
Dr Bill Williams, from the Medical Association for the Prevention of
War, has noted that "from February to May 2000, while the [Lucas
Heights] reactor was shutdown for maintenance, we simply imported all
our technetium [an isotope used in nuclear medicine], without any
reported adverse patient outcomes".
Dr Williams also cites research in the US which suggests that
alternative production methods of technetium are not far off.
Development and commercialisation of new technology could mean Lucas
Heights' existence is unjustifiable within years.
Let's remember why the Government's last attempt to impose a waste dump
on an unwilling community went so disastrously wrong. In 1998 the
Federal Government began a push to locate a national nuclear waste dump
in South Australia's arid north.
The move was deeply unpopular in South Australia. So much so that, in
2003, the Federal Government awarded a $300,000 contract to a
Melbourne-based PR firm to sell the plan to a hostile public. The
public didn't buy it. In fact, in demonstrating its contempt for
community opinion, the Federal Government cemented the passionate
resolve of South Australians.
With the South Australian community behind him, Mike Rann's Labor
Government eventually took the Federal Government to court over the
issue. On 24 June last year the Federal Court found that the
Commonwealth Government had misused the 'urgency provisions' in a
hurried compulsory acquisition of the relevant land parcel. The Howard
Government decided an appeal would be too costly, (as in, it might cost
them marginal Adelaide seats in the 2004 Federal election) and
announced its decision to abandon the plan two weeks later.
Since 1998, when the waste dump plan for South Australia was first
mooted, the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, a council of Senior Aboriginal
women based in Coober Pedy in the State's north, had insisted that they
had a responsibility to care for their country. See our photo story for
more about their campaign, which effectively argued that the Government
was ignorant, and that they (the Kungkas or women) held valuable local
knowledge. The Government thought the country was dead, meaningless,
remote. The Kungkas showed it was alive, filled with meanings and home.
The Kungkas wrote many letters to politicians explaining that they had
to look after the land, life and the future. Some of the Kungkas signed
these letters — which were drafted out loud and then written up in the
campaign office — with small, neat crosses.
Theirs then is a story about contesting power, with an unlikely
outcome. Or is it?
When Governments move radical proposals to extend their own power,
communities respond in kind.
------------------------>
WASTE DUMP - TRADITIONAL OWNERS TAKE THEIR FIGHT TO CANBERRA
3 November 2005
<www.clc.org.au/media/releases/2005/nov05_waste.asp>
Traditional owners of the two proposed waste dump sites in Central
Australia are taking their fight to Canberra .
Both groups have sent letters to the Minister for Education, Science
and Training, Brendan Nelson, Senator Scullion , Minister for
Aboriginal Affairs Amanda Vanstone and other politicians.
They have also listened to presentations from Australian Nuclear
Science and Technology Organisation and the Department of Education
Science and Training.
However, both groups have decided that the proposal has no positive
benefits for them.
The traditional owners are concerned about safety and the future
security of a nuclear waste dump, the waste being transported on the
roads that they use every day, the negative impact on businesses like
Alcoota Aboriginal Corporation's cattle company, the impact on their
traditional country and the ability to hunt and get bush tucker,
pollution of the water in the event of an accident and the future for
their grandchildren.
Chairman of the Alcoota Aboriginal Corporation, William Tilmouth said
that the company was extremely worried about its beef sales if there
was a nuclear waste dump nearby.
"Other pastoralists have also expressed concern over the perception by
the public that the beef will be contaminated. The cattle industry out
here prides itself on being clean and green.
"We were lied to before the last election. Even Dave Tollner admitted
that on Stateline last week. Now is the time for Senator Scullion to
stand up for his constituents in Central Australia and cross the
floor," Mr Tilmouth said.
Lindsay Bookie runs a tourist business further east along the Plenty
Highway and said that a waste dump would impact heavily on him
"I have talked to the tourists who come to my camp and they say they
wouldn't come anymore because it would spoil the area. I am really
worried about all those trucks along that road too. There are so many
accidents along there - it wouldn't be at all safe."
Steven McCormack, who lives close to the Mt Everard site said that a
nuclear waste dump would be devastating for him and his family.
"This land is not empty - people live right nearby. We hunt and collect
bush tucker here and I am the custodian of a sacred site within the
boundaries of the defence land. We don't want this poison here.
------------------------>
CANBERRA FOISTS NUCLEAR WASTE ON ABORIGINAL COMMUNITIES
15 July 2005
<www.clc.org.au/media/releases/2005/jul05_nuclear.asp>
The Director of the Central Land Council (CLC), Mr David Ross said
today that there had been no approach from the Federal Government about
a locating a nuclear waste dump in Central Australia.
"I think people in Canberra just looked at a map and thought it looked
remote and empty.
"However, the two proposed sites in Central Australia - Mt Everard and
Harts Range – are close to people's homes and communities," he said.
"There must be a process for consent."
"No-one wants a nuclear waste dump in their backyard and I am sure that
traditional owners will have deep concerns about their safety, risks to
the environment and the transportation of the nuclear waste.
"In September last year the Australian Government assured Territorians
there would be no waste dump sites in the NT.
"The next we hear about it, the sites have already been chosen.
Minister Nelson's media statement today does not even acknowledge that
the Territory Government has already legislated to ban the transport
and disposal of federal nuclear waste in the Territory and this
position is also supported by the Leader of the Opposition, Jodeen
Carney.
"The views of Territorians - both black and white – do not seem to be
important to this government.
"We have all watched the courageous struggle of the Kupa Piti Kungka
Tjutas to stop this dump being built on their country nearby in SA, and
some of those women have recently visited Alice Springs to talk about
their experience. It would seem that the Australian Government has not
learnt anything from the defeat of the waste dump proposal in SA.
------------------------>
SCULLION AND TOLLNER A DISGRACE ON NUCLEAR DUMP
13 October 2005
<www.clc.org.au/media/releases/2005/20051013_scullion_tollner_dump.asp>
Senator Scullion says he has crossed the floor to vote against the dump
in the past and will continue to do so in the future.
"I already crossed the floor to support a motion that says the
Commonwealth shouldn't do this," he said.
"Now, any motion of that type, I will also cross the floor to support
or if there's any legislation that comes before the Senate that can
prevent the Commonwealth from providing this in the Northern Territory
I'll vote against it".
(ABC NT Local News 19 August 2005)
The Central Land Council says that the introduction of two pieces of
legislation into Parliament today to allow a nuclear waste dump in the
Northern Territory shows an outrageous disregard for the views of
Territorians.
CLC director David Ross said some Arrernte people had already clearly
and loudly said 'no' to the proposal to have a nuclear dump site in
Central Australia and the Central Land Council was organising further
meetings with all traditional owners of the two proposed sites to
ensure that they were aware of the issue and could give their views.
It is a statutory function of the CLC to seek the views of Aboriginal
people about developments on country to which they are affiliated.
"The Government knew we were holding meetings next week with Arrernte
traditional owners of the country which may be affected and it has
accepted an invitation to those meetings to put its case.
However, this action completely obliterates any pretence that these
traditional owners' views will make a difference to the outcome,
although the Government formally asked us to consult people," Mr Ross
said.
"Senator Scullion has conveniently forgotten his former commitment to
prevent the dump.
"It's not too late Senator Scullion. You can still redeem your
integrity by crossing the floor to represent your constituents," he
said.
"To add insult to injury, David Tollner and Nigel Scullion's joint
press release on the issue is just a mumbo jumbo of outright lies.
"To pretend that Australians will be denied life-saving
radiopharmaceuticals if the dump is stopped is alarmist rubbish and
Territorians deserve better from their elected representative.
"At the very least, one would expect our elected representatives to
reflect the views of their constituents and to tell the truth. They do
neither," Mr Ross said.
------------------------>
Walk in the sand with us, traditional owners urge PM
October 4, 2005
<www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200510/s1474339.htm>
Traditional owners of land near Alice Springs earmarked for a national
nuclear waste dump have called for the Prime Minister and Science
Minister to visit the area and meet with them.
The Athenge Lhere group are traditional owners of the Mount Everard
site, which is north of Alice Springs.
It is one of three sites in the Northern Territory being considered by
the Federal Government for the dump.
Kathleen Martin Williams, who is one of the traditional owners, says a
visit may help the ministers understand the community's reservations.
"I'd like Johnny Howard and his sidekicks, especially that [Education
Minister] Brendan Nelson, to come here take off their shoes and walk in
the red sand with us," she said.
"Maybe they will appreciate our country. Maybe."
The Northern Territory's Environment Minister, Marion Scrymgour, says
she told the Athenge Lhere group this morning that the Territory
Government strongly opposes the dump.
Ms Scrymgour says the traditional owners' opposition to a dump being
placed on their country is just as legitimate as any resident in urban
Australia.
"A lot of the traditional owners in the central Australian region are
saying you know not in our back yard," she said.
"Sorry but these sites and these areas are significant to us. They have
significant dreaming areas ... and it shouldn't be in these areas."
------------------------>
Traditional owners urge rejection of nuclear dump law
ABC
November 3, 2005
Traditional owners from two central Australian regions earmarked for a
nuclear waste dump have voiced their disgust about having the facility
forced on them.
Seven senior men and women from the Harts Range and Mount Everard areas
near Alice Springs fronted the media this morning to make their
opposition to a dump known.
Legislation has passed the House of Representatives, allowing the
Federal Government to force the facility on the Territory.
Two of the proposed sites are in central Australia.
The traditional owners at today's press conference called on the
Territory's CLP Senator Nigel Scullion to cross the floor and vote
against the dump legislation in the Senate.
------------------------>
No nuclear dumps: traditional owners
By Stephanie Peatling
November 1, 2005
<www.smh.com.au/news/national/no-nuclear-dumps-traditional-owners/2005/10/31/1130720481813.html>
Traditional owners of two of the proposed three sites for a nuclear
waste dump in the Northern Territory have urged the Federal Government
to look elsewhere for the facility, saying they are worried about the
implications for the environment and the health of their people.
The Central Land Council held meetings with the traditional owners of
the Alcoota-Harts Range and Mt Everard sites, near Alice Springs, a
fortnight ago and has formally told the Minister for Science, Brendan
Nelson, of the owners' opposition.
But under legislation to be debated by Parliament this week, Dr Nelson
will gain the power to dismiss all objections to the site he eventually
chooses for the nuclear waste dump.
"Of primary concern is the need to keep their country safe and healthy
for present and future generations, and to be able to continue to use
their country for hunting and getting bush tucker," says a letter
written by the council outlining the owners' concerns.
People are living close to the two proposed sites and are worried about
the long-term health and environmental effects should the dump go ahead.
"They fought hard to get their country back and they believe they
should not be the ones to have to live with radioactive waste on their
land," the letter says.
A delegation of senior traditional owners will visit Canberra next week
to protest against the three proposed sites for the dump.
The Federal Government is responsible for finding a site suitable for
permanent storage of nuclear waste produced by federal facilities such
as Sydney's Lucas Heights reactor.
It resumed the search last year after a campaign by the South
Australian Government and local groups forced it to abandon plans to
put the dump near Woomera.
Three sites are being considered, two of them on land looked after by
the Central Land Council. The other is on Northern Land Council land.
The Northern Land Council has given its support for a waste dump in the
NT if it can be done with the co-operation of traditional owners and
without endangering environmental or sacred site considerations.
Legislation due to be debated this week will give Dr Nelson the power
to over-ride NT laws designed to prevent the building of a nuclear dump
in the territory.
It will also allow him to dismiss objections raised by traditional
owners and prevent appeals under federal environmental or heritage
protection laws.
The Opposition's science spokeswoman, Jenny Macklin, said the new
legislation would "crush all opposition to the dump, including that of
the Central Land Council".
"It's time for the Science Minister to listen to the concerns of the
local community, instead of ramming through legislation designed to
silence dissent," she said.
------------------------>
"Talking straight out" to the Territory
MEDIA RELEASE
October 30, 2005
The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta – a council of senior Aboriginal women from
outback town Coober Pedy are heading to Alice Springs to launch the
book of their campaign, which stopped a nuclear waste dump in SA.
"This is a big story. You don't have to start at the beginning; we've
already done a lot of work," explain the Kungkas, who will also meet
with Traditional Owners of the two proposed sites while visiting the
Alice.
Territorians now face a protracted battle with the Federal Government
who are currently drafting new laws to "put beyond doubt the
Commonwealth's power" to build a nuclear waste dump in the NT.
The Federal Government are surely learning from their SA blunders, but
the Kungkas are intent that communities in the Northern Territory can
learn too, "Be strong like us. Don't be scared of the Government. We
weren't scared and we're elderly ladies."
"Talking Straight Out" will be launched at 6pm on Friday November 4 at
the Todd Mall Lawns. It is a 120 page full-colour book, self-published
from an underground office.
Over six years the women travelled the country, "talking straight out".
They called their campaign Irati Wanti – the poison, leave it.
Whether instructing federal politicians to "get your ears out of your
pockets and listen", starring in documentaries or hosting international
guests, the Kungkas generosity, courage and cheeky spirit are
infectious, and are bound to inspire many Northern Territorians.
"We just want to say to everyone don't give up, just keep going. We
kept on going and we won."
------------------------>
Nuclear waste dump debate
ABC Stateline
21/10/2005
Reporter: Melinda James
<www.abc.net.au/stateline/nt/content/2005/s1487960.htm>
MELINDA JAMES (journalist):
Does you public statement today mean that the Land Council effectively
supports the waste dump being built in the Northern Territory?
NORMAN FRY (Northern Land Council):
Not really, what we are saying is that if it is inevitable that the
Territory is going to get it we want Territorians to be involved, the
current Northern Territory government has dealt Territorians out of
that equation, we want an amendment to the Commonwealth Radioactive
Waste Management Bill, that allows Territorians in the form of
traditional land owners who own half the NT, to be informed about this,
and if the Territory is going to get it, then we have some say about
where it goes, and what sorts of benefits and other issues are
available and on offer for us.
MELINDA JAMES:
Well you have just finished a full council meeting with all 80 members
attending where any alternative sites suggested, or did any traditional
owners indicate that they actually wanted a nuclear waste dump on there
land?
NORMAN FRY:
The Commonwealth people that are handling this from Brendan Nelsons
port folio, came to the NLC some months ago to talk to with us and they
came to our full council meeting, and they gave a good briefing, a
comprehensive briefing, to the full council about what the repository
would look like above ground and what a trench would look like…
MELINDA JAMES:
But what kind of benefits do you think having a waste facility on
aboriginal land would bring to traditional owners, for e.g. are
traditional owners actively seeking a site now?
NORMAN FRY:
No they are not. But as we know the Commonwealth government right now
have introduced the Commonwealths Radioactive Waste Management Bill
which overrides sacred sites legislation, and aboriginal land rights as
well, and may very well have components of compulsory acquisitions in
it, which would simply override the Land Councils and the Land Rights
Act and all our Cultural and Heritage Rights, what we are seeking to do
is have a seat at the table with the Commonwealth, and like I said if
it is going to come to the Territory, because as you know the
Commonwealth is pretty cranky with all of the states about this ... and
when the arguments starts to distill down the NT politically is
obviously the weakest in the federation and is more than likely we will
end up with it in the NT. And given that 50% of the entire land mass of
the NT is owned by traditional aboriginal people, what were calling for
from our full council meeting is for A)- an amendment to go that a land
council and there are four of them in the NT, the Central Land Council,
the Anindilyakwa Land Council, and the Tiwi Land Council, so that if
this is going to happen in any of their jurisdictions, then the
traditional owners will have the final say and that their sacred sites
protection their heritage will be protected, and at the same time I
believe the NT Government…
------------------------>
Little Indigenous support for nuclear dump, group says
December 9, 2005
<www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1527236.htm>
The organisation representing traditional owners near a proposed
nuclear waste dump site in the Northern Territory says most Indigenous
Territorians do not want the facility.
Legislation passed the Senate yesterday allowing the dump to be built
at one of three sites in the Northern Territory.
The Northern Land Council (NLC) backed amendments allowing for an
alternative dump site to be proposed by Aboriginal land owners.
But the Jawoyn Association's acting director, John Ah Kit, a former
Labor government minister, says the NLC should not be speaking for
others.
"I haven't heard of any other traditional owners that have been
consulted yet," he said.
"The concern the Jawoyn people have with the Northern Land Council ...
supporting a resolution, there was no consultation with the Jawoyn
Association nor the traditional owners."
He says the proposed sites need to be scientifically assessed and the
results made public.
"If they could prove that it's safe and secure there at Fishers Ridge
they would be looking towards the Jawoyn traditional owners providing
their blessings, but you know we need to wait and see whether that is
something that the Commonwealth can convince the Jawoyn people that it
is a safe and secure site," he said.
Mr Ah Kit says now the legislation allowing the facility has passed the
Senate, the focus must be on finding the best site.
"I understand the Territory Government is now willing to cooperate with
the Commonwealth and find a suitable site in the Northern Territory and
that may not be Fishers Ridge, it may be somewhere else and personally
I would certainly like to see that if it is in the Territory as the
Commonwealth's stated, then it should be in the most secure and safest
location in the Territory," he said.
------------------------>
Indigenous owners stage dump protest in Sydney
November 6, 2005
<www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200511/s1498776.htm>
Traditional owners from the Northern Territory have gathered outside
Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney to rally against plans to place
a nuclear waste facility on their land.
The 14 owners are from Harts Range and Mt Everard in Central Australia
- two of the three possible sites identified by the Federal Government.
They were travelling with the Central Land Council's David Ross; the
Member for the Central Australian seat of MacDonnell, Alison Anderson,
and the Territory's Deputy Chief Minister, Syd Stirling.
Mr Stirling will meet tomorrow with senators who could vote down the
Commonwealth's nuclear legislation.
He will also be present a petition with 9,000 signatures to the
Territory's CLP Senator Nigel Scullion.
Mr Stirling says the Territory's campaign against the dump is gathering
interest and support.
"We'll test that tomorrow of course ... we'll have a range of meetings
with a number of senators that we can get hold of before the debate and
the vote in the Senate," he said.
------------------------>
Traditional owners reject N-dump sites
November 1, 2005
<www.smh.com.au/news/National/Traditional-owners-reject-Ndump-sites/2005/11/01/1130720537294.html>
Traditional owners in the Northern Territory have rejected two of three
possible sites proposed by the federal government for a nuclear waste
facility.
Aboriginal people living in small communities and outstations near the
commonwealth-owned sites have serious concerns for their safety should
the building of the low-level waste dump go ahead.
Science Minister Brendan Nelson has compiled a shortlist of three
possible locations for a Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management
Facility.
These are Defence Department properties at Mount Everard and Harts
Range near Alice Springs and Fishers Ridge, near Katherine, in the
Northern Territory.
But the Central Land Council (CLC) this week circulated a letter
stating it opposes a nuclear waste dump on or near their traditional
land.
The CLC said traditional landowners on both sites had recently informed
them they were strongly opposed to any nuclear waste management
facility being located on any part of their country.
The CLC has formally notified Dr Nelson and Labor deputy leader Jenny
Macklin of landholders' concerns.
"Of primary concern is the need to keep their country safe and healthy
for present and future generations, and to be able to continue to use
their country for hunting and getting bushtucker," the letter says.
"Despite assurances that the radioactive waste will be carefully
managed their view is that the radioactive waste facility poses serious
long-term risks to country and people.
"Many Aboriginal people live near the sites in small communities and
outstations and they are extremely worried about the proposals.
"They fought hard to get their country back and they believe they
should not be the ones to have to live with radioactive waste on their
land."
Dr Nelson has introduced into parliament laws which will over-ride the
Native Title Act and NT laws aimed at preventing the establishment of a
nuclear waste dump in the territory.
In its letter, the CLC described the push to override landholders'
rights and NT laws as "a deeply disturbing development".
------------------------>
Traditional owners to keep up dump protests
September 20, 2005
<www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200509/s1463888.htm>
A group of traditional owners has returned from an anti-nuclear meeting
in South Australia with plans to hold a rally on the streets of Alice
Springs.
The group is from Mount Everard, north of Alice Springs, which is one
of three sites in the Northern Territory identified as a possible
location for a national nuclear waste dump.
A spokesman for the group, Julias Bloomfield, says they learnt many
things about nuclear waste at the meeting in Quorn, near Port Augusta.
Mr Bloomfield says they are worried about sickness coming to their
country.
"We love our bush, we love our bush tucker and we don't want any waste
dump there any radiation, any radiation around," he said.
Mr Bloomfield says the community will continue to fight the proposal
and they want to hold a protest march in Alice Springs against the dump
in the near future.
------------------------>
Nuclear 'poison' not welcome
By Nigel Adlam
14 September 2005
<www.ntnews.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,7034,16599192%255E13569,00.html>
A GROUP of traditional owners last night told the Federal Government
that they don't want a nuclear waste facility on their land in Central
Australia.
The site is at Mount Everard, 25km northwest of Alice Springs.
Traditional owner Benedict Stevens said she didn't want "poison'' from
the Lucas Heights nuclear plant in Sydney brought to Arrernte country.
"The Government says it is safe waste, but if it is so safe why are
they thinking about bringing it halfway across the country to our
land?'' she asked.
"The Government may think this place is remote but this is our home.
"The land is crucial to our way of life and we must protect the stories
and dreamings that are significant to our law, our culture and our
people.''
Ms Stevens said the Arrernte people were disappointed that Canberra had
decided to "dump'' nuclear waste on their land.
"The Government has already taken our land away from us,'' she said.
"We have learned to live with that. But now they want to destroy that
land by putting a waste dump there.''
Ms Stevens said there had been no consultation with the traditional
owners.
"The Government does not respect our way of life,'' she said.
The Mount Everard site is on Commonwealth land surrounded by Aboriginal
land.
Science Minister Brendan Nelson said consultation with Territorians
would start next month.
But he has said there will be no "mucking about'' and the nuclear waste
facility will be built in the Territory.
------------------------>
Open Letter from the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta
July 19, 2005
We are the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta - Senior Aboriginal Women's Council
of Coober Pedy. We have already fought the waste dump here in South
Australia. The Government wanted to put the dump in our country and we
won the fight last year.
We've heard the Government is saying they will put the dump in the
Northern Territory next. We just wanted to say to everyone don't give
up, just keep on going. We kept on going and we won. We were always
talking strong, over and over.
Lotta people live up north and we have got family, many grandchildren,
living in Alice Springs. One place is only 20 kms from Alice, that's
too close. And what about the rivers and creeks? And all the floods?
And don't forget about the underground water. It's very important.
We say keep the poison in Sydney at Lucas Heights where they make it.
We have been saying that all along. We don't want the poison in trucks,
driving along any road. It's just too dangerous.
Manta winki - the whole country has the Tjukur - the Dreaming. One
Australia, it was whitefellas who cut it up on a map, made the borders.
No difference between Coober Pedy and Alice Springs. Northern Territory
and South Australia. It's all the same country and we gotta look after
it. The whole lot.
We are making a book that will be ready soon about our fight to stop
the dump. All our words, the letters we wrote, and pictures of
everywhere we went to talk against the dump. We were fighting for a
long time but it was worth it to look after our beautiful desert
country. We are making the book for all our kids to learn how to fight
for the country. You fellas in the Northern Territory can read the book
and learn too. And you're kids.
Be strong like us. Don't be scared of the Government. We weren't scared
and we are elderly ladies!
Eileen Kampakuta Brown, Emily Munyungka Austin, Ivy Makinti Stewart,
Tjunmutja Myra Watson
Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta
Coober Pedy
------------------------>
Indigenous leader questions dump plans
ABC NT Local News
28 July 2005
<www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1424105.htm>
The leader of an Aboriginal community neighbouring a proposed site for
a Commonwealth nuclear waste dump wants more information about its
potential impact given how close it is to the community and a sacred
site.
Fisher's Range, 40 kilometres south of Katherine, is one of three
defence sites being considered in the Northern Territory.
Robert Lee from the Jawoyn Association says Banatjarl shares the road
to Fisher's Range.
"It's next to where I live, it's only four kilometres away and I'm not
too impressed at this stage," he said.
Mr Lee says they are keen for objective information about the proposal.
"How can it be best managed, not going to damage the environment, the
sacred sites and stuff because we've got a sacred site not very far
away."
Mr Lee says he will meet Government officials next week to get
objective information about the dump.
But he says they have concerns about its potential impact, particularly
as there are also important underground aquifers.
Northern Territory Country Liberal Party Senator Nigel Scullion says
issues like Mr Lee has raised will be considered when the site is
chosen.
------------------------>
NT Govt vows to fight nuclear dump decision
Saturday, 16 July , 2005
<www.abc.net.au/am/content/2005/s1415444.htm] >
ANNE BARKER: The remote community of Harts Range, north-east of Alice
Springs, is home to about 240 people.
This small Indigenous community is well off the beaten track – 150
kilometres along the Plenty Highway towards the Queensland border – an
ideal place for a nuclear waste dump, according to Federal Science
Minister Brendan Nelson.
BRENDAN NELSON: And if the people of Sydney can comfortably live with a
nuclear reactor that conducts research and produces isotopes for
industry, and for medical use, why on earth can't people in the middle
of nowhere have low level and intermediate level waste?
===============================================
5.
URANIUM MINING
===============================================
5.1
Introduction
There is a long history of racism in the uranium mining industry in
Australia. Typically it involves some or all of the following tactics:
* divide-and-rule tactics.
* threats, most commonly legal threats.
* bribery.
* humbugging Traditional Owners, i.e. persistent pressure until the
mining company gets what it wants.
* ignoring the concerns of Traditional Owners insofar as the legal and
political circumstances permit.
Battles over uranium mining have of course been closely connected to
struggles over land rights. For example, in the mid to late 1970s, the
federal Land Rights Act stated that Aborigines had the right to claim
vacant crown land where they could establish traditional ownership. The
uranium-rich Alligator River district in the Northern Territory came
into this category, and Justice Fox - head of the Ranger Uranium
Inquiry - recommended that it be declared Aboriginal land. However,
under the Act, an Aboriginal veto of mining on their land could be
overridden if the government considered mining to be in the "national
interest" - and the Fraser government used the "national interest"
clause to override Aboriginal opposition to the Ranger uranium mine.
The Fox Report (May 1977, p,60) said: "There can be no compromise with
the Aboriginal position; either it is treated as conclusive, or it is
set aside ...... We have given careful attention to all that has been
put before us by them or on their behalf. In the end, we form the
conclusion that their opposition should not be allowed to prevail."
Vincent Forrester, former chairperson of the Northern Territory
National Aboriginal Conference, summarises the problem of dependence on
royalties: "We must break this dependency on mining activity for money
for essential services. It is morally bankrupt. No Aboriginal community
should be put in the position of deciding on development that is tied
to the uranium industry. Until all Aboriginal service matters are met
by direct grants from federal treasury, our people have little choice
in this matter." (1984, "Uranium Mining and Aboriginal People",
<www.sea-us.org.au/blackuranium.html>.)
===============================================
5.
2 Jabiluka & Ranger
Mining company ERA and the Howard government were determined to
override the opposition of the Mirarr Traditional Owners to the
Jabiluka uranium mine in the NT. After an extraordinary international
campaign led by the Mirarr, mining company ERA and the government were
defeated. The mine site has been rehabilitated and the Mirarr have a
veto over any future development of the mine. ERA still has hopes of
mining Jabiluka at some stage in the future, and it still operates the
Ranger uranium mine near Jabiluka.
See the website of the Mirarr Traditional Owners.
<www.mirarr.net>.
<www.mirarr.net/references.html>
<www.mirarr.net/media/index.html>
See the Mirarr/Gundjehmi submission #44 to the 2005-06 federal uranium
inquiry. <www.aph.gov.au/house/committee/isr/uranium/subs.htm>
Here is the English version of the opening statement from that
submission, by Senior Traditional Owner Yvonne Margarula.
Al-gangila al-Mirarr al-redweleng bolk-Mirarr ngalengarre gun-wok.
Statement from Mirarr Senior Traditional Owner Yvonne Margarula
Submission to 2005 Federal Parliament Uranium Inquiry
We Mirarr People have a long [over 30 years] experience with uranium
exploration and mining on our traditional lands.
No other Aboriginal community in Australia has experienced the impacts
of uranium mining for such a sustained period.
Along with other Aboriginal people the Mirarr opposed uranium mining
when the Government approached us in the 1970s.
The old people were worried about the damage mining would do to country
and the problems that mining would bring for Aboriginal people.
The Government would not listen and forced the Ranger uranium mine on
us, but the old people were right and today we are dealing with
everything they were worried about.
Uranium mining has completely upturned our lives – bringing a town,
many non-Aboriginal people, greater access to alcohol and many
arguments between Aboriginal people, mostly about money.
Uranium mining has also taken our country away from us and destroyed it
– billabongs and creeks are gone forever, there are hills of poisonous
rock and great holes in the ground with poisonous mud where there used
to be nothing but bush.
I do not like visiting the Ranger mine and seeing what has happened to
my father's country. This land has been ruined forever. We don't
believe that the mining company should only be protecting the Kakadu
National Park outside the Ranger area; we don't want the Ranger Project
Area to be sacrificed. We want the company to keep the impact of the
mine as small as possible but it has been growing little by little ever
since it began.
Although the uranium mining at Ranger is taking place on Mirarr
country, overall we have not truly benefited from the mine. Our lives
are worse since the government decided to allow uranium mining. When
the government started the mine and the national park at the same time
in 1979, a lot of Aboriginal people came into the area for the first
land claim in Australia and the promise of uranium and Kakadu Park
royalty monies.
We went from four or five families and around fifty Aboriginal people
in 1975 to over 500 today. There has been a lot of fighting for many
years between the Mirarr Traditional Owner's of Ranger and Jabiluka and
other Aboriginal people.
Mining and the millions of dollars in royalties have not improved our
quality of life.
For 25 years we Mirarr People, the Traditional Owners of Ranger, were
pushed to the outside by non-Aboriginal people in government, mining
companies and Aboriginal organisations and by other Aboriginal people
who did their bidding and who were favoured by them.
Other Aboriginal Associations in Kakadu, with the help of government
and the mining company, started using Jabiluka Mine money to set up
social service programs like the Women's Resource Centre and the Night
Patrol. The mining company ERA even provided their own staff to
coordinate the CDEP project.
They tried to divide the Aboriginal community in Kakadu but they did
not succeed.
The Mirarr did not use these services because it was being funded by
poison money from a uranium mine that will destroy a sacred site.
We told the government that it wasn't right that in Arnhem Land
communities they fund all the social services, but we are forced to
have a uranium mine to provide the money for service provision in
Kakadu.
The Women's Resource Centre and Night Patrol have since closed down,
and we initiated the setting up of an independent CDEP for all of
Kakadu's outstation residents because of arguments between the Mirarr
and the Djabulugku Association, of which we are members.
Mining made us, the Traditional Owners, feel like outsiders until we
established the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation in 1995. Before then
the Gagudju Association was too big a group and could never truly
represent the interests of the Mirarr Traditional Owners, along with
many other clans.
Since then we have developed a strong voice in our own right and have
made many important contributions to Kakadu. Some of these include
economic development studies, helping establish a process to examine
Jabiru's future irrespective of mining, establishing an independent
organisation for service delivery to Kakadu's outstations, funding
diesel for electricity on the outstations, saving and carefully
investing royalty money, and arguing for greater Aboriginal involvement
in the running of Kakadu National Park. We have also recently helped
set up the Kakadu Youth Centre in Jabiru.
We have made these decisions through our Committee at the Gundjeihmi
Aboriginal Corporation. Many of these things should have been done by
the Land Council, by the Commonwealth Government or the Northern
Territory Government – but they were not.
Along with our professional staff, we had to think, organise and even
pay for many of these initiatives. Once non-Aboriginal people in
government and the mining companies got what they wanted, once Ranger
was up and running, all our problems were ignored.
Everyone started looking at Kakadu's problems only when the government
announced that the Jabiluka uranium mine should happen. All of a sudden
there were many people interested in us and our problems and a lot of
money was spent telling the world that more mining could happen and
that things would be different this time.
Around this time (1997-1998) many decisions were made about things we
didn't speak about in the KRSIS process and none of these things have
lasted. None of the promises last but the problems always do.
We are very worried about any further mining. We are worried because as
Traditional Owners we must both look after country and look after
people. If the country is poisoned people's lives could be ruined, if
the social problems are not fixed this could also ruin lives.
Mirarr want a greater say in how the Ranger mine operates, in how the
environment is protected, how the monitoring of the land is done. We
don't think that once the mining starts the Traditional Owners should
be locked out of all this just because the government calls it an
'operational issue'.
We want this say because one of our main worries is the long-term
impacts of mining at Ranger, how mining could permanently damage the
Magela Creek, the nearby billabongs and the water underground.
People live on the creek downstream of the mine, they drink the water
and fish and play in it. We are now very worried that the tailings in
the pits at Ranger might poison the land over time.
Everyone seems to be only concerned with what is happening today or
next year, yet no scientist can tell us properly what will happen at
the mine site in a hundred years time when they are all gone and no-one
cares.
Again it will be only the Mirarr people looking after that place as we
have done for thousands of years.
We feel that people in government and in the mining company are still
not listening to us. No one has answered all the questions or responded
to all the comments that Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation put to the
Senate inquiry in 2002 and 2003. Perhaps people want to ignore us and
hope our opposition will just go away – but if we are treated that way
again we will respond in the same way.
If we don't have any power through the agreements and the environment,
cultural and social processes then we will try to take power through
the courts and through the media like we have in the past.
This fight is not something we want, we simply want non-Aboriginal
people to mean what they say when they promise to include us in
decision-making over our own lives and country.
The government granted both the Ranger and Jabiluka mining leases
Aboriginal Land during the land claim, but we have no real say over
what happens there.
Worse still, they took some land in the middle of my country to build
the mining town of Jabiru and will not give it back to the Mirarr
Traditional Owners, even though mining will finish in five years time
when Ranger's uranium is mined out completely.
The government also boast that Jabiru is part of the World Heritage
Kakadu National Park, taking advantage of the fact that my people have
looked after this country for generations, yet they are unwilling to
recognise the Mirarr as Traditional Owner's under the Aboriginal Land
Rights Act NT and schedule Jabiru as 'Aboriginal Land'. We have been
asking for this for many years.
We want non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal people to recognise and respect
us as Traditional Owners and to let us decide our future as we have
done since time immemorial. We hope that what we are saying in yet
another government uranium inquiry will finally be listened to.
Yvonne Margarula
Mirarr Senior Traditional Owner
------------------------>
This article provided a potted history of the Jabiluka uranium
controversy ...
Aboriginal people win right to limit australian uranium mine
Environmental News Service
February 28, 2005.
<www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2005/2005-02-28-03.asp>
DARWIN, Australia, February 28, 2005 (ENS) - The Aboriginal owners of
Kakadu National Park have won their long battle for the right to halt
further development of a uranium mine on their traditional lands within
the park.
On Friday, the Mirarr Gundjeihmi Aboriginal people, the leaseholders
Energy Resources of Australia (ERA), and the Northern Land Council
signed a landmark agreement on the long term management of the Jabiluka
uranium mining lease area in the Northern Territory.
While the Jabiluka Mineral Lease and the 1982 Jabiluka Mining Agreement
remain in force, the newly signed Jabiluka Long-Term Care and
Maintenance Agreement obliges Energy Resources of Australia to secure
Mirarr consent prior to any future mining development of uranium
deposits at Jabiluka.
Mirarr Senior Traditional Owner Yvonne Margarula, ERA Chief Executive
Harry Kenyon-Slaney and Northern Land Council Chief Executive Norman
Fry signed the agreement following nearly three years of negotiation
over the future management of the lease which is surrounded by Kakadu
National Park, but is separate from it.
All parties welcomed the agreement as a major step forward in relations
between Traditional Owners and Energy Resources of Australia, who in
the past have been in conflict over Jabiluka.
"I am pleased that the mining company has listened to the Mirarr
people, showing us the respect we deserve as Traditional Owners," said
Margarula, who, with Jacqui Katona was awarded the prestigious Goldman
Prize for Australia in 1999 to honor her work to conserve Kakadu.
"This agreement lifts the shadow of Jabiluka off the Mirarr and other
Aboriginal people in Kakadu," Margarula said. "We now have a chance to
solve some of the social problems like alcohol, unemployment and
health. Jabiluka will never be mined unless the Mirarr give approval -
in future the decision is ours alone for the first time."
Kenyon-Slaney said the agreement heralds a new era of cooperation. "The
company would like to develop Jabiluka, one of the world's most
significant uranium deposits. Under this agreement development would
only go ahead with the support of the Traditional Owners, and we can
now work together to try to find a way forward that meets the
expectations of all parties."
Norman Fry, chief executive of the Northern Land Council said, "The
agreement will promote a cooperative and constructive relationship
between the Mirrar and ERA regarding future developments." The
agreement also waives some of ERA's financial obligations flowing from
construction of the mine decline in 1998. The backfilling of the 1.2
kilometer decline at Jabiluka was completed in late 2003, in the
lead-up to this agreement, with mineralized and non-mineralized rock
returned to the underground workings.
Yet it is unlikely that Margarula and the Mirrar people will allow more
uranium mining at Jabiluka. In a 2002 statement, Margarula said, "All
the Mirrar are together; we are united against any more uranium mining
on Mirrar country. No amount of money, no amount of political pressure,
no backroom deals, no bribery or blackmail will make us change our
mind. We cannot change the law and the law is that we protect our
sacred sites. Since 1996, the Mirrar have fought against Jabiluka
across Australia and overseas. We have won many friends and our
supporters are strong and stand with us."
The Mirrar are concerned about radioactive contamination of land and
water from the mining as well as disturbance of the natural land
surface and life of the land.
Kakadu National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, covers 19,804
square kilometres (7,646 square miles) in the wet-dry tropics of
northern Australia. The park is managed by the director of national
parks and the Kakadu Board of Management. Over half of Kakadu is
legally recognized as Aboriginal land and the remainder is subject to
land claims.
Greens Senator Kerry Nettle today hailed the deal which gives the
Traditional Owners of the Jabiluka uranium mine site a veto over any
future development as a great victory for the Mirrar people.
"The Traditional Owners, the Mirrar people, now have control over the
future of the mine site and have ruled out any future mining in this
unique and precious area," Nettle said. "As one of the many thousands
of Australian who joined blockades in defence of Jabiluka I understand
the natural beauty and cultural significance of this place."
The struggle over uranium mining in Kakadu National Park began in 1976
when the Aboriginal Land Rights Act was legislated with a provision to
extinguish the right of the Mirrar to withhold their consent to uranium
mining at Ranger, a site near Jabiluka, also in the park.
In 1980, the Mirrar and other clans in the Kakadu area launched their
land claim. Nevertheless, ERA packaged the first product of uranium
oxide at the Ranger operation in August 1981.
In 1983, with the election of Bob Hawke's Labor government, development
at Jabiluka was suspended indefinitely.
In 1992, Margarula, now the Senior Traditional Owner, instructs the
Northern Land Council and the federal government that the Mirrar do not
want mining at Jabiluka to proceed.
In 1996, John Howard's Liberal Coalition government came to power, and
approval of uranium mining at Jabiluka began to move forward.
In 1997, the Alliance against Uranium formed as a result of a meeting
in Alice Springs between Aboriginal people affected by uranium deposits
and environmental groups. Traditional Owners rejected the offer of
royalties from the Jabiluka mine.
In 1998, the Mirrar and others established a blockade against the
uranium development. In May, on the first International Day of Action
to Stop Jabiluka, Margarula arrested with three other elders for
trespass on land to which she holds title.
The blockades, protest marches and legal actions continued for years,
along with appeals to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee to halt the
mine development.
In 2000, Rio Tinto Ltd became the majority shareholder in ERA,
leaseholders of the Jabiluka mine.
In December 2000, the World Heritage Committee concluded that the
approved proposal for the mine and mill at Jabiluka does not threaten
the health of people or the biological and ecological systems of Kakadu
National Park that the World Heritage Bureau's 1998 Mission believed to
be at risk.
As work proceeded at Jabiluka, reports of radioactive leaks at Ranger
and another Australian uranium mine became public. In 2002, the Mirrar
called for ERA to enter into legally binding agreement to never develop
Jabiluka without the informed consent of Traditional Owners.
Negotiations around that proposal were finalized Friday in the Jabiluka
Long-Term Care and Maintenance Agreement.
"The Greens welcome both the conservation of the Jabiluka site and the
fact that the growth of the Australian uranium industry has been
thwarted at Jabiluka," said Nettle. "The Greens will continue to
campaign for an end to uranium mining in Australia as part of our
broader opposition to the dangerous and destructive nuclear industry."
The Mirrar want Rio Tinto to rehabilitate the Jabiluka mine site and
incorporate the lease into Kakadu National Park.
On Thursday the Australian and Northern Territory governments released
a consultancy report on the future of tourism in Kakadu National Park
that turned attention once more towards the natural values of the
unique region.
The report, "Kakadu - Walking to the future... together, A Shared
Vision for Tourism in Kakadu National Park," outlines 71
recommendations and builds on the launch of the Kakadu Board of
Management's vision of greater indigenous involvement in tourism and
new experiences for visitors.
"Kakadu is a place of extraordinary landscapes and wildlife and a rich
and deeply spiritual Aboriginal culture," said spokespeople for two
federal ministries and the Northern Territory.
"This report provides an important opportunity for the tourism industry
and the public to have their say on the ways in which tourism could
develop in Kakadu National Park for the benefit of future generations,"
said Greg Hunt, parliamentary secretary to the minister for the
environment and heritage; Warren Entsch, parliamentary secretary to the
minister for industry, tourism and resources; and Clare Martin, chief
minister for the Northern Territory.
"This vision is about respecting our culture, helping visitors
understand and appreciate the beauty of our traditional lands and
proudly sharing our country with park visitors," said Jonathon Nadji,
who chairs the Kakadu Board of Management. "We look forward to working
more closely with the tourism industry to create new job opportunities
for our people, especially young people looking for satisfying work on
their own country," Nadji said.
Among the ideas the Board will consider are an enhanced tourism focus
within the park management; the potential for new experiences such as
night wildlife tours, bush tucker tours, eco camps and walking tracks;
new low impact accommodation, both at the luxury and budget ends of the
market; exploration of Kakadu's unique six seasons; and the potential
for Aboriginal storytelling to give visitors a new perspective of
country.
"We will be looking to governments to help traditional owners gain
business skills and access venture capital so that those of us who want
to be part of a new tourism industry are able to participate
effectively. We will now be considering how the new Kakadu Plan of
Management will advance these initiatives," he said.
"This is the beginning of a new partnership between the traditional
owners, the Australian and Northern Territory Governments and the
tourism industry," the government officials said.
"We will now look at how governments can support traditional owners and
the tourism industry in delivering a new, re-invigorated, tourism
future for Kakadu."
The Australian government, still led by Prime Minister John Howard,
said it will provide a formal response to the report by July 1, 2005.
A number of recommendations from the report are already under way at
Kakadu, including the establishment of a tourism manager position and
the upgrade of the welcome and exits to the park to reflect the
indigenous heritage.
An electronic copy of the report is available at:
<www.deh.gov.au/parks/publications/kakadu/tourism-vision>.
See the environmentalist point of view at: Environment
Centre of the Northern Territory <www.ecnt.org>
------------------------>
Yvonne Margarula, Senior Traditional Owner: "A new mine will make our
future worthless and destroy more of our country. We oppose any further
mining development in our country."
Phillip Shirvington, CEO of ERA, May 1997: "ERA will push ahead with
plans for Jabiluka whether or not it is ultimately opposed by the
senior Aboriginal Traditional Owner of the land."
------------------------>
The 2000 Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty Review Conference
14 April - 19 May 2000, New York
Presentations By Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
May 3
Indigenous Peoples Presentation: Peaceful Uses Result in Genocide
Speaker: Ms. Jacqui Katona, Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation
Mr Chairperson, delegates, distinguished panel members and NGO
colleagues.
I'd like to thank the organisers of this NGO forum for an opportunity
to speak with you today on the Indigenous Testimony of the Nuclear Age.
I am employed by my countrymen, the Mirrar Aboriginal people in Kakadu
National Park in Australia's Northern Territory, as Executive Officer
of the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation and my area of expertise is the
effects of uranium mining on the land of the Mirrar people.
Contributions to this presentation come from Indigenous peoples who
have witnessed and continue to live through and suffer considerable
harm as a result of the effects of the nuclear fuel cycle.
There is an urgent critical dialogue in which governments,
participating in the NPT, must engage with Indigenous peoples. We
believe the debate cannot treat disarmament and non-proliferation
separately from the mining of uranium, the testing of weapons, nuclear
research and the storage of toxic waste. Some may define these
activities as "peaceful uses", however, for our peoples the outcome is
genocide. Indigenous peoples bring these concerns to the attention of
this forum on behalf of all living things, – our families, our hope and
future lies with the earth and all things living.
We join the international community in celebrating the reduction of
nuclear weapons, however, it is our expectation that without
weapons, required for military purposes, uranium production and toxic
waste storage would also experience reduced demand.
Article IV of the NPT is particularly relevant to this issue. It is the
cost of "peaceful use" which is borne by Indigenous peoples. "Peaceful
use" is advocated as an important inalienable right of nuclear and
non-nuclear weapons states but these peaceful uses belie a devastating
conflict at source - conflict which results in the devastation of
Indigenous peoples lives and the destruction of Indigenous rights,
values and beliefs.
We believe the loss of our peoples and these cultural foundations
diminish the global community and are an unacceptable disproportionate
representation of the negative impact of the nuclear weapons and
power industry experienced by Indigenous peoples.
We believe this activity makes nuclear and non-nuclear weapons states
complicit in nuclear proliferation. "Peaceful use", we believe, is a
convenient status which in some cases allows governments to pursue
clandestine nuclear weapons development.
It is our desire to participate with the honourable signatories to the
NPT to ensure that definitions of "peaceful use" do not continue to
justify the imminent threat to the lives of people in our communities.
Without any formal procedures to legitimately recognise the importance
of these issues, however, there is no alternative but to continue to
raise these matters controversially.
The enjoyment and exercise of the rights of many Indigenous nations are
impaired directly as a result of the nuclear fuel cycle and its
"peaceful uses". Our sacred sites are desecrated, our economies are
destroyed, our communities are overwhelmed and marginalised and our
ceremonies to honour our land are prevented. The deaths in our
communities resulting from "peaceful use" deplete the foundations of
our society. The outcomes of Indigenous contact with the nuclear fuel
cycle is a generational impact of cultural destruction. "Peaceful use"
in fact perpetuates genocidal practices of colonisation in Indigenous
communities.
Allow me to inform you of the experience of the Mirrar Aboriginal
people in Northern Australia as an example of Australia's proliferation
of activity in the nuclear fuel cycle and the failure of current
measures.
Twenty five years ago it was decided, by the Australian government,
after a federal inquiry that development of uranium mines would
go ahead despite the opposition of our people and despite our
legislative right to prevent the development. This right was itself
extinguished by legislation. An agreement was negotiated on behalf of
our people by the Northern Land Council for financial income which was
expected to provide water, power, housing, roads, sewerage, education
and health. These are services which most communities regard as
citizenship entitlements.
* The Australian government has recently been forced to admit that
there has been no tangible benefit to our people as a result of
uranium mining. Twenty kilometres from the currently operating Ranger
Uranium Mine again on the land of the Mirrar people the Australian
government has now approved the development of another uranium mine
known as Jabiluka.
* Despite criticism from the European Parliament and the World Heritage
Committee in defence of the Mirrar people's position the Australian
government continues to pursue the project.
* At present neither the Australian government nor the mining
company will release detailed information on their proposal for
milling and storage of tailings waste on-site at the Jabiluka project.
This is in spite of the mining company, Energy Resources of Australia,
being forced to admit that inadequate planning has taken place in
relation to water storage at the Jabiluka project area. All these
issues combine to increase the cultural, social and economic
uncertainty for Indigenous peoples in our area.
While we believe Australia is complicit in perpetuating the nuclear
fuel cycle, we also believe Australia is not unique in this respect.
State parties must actively commit themselves to true
non-proliferation. We believe the NPT process must extend its vision to
embrace a vehicle for monitoring the production of uranium for
"peaceful use".
One third of the world's uranium reserves lie within Australian earth.
The vast majority of these deposits are located in close proximity to
Indigenous communities, have been imposed against the wishes of
Indigenous peoples and continue to operate with complete indifference
to the rights of our people.
* The massive and currently operating Olympic Dam uranium on the
lands of the Kokatha peoples, the site of an explosion last year,
has also led to the wholesale destruction of sacred sites in the area.
* Heathgate Resources, a subsidiary of US company General Atomics, has
received federal approval for an in situ leach uranium mine at a
uranium deposit known as Beverley. Some forty (40) per cent of the acid
solution remains in the ground, leaching acids and uranium into the
local groundwater. Independent recommendations for water testing have
not been implemented.
* Nuclear tests have been undertaken in close proximity to the
Aboriginal people of Maralinga, again in South Australia, in the 1950s.
The Tjarutja people, many of whom have died, continue to experience the
effects of radiation have pursued the Australian and British
governments for compensation and rehabilitation of the lands upon which
the tests took place. There has been no genuine commitment by the
Australian government to resolve the remaining issues of contamination.
The Australian government is now considering proposals for the storage
of toxic waste dumps within South Australia and other locations against
the express wishes of Aboriginal peoples.
Indigenous people in Australia respectfully ask: - Why is Australia
undertaking an increase in uranium production if a genuine reduction in
the utilisation of nuclear weapons arsenal is taking place? We believe
we have a right to this information to manage the nuclear risk and
damage already experienced by our communities. It is information vital
to our peoples overcoming powerlessness and entrenched disadvantage.
The peoples of the South Pacific including Belau, Tahiti, Mururoa, and
the Marshall Islands expect to experience the devastating effect of
nuclear testing for many generations. There is yet to be implementation
of commitment to denuclearisation in these territories.
In Utah, Indigenous Navajo Downwinders are attempting to overcome
the legacy of uranium mining after being assured by their
government that mining posed no threat. This legacy includes the deaths
of many of their peoples and remaining uncertainty about the future for
continuing generations who must live with the exposure to radiation of
their forebears.
The Western Shoshone Nation here in the United States continues to
experience human rights violations of their sovereign directly as a
result of ongoing nuclear activity. The Nevada Test site has seen over
nine hundred bombs detonated in violation of the Ruby Valley Treaty.
Since 1997 there have been eleven subcritical tests on Western Shoshone
lands and radioactive toxic waste storage facilities accept over five
truckloads of waste into Western Shoshone lands every day to be stored
above ground. These activities are directly attributable to the
continuing proliferation of nuclear weapons. The Western Shoshone
believe this activity to breach the obligations of the United States
under the NPT. The Western Shoshone are now forced to manage the
present nuclear risk and damage to their communities.
Potential and ascertained irreversible genetic effects are the legacy
of proliferation for our communities the responsibility for which must
be borne by the global community in pursuing non-proliferation.
"Peaceful use" does not provide a prevention strategy for the illness
and impairment of rights of future generations of Indigenous peoples
affected by nuclear activity.
Indigenous peoples are committed to resolve the overwhelming effects of
nuclear activity – it is a matter of our survival - and we require the
cooperation and commitment of governments to do so. Constructive
dialogue with Indigenous peoples must take place to restore authority
and jurisdiction to Indigenous institutions. We believe, our
communities have a right to access broad sustainable economic choices
not narrowly focussed, limited options for uranium extraction, or
radioactive toxic waste storage. This requires governments to honour
obligations to our peoples, not only as citizens or stakeholders, but
as legitimate landowners and sovereign peoples.
The future of many Indigenous communities can be dramatically
influenced through the genuine motivation of parties to the NPT to
eradicate nuclear weapons and to realistically define "peaceful use" of
nuclear materials.
We believe the NPT process must actively and formally become informed
of the nature of supply of raw materials to the nuclear fuel
cycle in respect of Indigenous rights and environmental standards and
exercise responsibility for establishing and implementing adequate
safeguards.
We recognise that the NPT has become the most universally accepted
international treaty enjoying the support of 187 states parties. The
NPT has heralded brave steps in security and confidence for the worlds
populations but fails to recognise that without change to levels of
production of nuclear materials there can be no claim of genuine
non-proliferation. Implicit in non-proliferation is the elimination of
further demand for nuclear raw materials and the limitation to demand
for storage space for radioactive toxic waste.
The global community cannot aim to build a sanctuary of peace through
disarmament only – uranium mining, testing and storage of toxic waste
must be eliminated. These are inextricably linked to the nuclear
threat, immediate dangers inherent in the development of nuclear
weapons. We believe it is the elimination of these elements of the
nuclear fuel cycle which must ultimately be used as the test for the
success of the NPT.
True confidence requires transparency and the courage to set
performance indicators which reflect successful outcomes for humanity,
not a paradigm which merely reinforces the status quo. A future with
renewable sources of sustainable non-nuclear energy production must
enjoy the support and momentum created through the implementation of
international standards set by instruments such as the NPT.
With respect, I propose a resolution for acceptance by this forum for
future action on these issues within the NPT process. That the NPT
Review 2000 resolve:
*to become directly informed of the issues of uranium mining, testing,
rehabilitation, and toxic waste storage affecting Indigenous
communities through the establishment of relevant and formal reporting
procedures and the provision of resources adequate to the task of the
timely compilation of relevant information and findings; and
* that there is commitment to the establishment of an Indigenous
committee which reports to the NPT process officially and regularly on
various States actions to address the issues of disadvantage arising
from findings of such reporting relevant to Indigenous communities.
We remain committed to work constructively with this and all other
forums to overcome the legacy of the nuclear age. We can only
gain confidence from this process when genuine and measurable
commitments to all aspects of nuclear non-proliferation are finalised.
The legacy for our peoples is the permanent and irreversible effects of
radiation on people for thousands of generations and lands for many
thousands of years.
We retain hope that the challenges that lie ahead for the NPT and
the global community can accommodate recognition of the rights of
the world's oldest living continuous civilisations. Any definition of
security must demand that Indigenous futures are not defined by
compromise in place of a nuclear free world.
Thank you for the important opportunity to contribute these issues to
your deliberations.
Ms. Jacqui Katona, Executive Officer
Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation,Jabiru, Northern Territory, Australia
------------------------>
Statement from the Gundjehmi Aboriginal Corporation
We, the Mirrar Gundjehmi, Mirrar Erre, Bunitj, and Manilakarr clan
leaders, have met to talk to each other about the future of our people
and protection of our country.
We have many concerns about mining in our country. We do not feel that
our people or country have been protected since mining came here.
Government has forced us to accept mining in the past and we are
concerned that you will force mining development upon us again.
Previous mining agreements have not protected us or given our
communities strength to survive the development.
A new mine will make our future worthless and destroy more of our
country. We oppose any further mining development in our country.
We recognise and affirm the responsibility of the senior traditional
owner, Yvonne Margarula, to decide on the future of Mirrar lands and we
support her opposition to mining. We have no desire to see any more
country ripped up and further negative intrusions on our lives.
Our future depends on our culture remaining strong. It is important for
our obligations to each other to be recognised and our responsibilities
for country to be met. Our cultural values cannot be traded for money.
Our country, and the cultural values of our people, is recognised by
World Heritage standards and we call on your Government to honour these
obligations. These obligations can not be dismissed. We call on all
Australians to honour these obligations.
Government has forced us to trade our citizenship rights for mining
development. No other citizens are asked to make this sacrifice. The
lack of Government support has had a permanent impact on our community,
there have been great changes which have had a permanent negative
impact. We believe the decisions that are made by Government about our
future also reflect on the rest of Australia.
We have to deal with the massive intrusions that development brings to
our country. Our priority is protecting country and by doing this
protecting our people and our future.
We say no to mining at Djabulugku.
Yvonne Margarula
Jacob Nayinggul
Bill Niedjie
------------------------>
Speech by Jaqui Katona
Medical Association for the Prevention of War Conference
April 1997
I'd like to thank the organisers of this conference for an opportunity
to speak with you today on the issue of uranium mining on Mirrar land.
I work for the Mirrar people in Kakadu National Park for the Gundjehmi
Aboriginal Corporation.
The Mirrar, and other people of the Kakadu region, have dealt with the
consequences of uranium mining for the past twenty years. When uranium
was discovered in large quantities in our area, the Federal Government
faced a significant dilemma. There was widespread support for the
legislation of the Aboriginal Landrights Act to recognise the important
relationship of Aboriginal people to the land, and the need for
Aboriginal people to be empowered, to make decisions about the
management and control of their country. However, mining companies were
determined to capitalise on a resource boom of the most dangerous
mineral on the face of the earth.
Our people have always been opposed to uranium mining. Our people have
an obligation, recognised and imposed by our law - Aboriginal law - to
protect country. Our people have been well aware of the destructive
force of uranium beyond mining, and held fears for the use of uranium
when it left Kakadu. The opposition of Aboriginal people created a
problem for the Government. How could they give Aboriginal people
control of their land if the demands of industry could not be satisfied?
So the government created a process, the Fox Inquiry. The aim of this
Inquiry was to look into the feasibility of opening four uranium mines
within an eighty kilometre radius of each other. The Inquiry was
charged to investigate the likely social and economic impacts on the
Aboriginal community, the nuclear fuel cycle and the environmental
consequences.
The Inquiry recognised that Aboriginal people had a clear and
unquestionable right to successfully claim their land. It found that
Aboriginal people were absolutely opposed to the mining of uranium. It
also found that the opposition of Aboriginal people should not prevail,
and instead, Kakadu National Park should be created, a township would
be established and strict environmental controls would monitor the four
uranium mines.
Our people continued to oppose uranium mining. Government
representatives visited our community and told the people they couldn't
say no. There was a media lockout. The Northern Land Council was
advised that if approval was not given by Traditional Owners then the
Landrights Act would be dismantled. Our people were told that approval
for Ranger was in the national interest. Independent advisers were
refused permits by the Northern Land Council, and in the words of one
of the Land Council members, the Ranger agreement was signed through
lies and trickery. This agreement went on to become the subject of
legal action against the Commonwealth.
It's clear that the Ranger agreement was signed under duress.
Landrights have become a meaningless platitude. Landrights protected
the rights of the powerful, and condemned our people as passive
recipients of the consequence of resource development. A new regime of
management and control was set out from Mirrar land, outside the direct
control of Traditional Owners. Next came the approvals process for
Jabiluka. Our people continued to oppose uranium mining. In this case,
the land was still under a claim under the landrights Act, a claim
which was strenuously opposed by the mining company, Pancontinental.
The campaign of aggression then took another step. In exchange for
opening limited negotiations on the agreement, before approval for the
project had been sought, the Northern Land Council suggested to the
company that they would draw their opposition to the land claim. Pan
Continental agreed. In fact Pan Continental were so supportive, so
grateful for the limited negotiations which they opposed with further
duress, that they paid a large part of the cost of the land claim. They
also paid a large cost involved in negotiating the agreement.
It was clear to our people then that their right to say no which was
expressly legislated for in the Aboriginal Landrights Act would
conveniently evaporate for what Government called Australia's future.
This has been a high price for our community. We have watched our
people die in the shadow of industrial gain. Our community is regarded
as fringe dwellers in our country. As soon as the ink was dry on the
agreement, our citizenship rights were withdrawn.
There were many promises made to our people about the benefits of
mining. School, housing, employment, health services and investments.
Well, we have no Aboriginal graduates of secondary education. Housing
is substandard. The vast majority of the community is unemployed.
Health services are minimal. And those strategic investments are losing
value each year. Consumption of alcohol and dependence on welfare are
inescapable problems.
Aboriginal people in our community are not regarded as citizens. If
these problems are to be addressed, there is only the offer of a new
mine for us to be able to achieve a better standard of living.
The dominance of multi-national mining companies on our country has
cost our community a high price. We have paid not only by losing our
country, we have paid by living out the consequences of decisions taken
by others, made about our future.
Our interests are not protected by mining agreements. Our people are
not the millionaires the media would have you believe, although these
agreements have been held up as some sort of model for negotiating
agreements to benefit Aboriginal communities.
No effort has been made by government to ensure that social and
economic conditions have been, or will be improved for our people. Only
the offer of further development. Energy Resources of Australia, the
leaseholders for the Ranger and Jabiluka deposits, releases
contaminated water from the Ranger mine into our wetlands every year.
These wetlands are protected, by a garden variety of cross hatched
environmental standards - National Heritage Estate, Ramsar Convention,
National Parks status, and World Heritage Listing. We have been
devastated to learn that neither Traditional Owners' opposition, nor
internationally recognised standards are capable of preventing further
release of contaminated water. How much is Australia prepared to
sacrifice to meet the needs of an industry which so callously
disregards the consequences of its activities?
Is Australia prepared to continue to sacrifice the rights of indigenous
people and environmental standards for short term private profit for a
company ?
Nothing can replace our country when its mined. Nothing can reverse the
damage to our water system and our food sources. Our culture can't be
replaced by money. Inherent in our laws and culture is an obligation to
protect and preserve our homeland for future generations. It isn't
negotiable. It isn't a matter of convenience It's our tacit
responsibility to future generations. In fact, its a right recognised
by the High Court.
Stopping the Jabiluka mine is the first step in changing the future for
our community. We have a responsibility to our children, and
grandchildren and their children, to strengthen their heritage by
acting now. This is our future. Without industrial domination. Without
aggression. With meaningful positive change. For us, by us.
We say No to uranium mining now and for the future. Our right to say no
comes from our ancestors, our heritage, our law and culture. Our Native
Title. The Federal, State and Territory Governments are now moving to
extinguish Aboriginal Rights. They will create a meaningless piece of
legislation, which will, like the Aboriginal Landrights Act, again
marginalise Aboriginal people, their role in managing and controlling
our future.
Other countries have successfully dealt with indigenous people's rights
without extinguishment. There have been a number of comprehensive
agreements reached in Canada to ensure that Aboriginal people have the
ability to exercise their rights as equals, through recognised laws.
Those ideals of equality, respect and recognition are a manifest
requirement in this country also.
We will continue to fight uranium mining on our land by pursuing
whatever legal avenue is open to us. We believe that the mineral lease
issued for Jabiluka is invalid, and the Northern Land Council has
written to the company and the Government seeking clarification without
a response and we will now seek a determination in the courts. We have
met and established the Alliance Against Uranium, and with other
Aboriginal people and environmental groups, we are committed to the
following declaration:
"We, the Martu, Mirrar Erre, Arabanna, Murran and Gangalida people have
met with the environment groups of Australia. We share concerns with
local, national and international impact of present and proposed
uranium mines. We don't want uranium from our country to be used to
hurt other people. The Aboriginal experience with uranium mining
continues to result in genocide of our community and destruction of our
homeland and country.
Our future depends on all our cultures remaining strong. Our cultural
values cannot be traded for money. Our country, the law and power, the
cultural values, have been recognised by the High Court. We call on all
Australians to recognise and affirm these Native Title obligations, to
protect country and culture, now, and for the future.
Together we have developed a timetable for action, to oppose uranium
mining and export at all levels, and to actively work towards reducing
all forms of nuclear threat. It's forums like this one that are
important. It's been demonstrated to us that there is a section of
society willing to acknowledge the importance of the Aboriginal
contribution to the future of Australia. For protection, management and
control of the country. Aboriginal people have been defeated at every
turn when they oppose uranium mining."
Our struggle is under-resourced, and our voices are pushed aside. We
need to fight uranium mining collectively, recognising the rights of
Aboriginal people to a better future, and acknowledging the importance
of a nuclear free future.
Although I'm a guest at this forum, I'd like to put it to you here
today to consider a motion of support for our efforts, and the efforts
of other Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal people to prevent uranium
mining. I propose a motion as follows:
That this conference mindful of the social, cultural dislocation
experienced by Aboriginal communities in the mining of uranium, mindful
of the worker and public health risks, and acknowledging the
inescapable links between the civil and military nuclear cycle, calls
upon National Government to reduce all forms of nuclear threat. I put
that this MAPW conference specifically calls upon the Australian
Government to acknowledge its responsibility to present and future
generations. To actively work to reduce mining and export of Australian
uranium, and in particular I put that this conference calls upon the
Australian Government to heed and act upon the continuing opposition of
Aboriginal people to uranium mining and to work actively and
responsibly to phase out this industry and to oppose its expansion.
Your support is invaluable. Your recognition is welcomed.
We hope that together our efforts will build a more honest future for
all of us.
===============================================
5.3 Beverley
Heathgate Resources, owned by General Atomics, succeeded in imposing a
uranium mine on the Adnyamathanha people in the Gammon Ranges in
north-east SA in the late 1990s ...
Voices of the Adnyamathanha Community
The hasty 'go–ahead' given to the Beverley uranium mine was not
sanctioned by the whole of the Adnyamathanha people whose sacred and
traditional lands the mine is on. The company negotiated with a small
number of Native Title claimants, but did not recognise the will of the
community as a whole. This divide-and-rule strategy, coupled with the
joint might of industry and government, resulted in inadequate and
selective consultation with the Adnyamathanha people.
As one Adnyamathanha member puts it: "Published works arising out of
the EIS process is biased in favour of 'development' because it is
owned and controlled by the powerful – the mining company/industry and
the government."
The level of discontent and confusion widely expressed by those who
have taken part in or witnessed the Beverley mine approval process has
led one Adnyamathanha person, Jillian Marsh, to engage in a research
project that aims to fully explore the nature of decision making in
this case. It is hoped that this project will bring a better
understanding by all parties of the cultural heritage issues at stake.
Jillian Marsh states: "The claims made by Adnyamathanha about being
ignored or having our concerns regarded as not important needs to be
addressed. Including the voices of Adnyamathanha in an academic
research project (a thesis Doctorate) is one way of bringing some
balance." (8/9/05.)
The late Mr Artie Wilton, the last living Wilyaru man (Adnyamathanha
full initiate), said in June 2000 that he was never consulted about the
Beverley uranium mine and never agreed to the Beverley or Honeymoon
mining projects. "The Beverley Mine must be stopped, dead stopped", Mr
Wilton said. (Media release, 7/6/2000.)
Vincent Coulthard, Chairperson of the Adnyamathanha Native Title
Management Committee, expressed concern that "a mining agreement was
signed under duress" and "Heathgate hasn't delivered promised
commitments" and that Adnyamathanha people "were not given the
opportunity to tender for crucial contracts." (ABC, 3/11/99.)
Kelvin Johnson states: "We protest at the treatment of our people being
forced into an unfair process of negotiation. We protest because our
land is being damaged against our wishes. We protest because Native
Title legislation is not helping our country. We protest because the
State Government and the Mining Industry refuse to listen to our
concerns. We protest because it is our right and our responsibility to
look after this country." (Media release, 7/6/2000.)
For many years before the introduction of the mine, the Adnyamathanha
people looked after their cultural sites under the Aboriginal Heritage
Act (SA). However, since the coming of Native Title, the Heritage Act
was then over-ridden by the Native Title Act, although it should not
have been.
Richard Salvador from the Pacific Islands Association of NGOs states:
"... those Adnyamathanha who openly challenge the legal system and the
government policies as an inadequate and inappropriate framework for
consultation are punished, marginalized and reputed as "radical' and
"unreasonable". ... From where we stand, the two are systems of
resource extraction and misuse/abuse of our lands , which, in the final
analysis, strip (us) of our dignity and violates our human rights."
(Presentation to NPT Review Conference Preparatory Committee, April
2002.)
Jillian Marsh states: "The State and Federal government enact
legislation and then choose to ignore requirements under these Acts.
This leads the Australian public, in this case specifically the
Adnyamathanha community, and the mining industry to an understanding
that our legal system can be effectively thwarted without any
accountability if the governments of the day choose to support a
proposal such as the Beverley Uranium Mine." (Submission to 2002-03
Senate Inquiry.)
'Consultation' - Heathgate style:
"Initial negotiation was misrepresentative,
ill-informed, and designed to divide and disempower the Adnyamathanha
community."
"[T]he resulting meeting was held under appalling
conditions. The company (Heathgate Resources) censored the entire
meeting with the assistance of Graham Gunn (local member of Parliament)
and the State Police. One Adnyamathanha man that stood up and asked for
an independent facilitator from the floor to be elected was immediately
escorted by two armed Police holding him on either side (by his arms)
to the outside of the building."
-- Jillian Marsh, submission to 2002-03 Senate Inquiry.
===============================================
5.4
Roxby Downs
The racism associated with the Roxby Downs uranium mine in South
Australia is enshrined in legislation. BHP enjoys - and refuses to
relinquish - completely unjustifiable legal privileges under the SA
Roxby Indenture Act, which overrides the Aboriginal Heritage Act, the
Environment Protection Act, the Water Resources Act, and also provides
exemptions from the Freedom of Information Act.
------------------------>
Check the website of the Clean Futures Collective of Friends of the
Earth, Adelaide: <www.geocities.com/olympicdam>
------------------------>
See: The WMC Dossier - From "The Gulliver File"
<www.sea-us.org.au/roxby/wmc-gulliver.html>
------------------------>
Kevin Buzzacott, from the Arabunna: "Roxby Downs has brought nothing
but problems with our people and the destruction of our lands. We know
how our people have been manipulated, bribed, tricked and contracts
signed under duress. We have seen how the mining companies set up rival
land councils to counter the claims of the rightful authority for the
country."
------------------------>
The story of the Roxby expansion in the mid-1990s is ... well ... read
it and weep ... see the transcript of the hour-long ABC Radio National
'Background Briefing' program, 'Violence in Marree - WMC Interference',
<www.geocities.com/olympicdam/articles>. The transcript is also
posted at: <www.sea-us.org.au/roxby/bb-abc.html>.
And the story is briefly recounted in the following article ... which
is posted at: <www.geocities.com/olympicdam/articles>
Watered Down Negotiations - WMC Picks Both Sides
Jan Whyte and Ila Marks look at how WMC's activities are potentially
dividing the Aboriginal people, possibly damaging areas of cultural and
sacred significance and maybe degrading the environment.
This article was published in Chain Reaction No. 75 (July 1996), the
FoE Australia magazine.
UNDER THE MAGNIFICENT arid landscapes of Central Australia lies the
Great Artesian Basin (GAB), one of the world's largest underground
water systems. Around the edges of the GAB, stretching from Queensland
to South Australia, are Mound Springs -natural outlets for the
underground water. Above the GAB in northern South Australia lies Lake
Eyre, a huge salt lake, and a designated National Park. Adjoining the
southern edge of the lake lies Finniss Springs Mission Station.
Finniss Springs was a cattle station leased under the South Australian
Pastoral Act. In 1992 it was resumed by the SA Government with the
intention of creating a National Park. This was never proclaimed and
the status of the Station is unclear. The Arabunna people are widely
accepted as being the traditional custodians for the land in this area.
Members of the Arabunna community were the Finniss lease shareholders
until its resumption.
One hundred and twenty kilometres south of Lake Eyre is the copper
uranium mine at Olympic Dam owned by Western Mining Corporation (WMC).
Water, up to fifteen million litres per day, needed for the mine,
metallurgy plant and township of Roxby Downs, is presently obtained
from six bores a few kilometres to the west of Finniss Springs
(Borefield A) and three bores on the edge of Lake Eyre South.
WMC is opening a new borefield (Borefield B) 100 kilometres north east
from Borefield A to accommodate a 'billion dollar' expansion of the
mine's operations. Thirty-three million litres of water per day will be
pumped from Borefield B and nine million litres per day from Borefield
A will continue to be pumped. The water is obtained free of charge by
special license from the South Australian Government.
Friends of the Earth (FOE) believes this depletion of water from the
GAB and Borefield A has had a deleterious effect on the environment of
the Mound Springs which host many rare species of flora and fauna. The
Springs and the Lake are also of great cultural and sacred significance
to the Arabunna people who are concerned about the damage being done.
FOE is also disturbed by the lack of consultation on the part of WMC.
Undermining Consultation
It appears that WMC has embarked on a course of side-stepping
consultation with the Arabunna as the traditional custodians. It has
also taken similar actions in regard to the Kokotha, the traditional
custodians for the actual mine site. One method used by mining
companies to side-step proper consultation processes is documented in
North America and Canada as well as Australia. Mining companies
incorporate small Aboriginal groups in areas under dispute and give
them financial support. These groups are then regarded as the official
representatives for that area and mining companies proceed to consult
with them. Thus, it seems as if the companies are going through the
correct legal processes whereas, in fact, they are ignoring parties who
have legitimate interests. In the case of Finniss Springs Station a
group was established early in 1992 calling itself the Dieri Mitha
Council. The people involved in this group had previously identified
themselves as being part of the Arabunna community. WMC has signed a
co-operation agreement with the Dieri Mitha Council for areas of land
in which WMC has an interest, Borefield B and the pipeline corridor
through Finniss Springs. FOE believes that WMC has provided money and
supplied the Dieri Mitha Council with vehicles. The Dieri Mitha Council
currently has a native title claim over Finniss Springs Station.
Co-incidentally, its Darwin lawyer also acts for WMC.
In Australia every Aboriginal group has its own beliefs and customs
which are linked to their own territory. It would have been unheard of
to perform a ceremony on another tribe's land uninvited. But this is
what happened when it appears that WMC financed the Dieri Mitha Council
to bring people from the Northern Territory, 1,600 kilometres away, to
hold a ceremony on Arabunna land. This was an attempt to prove that the
Dieri Mitha are the traditional custodians and still traditionally
linked to the land, proof of which is needed to support a native title
claim. It would also support WMC's contention that it consulted with
the appropriate Aboriginal group with regard to the pipeline corridor
and Borefield B. It appears that the 'ceremonies' were assisted by WMC
employees and consultants. The Arabunna consider this a sacrilege, and
are outraged that a mining company has used Aboriginal culture for its
own gain. The 'ceremony' took place close to the township of Marree in
January 1995. Over the time of the ceremony, which lasted several days,
the people of Marree, and especially members of the Arabunna community,
were subjected to a high level of terror and fear. As a consequence of
the violence four members of the Dieri Mitha Council are serving jail
sentences of up to four years for assault (see Chain Reaction Number
73-74).
It is not suggested that WMC were responsible for, or encouraged, the
violence that took place.
The Dieri Mitha Council is also involved in frustrating and harassing
tactics that prevent or delay plans and projects initiated by the
Marree Arabunna People's Committee. In November 1995 the Dieri Mitha
Council used a Court injunction to prevent Finniss Springs Station from
being transferred to the SA Aboriginal Lands Trust. Under the care of
the Aboriginal Lands Trust the management of Finniss Springs Station
would have ensured that sacred areas and sites were protected and a
proper land management scheme was put in place. The management of
Finniss Springs Station, and the status of the land, remains in limbo,
it would seem to the benefit of WMC.
On a community level other projects have been frustrated by the Dieri
Mitha Council. For example, they have prevented houses from being
relocated within the town to accommodate residents of Marree even
though there is an acute housing shortage. Employment schemes have also
been stopped. Members of the Arabunna community are prevented from
visiting their own land for fear of assault by members of the Dieri
Mitha Council.
Borefield Developments
Meanwhile WMC is moving quickly to construct its pipeline and access
road across the gibber, break away and sandhill country of Finniss
Springs Station. Under agreements with the Dieri Mitha, WMC is
obtaining site approval for the pipeline work, the new borefield and
the test bores scattered across the country side. Traditional
custodians maintain that the Dieri Mitha do not have relevant
traditional knowledge and that traditional sites could be violated as a
result.
These spring complexes are liable to be affected by the development of
Borefield B.
The pipeline construction is a massive operation involving over a
thousand semi-trailers transporting pipes from three different states.
All of this movement of trucks and people means that it is more likely
that sacred sites will be damaged by people who are unaware or do not
care about their significance.
In recent years registered Aboriginal sites have been damaged by WMC
employees and contractors as well as tourists behaving inappropriately
and causing irreparable damage.
Watching The Springs
WMC is engaged in an extensive monitoring program and is gathering
information useful for a better understanding of the Mound Springs.
This information is not readily available to interested parties,
however, and that which is available indicates that the springs have
been seriously affected. Since WMC began taking water from the area in
1983 two springs have dried completely. At Venable Spring a pump with
two solar panels is still not producing flowing water. Other springs,
particularly Beatrice and Bopeechee, have drastically reduced flows.
In November 1995 WMC began pumping two hundred thousand litres of water
a day into the aquifer in the vicinity of Bopeechee Spring. By April
1996 there had been no improvement in flows. The Bopeechee experiment
is an attempt to determine whether the springs are replenished by water
flow or pressure.
The Mound Springs are being considered for World Heritage listing as
well as the National Park proposal. It appears that WMC employees and
consultants are also active in campaigns to prevent these proposals
coming to fruition.
It is time that action was taken to prevent further environmental
damage to these unique mound springs and to address the social impacts
on the local Aboriginal community.
Jan Whyte and Ila Marks, members of the FoE Anti-Uranium Collective
and have made regular visits to the Mound Springs over the last ten
years.
===============================================
6.
ALLIANCE AGAINST URANIUM
The Alliance Against Uranium is a network of Indigenous organisations
and individuals, and environmental groups. It was formed in 1997.
------------------------>
Alliance Against Uranium Meeting Statement
The first meeting of the Alliance, held in Alice Springs on 19-20 April
1997, released the following statement:
"We the Martu, Mirrar, Arabanna, Murran and Gangalida peoples have met
with the environment groups Australian Conservation Foundation, the
Wilderness Society, Friends of the Earth, Arid Lands Environment
Centre, Western Australian Anti-uranium Coalition, Greens WA and Gaia
Foundation, Nuclear Issues SA to talk about our opposition to uranium
mining.
We share concerns with local, national and international impacts of
present and proposed uranium mines. We don't want uranium from our
country to be used to hurt other peoples. The Aboriginal experience
with uranium mining continues to result in genocide of our community
and destruction of our homelands and country. Our future depends on all
our cultures remaining strong. Our cultural values cannot be traded for
money. Our country and the law and power and cultural values have been
recognised by the High Court.
We call on all Australians to recognise and affirm these Native Title
obligations to protect country and culture now and for the future.
Together we have developed a timetable for action to oppose uranium
mining and export at all levels and to actively work towards reducing
all forms of nuclear threat."
------------------------>
Alliance Against Uranium Meeting Statement
South Australia, October, 1999
The third Alliance meeting was held in South Australia on 23 - 24
October 1999. This meeting produced the following statement:
"Representatives of national and regional environment groups and
concerned Aboriginal people from Alice Springs, the Flinders Ranges and
Port Augusta met in the Flinders Ranges on the 23rd and 24th October
1999.
This meeting reaffirmed strong opposition to plans to expand the
nuclear industry in South Australia. The meeting developed and
committed to an active plan to stop the development of a
national/international radioactive waste dump.
This plan will include community meetings in Port Augusta and Adelaide
and increased campaigning to highlight the environmental and cultural
impacts of radioactive waste.
Aboriginal people in South Australia have first hand knowledge of
nuclear impacts through the experience of atomic weapons testing at Emu
Field and Maralinga and the legacy of uranium mining on their land.
Alliance members do not believe that the Government's approach to the
issue of a radioactive waste dump has been open or reasonable and
refuse to let the country or people of South Australia be treated as a
nuclear sacrifice zone."
------------------------>
Alliance Against Uranium Meeting Statement
Quorn, South Australia, September 17-18, 2005
The meeting was attended by representatives of the Adnyamathanha,
Kokatha Moola, Warlpiri, Anmatyere, Kungarakun and Gurindji nations and
Friends of the Earth, Australian Conservation Foundation, Medical
Association for the Prevention of War, Mineral Policy Institute,
Campaign Against Nuclear Dumping (SA), Australian Student Environment
Network and the Anti-Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia.
The Alliance meeting opposed plans to dump nuclear waste in the
Northern Territory and addressed the strong concerns held over uranium
mining and the risks of radiation.
The meeting reaffirmed the right of this and future generations to a
clean environment.
The meeting supported the right of indigenous people to have
- clean water and safe bush tucker
- strong culture and healthy communities
- protection for their sacred lands and burial grounds
The meeting called on the Federal Government to respect these things
and to not force nuclear projects on unwilling communities.
The meeting shared information between people with experience of
uranium mining and others who are now facing these questions. The
meeting maintained that prior consultation and informed group consent
is essential when considering nuclear projects.
The meeting participants committed to share information and stories and
to build the links between their groups and peoples to reduce nuclear
risks to people and country.
Alliance Against Uranium meeting statement, 17-18 September 2005,
Quorn, Nukunu Country, South Australia
------------------------>
Green-Black Alliance reborn in Quorn
By Joel Catchlove (Friends of the Earth)
19 September 2005
As Australia's uranium industry looks to expansion and the nuclear
power debate ricochets around parliaments across the nation, Indigenous
groups and environmental organisations concerned about the nuclear
industry's destructive impacts met in Quorn, in South Australia's
southern Flinders Ranges over the 17-18 September. It was the first
meeting of the Alliance Against Uranium since 2001, and a determined
movement to return the social and cultural impacts of the nuclear
industry to the current debate. The meeting was attended by
representatives from the Adnyamathanha, Kokatha Moola, Warlpiri,
Anmatyere, Kungkarakun and Gurindji nations, encompassing traditional
lands stretching from Rum Jungle, near Darwin, through central
Australia to as far south as the Kokatha Moola lands at the head of
South Australia's Spencer Gulf. The representatives discussed their
concerns with delegates from Friends of the Earth, the Australian
Conservation Foundation, the Medical Association for the Prevention of
War, Anti-Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia, the Campaign Against
Nuclear Dumping and the Mineral Policy Institute.
The nations present represented a spectrum of experience with the
nuclear industry, from the Adnyamathanha, Kokatha Moola and Kungkarakun
who continue to deal with ongoing legacy and presence of the Beverley,
Roxby Downs and Rum Jungle uranium mines, to the central Australian
nations who are under increasing pressure to open their lands to
uranium exploration companies. Among those in attendance was senior
Kokatha Moola woman and recipient of the Goldman Environmental Prize,
Mrs. Eileen Wani Wingfield. Mrs. Wingfield has experienced the legacy
of the nuclear industry on her country throughout her life, witnessing
the fallout of the Maralinga atomic tests in the 1950s and 60s and
campaigning against the establishment and expansion of BHP Billiton's
Roxby Downs uranium mine on her traditional lands. In more recent
years, Mrs. Wingfield was a member of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, whose
Irati Wanti ('the poison, leave it') campaign was central in halting
the Federal Government's plans to dump nuclear waste in South
Australia. It was for this work especially that she received the
Goldman, the 'Nobel Prize for Environment.'
Members of the Adnyamathanha, Kokatha Moola and Kungkarakan nations
expressed their continued opposition to uranium mining on their land,
describing how Native Title law has been used to divide their
communities and open their countries to the nuclear industry.
Overwhelmingly among these representatives, Native Title has completely
failed to protect the rights and culture of Indigenous groups, instead
being twisted to serve the desires of uranium miners. Adnyamathanha
representatives described the tactics of mining companies in targeting
"people who need quick cash" to become Native Title claimants for a
region, yet who do not represent the wishes of the whole community. The
companies are adept at exploiting existing tensions within Indigenous
communities, promising copious financial benefits to those willing to
support the mining companies objectives.
"It's all money talk, but money doesn't talk. If we let our land get
ripped up, then we'll have nothing," said Adnyamathanha woman Vicki
Wilton. When dissent occurs within the community, the mining company
can be ruthless in its response.
"When you stand up for your country, they put you down. They disgrace
you in front of your mob," she said. Indeed, public meetings leading up
to the establishment of Heathgate Resources' Beverley Uranium Mine was
marred by the violent suppression of dissent against the miner's plans.
On one occasion, Adnyamathanha who requested that the meeting be
chaired by someone from the floor were physically removed from the
meeting by the police. Perhaps most notoriously, in May 2000, SA's STAR
Force paramilitary police responded brutally to a peaceful protest at
the mine site, including the pepper spraying of an 11 year old
Adnyamathanha girl.
"Have a really good look at the little black writing on the paper,"
advised Ms. Wilton, "Read what you sign, please. Don't get ripped off
no more. You've only got one country." Kokatha Moola representative Sue
Haseldine was more emphatic, "Don't sign anything. [If you sign]
they'll get you one way or the other."
"They're so professional in splitting us up," said Kungkarakan
representative Speedy McGuinness. The now-closed Rum Jungle uranium
mine lies within Kungkarakan country, south of Darwin.
While some Indigenous representatives acknowledged the value of Native
Title as a way of legally acknowledging access to the land for hunting,
bush tucker and practising traditional ways of life, they emphasised
that it was "not for mining agreements". For others, it is deeply
insulting that the legal system demands they prove their custodianship
and connection with the land that their people have held for tens of
thousands of years.
"If we have to prove our connection with the land, then so should the
government. So should the Queen if they say it belongs to the Crown.
It's not ours to give and not theirs to take," said Ms. Haseldine.
Representatives from central Australian nations attended the meeting to
gather information in view of their own nations' growing popularity
with uranium prospectors. For these nations, the potential remains to
reconcile the suggested financial benefits of uranium mining and its
implications of securing an economic future for subsequent generations
with the very real risks of legacies of health problems and
contaminated land. For the people of this region, in which dust storms
are not uncommon and for whom hunting and bush tucker gathering remain
significant, the entering of radioactive matter into the food chain
through water or dust and an increased presence of radon gas from
mining elicited particular concern. Likewise, certainty that natural
springs will not be polluted or depleted by uranium mining activities
is also essential.
One of the meeting's central issues was the Federal Government's
determination to site a national radioactive waste dump in the Northern
Territory, despite Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell's
"absolute categorical assurance" that NT would not be selected for a
nuclear dumping ground. Indigenous groups have already commenced
building their campaign against the dump and used the meeting to gather
national support for their actions.
===============================================
7.
FURTHER COMMENTS, QUOTES & ARTICLES
------------------------>
Uranium Mining and Aboriginal People
By Vincent Forrester
From a paper given to the Australian Labor Party, Northern Territory
State Conference in Darwin in 1984. Vincent Forrester was the
chairperson of the Northern Territory National Aboriginal Conference.
This article is posted at: <www.sea-us.org.au/blackuranium.html>
I follow the culture of my people. We belong to the land. We are the
caretakers for the land. Our lifetime on this earth is only a blink in
time, so our lifetime is spent protecting and caring for this land for
future generations.
A leader of an American Indian tribe has this to say about uranium :
"Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the child of the earth. People did
not weave the web of life; they are merely strands in it. Whatever they
do to the web, they do to themselves".
I want to tell you how I feel about uranium and how the whole nuclear
cycle affects our land, our lives, our traditions.
In preparation for this forum I have read widely and consulted widely,
but rarely have I seen or heard a word from the people who I believe to
be among the worst affected by the nuclear cycle : my people, the
Aboriginal owners of Australia.
It is our land which white miners rip apart to extract the poisonous
yellowcake, and it is on our land where they dump the polluted tailings.
It is on Aboriginal land that the British, with support from the
Australian government of the time, exploded deadly nuclear weapons,
with no regard for our people, their land or their future.
And it is on Aboriginal land that the government is examining the
possibility of dumping deadly radioactive waste in untried synthetic
rock.
I say to you, when you consider your attitudes to Australian
involvement in the uranium industry, that you think first about what
you are doing to our people.
Our Environmental Concerns
I turn now to some of our grave concerns about the controls on
environmental damage resulting from uranium mining. For example :
* seepage from the tailings dam;
* concentration of radioactive contaminants in the water systems;
* erosion;
* radon gases escaping from the tailings;
* cyclones could disperse contaminated dust from strip mining
operations;
* return of the tailings to the pit at the end of mining operations
poses long-term effects on the Alligator Rivers area;
* there are major geological faults in the wallrock of the pit area;
* there is a geological fault under the north wall of the Ranger
tailings dam;
* contaminated water is being released into the Magela Creek
But what do Aboriginal people of Arnhem Land know of these dangers. Our
people in Arnhem Land and throughout Australia are not sufficiently
informed about the extent of damages occurring from uranium mining. Nor
do we know the extent to which they are being exposed to radiation in
the atmosphere. Nor do we know the extent of contamination already
present in the food chain.
There is simply no proper information given to Aboriginal people living
in the area about the effects of uranium mining on the land. The
monitoring scientists have made no attempt to interpret their findings
to the effected Aboriginal people.
The Ranger Inquiry said that a certain amount of environmental impact
into the area was to be expected. The impact is now being realised.
There are scores of scientists monitoring and making recommendations of
what is the best way of dealing with the problem of the Ranger tailings.
The Ranger Inquiry recommended that all contaminated waters should be
kept on the site. Both Ranger and Nabarlek (now closed) are looking at
ways to get rid of the waste waters.
The local Aboriginal community have no involvement in this and must
depend on the government or on statutory bodies dependent on royalties
from uranium mining.
This dependency, I believe, is a form of ransom. White Australia says
to the under-serviced, fledgling outstation movement, "You can have
money for Toyotas, for bores, to help you set up", but if mining stops,
the money stops too.
We must break this dependency on mining activity for money for
essential services. It is morally bankrupt. No Aboriginal community
should be put in the position of deciding on development that is tied
to the uranium industry.
Until all Aboriginal service needs are met by direct grants from
federal treasury, our people have little choice in this matter.
No real substantial study has been done on the radiation levels in
Aboriginal people's diets in the uranium regions. We can only guess
what amount of radiation they have in their bodies or in the food chain.
Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land and in Aboriginal Australia are
concerned about radioactive safeguards. Aboriginal anxiety has been
growing ever since the spillage at Nabarlek which was not reported
immediately to the community or with factual details.
Without this information, how are we to make a proper decision. It is
not correct to say that any Aboriginal community has made a real
decision on uranium mining until all the facts are presented to all of
our people, and they must be presented in Aboriginal languages in a
manner that has meaning to our people.
Tailings Can Bring Ecological Disaster
For each tonne of ore mined only three kilograms of yellowcake [uranium
oxide - U3O8] are recovered. So the Ranger mine with an annual
production of 3,000 tonnes of yellowcake can only mean that millions of
tonnes of radioactive tailings will be produced each year.
Uranium tailings retain 80 per cent of the radioactivity of the
excavated ore and this radioactivity will be emitted for thousands of
years.
Tailings are considered to be a major source of pollution because they
are readily dispersed by wind and rain. The tailings from the proposed
Koongarra mine poses a greater threat to the environment, seepage and
overflow from the tailings dam would pollute the unique Woolwonga
Wildlife sanctuary in the Kakadu National Park.
Rum Jungle was abandoned in 1971. The tailings dam has been breached by
monsoonal rains and the Finniss River has been polluted, by toxic
elements and radioactive materials. Pollution extends over 100 square
kilometres. Aboriginal people there cannot use the land any more.
The taxpayer is now paying $16 million to fix up only half of this
problem. The [mining] company will not accept any responsibility for
the damage they have done to our people and our land.
In the Northern Territory we have tailings dams in an erratic climate.
Contamination of a wide ecosystem is possible. Wind and rain can
disperse radioactive and non-radioactive waste into the whole food
chain.
A failure of the tailings dam at either the Ranger or the [proposed]
Jabiluka mine would bring nothing less than ecological disaster to the
land.
Dust particles from the tailings very soon get into the ground water
which in turn becomes contaminated. Once this happens it is very hard
to clean a river system of its radioactivity.
Radioactive gases from the submerged or wetted-down tailings can travel
great distances. People can breathe in this gas up the 80 kilometres
downwind from the tailings. It has already been proven that miners
working in uranium mines are threatened with lung cancer.
All this affects our people living near uranium mines. It causes the
greatest biological damage if it gets into the human food chain.
Anyone living near tailings from uranium mines will be breathing in
radioactive dust which emits alpha radiation. This type of radiation
poses the greatest threat to human life.
The lifespan of radioactive waste materials from tailings may be
250,000 years. How will this affect the environment and our culture
over all those years?
The Water Supply of my People
The vast underground water reserve serves vast arid regions. It is the
water supply of many of my people.
The Federal government last year approved uranium mining at Roxby Downs
in South Australia despite the ALP policy to "phase out the uranium
industry".
A shaft has been sunk through an Aboriginal sacred site and several
other sites have been bulldozed to put in roads and a pipeline corridor.
The pipeline corridor will supply 33 million litres of water to the
mine every day. It is unknown how this will affect the underground
water supply and plants dependent on the current water patterns.
Radioactive Wastes
Synroc is a method for the storing of nuclear waste. It is being
developed by a Professor Ringwood [of the Australian National
University]. I am concerned whether Synroc is a safe method for waste
storage.
I have recently read an article in Australia Habitat entitled
"Certainty and Uncertainty in the Disposal of Nuclear Waste", by Dr
E.H. Hirsch, who is a physicist experienced in the problem of nuclear
waste. He questions the use of Synroc at this stage.
Whatever the result of the Synroc storage method, or any other method
of storage, I don't want nuclear waste stored in my people's land. If
anything should happen I believe it will bring about disastrous
consequences to our underground water supply.
I believe that areas near the Musgrave Ranges are being examined as a
possible suitable storage area by the Australian government. They are
considering Aboriginal land as a waste land. We do not consider
ourselves or our hard fought-for land as a national sacrifice.
This is my land. We need the information and all Aboriginal people
should have the right to decide what befalls us and our future
generations.
The Navajo's Experience
There is a very real water problem to the Indian people of North
America in areas where large tailings dams have resulted from uranium
mining.
Navajo Indians living in uranium districts now find that amongst their
people there are many birth defects. They find there are many Indian
miscarriages. A lot of children are born underweight. Many children
have learning difficulties. A number of children are deformed.
The Indian people don't know if these things are happening because of
the men who worked in the mines, or from the explosions of nuclear bomb
tests, or from eating contaminated food, or drinking contaminated water.
But they do know that these things are happening to people living near
tailing piles. It has already been established in America that :
* there is a high incidence of lung cancer in miners working in uranium
mines;
* there is a high incidence of chromosome damage in miners working in
uranium mines;
* damage to the genes passes from generation to generation.
Exposure to radiation in a uranium environment can cause a number of
early ageing problems. It can be the cause of liver problems,
respiratory diseases and heart diseases. It can cause a person to be
very susceptible to infectious diseases and override the body's natural
immune system.
Maralinga
We, the Aboriginal people of Central and South Australia have had the
frightening experience just as recently as 20 years ago of the
dreamtime snake awakening and shaking his tail. This brought
destruction to the land and its caretakers.
The survivors of a bomb test in Japan are often shunned by those
wishing to marry because of fears that their children could inherit
mutations. Will this also become the fear of my people when exercising
aboriginal customary laws relating to marriage ?
What will happen to Aboriginal people affected by the nuclear bomb
testing at Maralinga?
Or, for that matter, to many thousands of Australian citizens of inland
and northern Australia who became targets of the scientists who ordered
bombs to be exploded when the winds could only take the nuclear fallout
on an inland journey of radiation contamination?
Royal Commission into British Nuclear Weapons Testing
The Pitjantjatjara Council called for a Royal Commission into the
circumstances surrounding the nuclear tests in South Australia in the
1950s and '60s. Council representatives went to London to lobby over
the issue. Leading the delegation was Yami Lester who lost his sight
after the fallout cloud from the first Emu test descended on him and
his people. A Royal Commission was set up in July 1984 under the
presidency of Justice Jim McLelland. The Commission reported in
November 1985.
The Pitjantjatjara and Yaknunytyara people believe that many of the
deaths around this time were related to the fallout from the bombs.
Clouds of fallout passed over and around them. (The Royal Commission
found that an Aboriginal community at Wallatinna had been exposed to a
black mist of radioactivity and that this could have caused harm to the
people's health. The Commission also found that Aboriginal people had
been denied access to their traditional lands and that the
plutonium-contaminated areas at Maralinga must be cleaned up. In 1994
the British Government agreed to a limited clean-up whereby the
plutonium- contaminated soil would be gathered into existing pits of
radioactive rubbish where it would be 'fused' into a solid.)
No one told my people about the tests at the time and only now, after a
barrage of leaks and statements, is the Australian government
considering holding a full inquiry into the matter. But the full extent
of cancers and other illnesses being suffered by my people may never be
known.
Our land in the immediate test area may not be useable for 50,000
years. This is the same timespan widely believed by non-Aboriginal
people to represent the existence of our culture in this country.
All this was caused by well-meaning scientists at the time who were
unable to forecast the consequences of their actions. We have
well-meaning scientists today who still cannot accurately predict the
consequences of their actions when it comes to uranium.
The health of our people throughout Aboriginal Australia is already so
poor that it cannot take any more damage. The continuing 200 years of
exploitation of our lands and our existence must stop.
We wish to remind the Australian Labor Party of its election policy
commitment to Aboriginal people on uranium mining. This policy states
that :
"...The provision of Australian uranium to the world nuclear fuel cycle
creates problems relevant to Australian sovereignty, the environment,
the economic welfare of our people, and the rights and wellbeing of the
Aboriginal people".
We demand that our rights and well-being are recognised. All of our
people need to be fully and equally informed of the problems of mining
uranium on our lands.
------------------------>
NGO PRESENTATION TO THE NPT REVIEW CONFERENCE PREPARATORY COMMITTEE
NEW YORK, APRIL 2002
INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVE
SPEAKER: Richard Salvador, Pacific Islands Association of NGOs (PIANO)
<www.reachingcriticalwill.org/legal/npt/NGOpres02/4.pdf>
Mr. Chairperson, delegates, distinguished panel members and NGO
colleagues, I would like to take this opportunity again to express my
thanks for allowing us to address you on the continuing relevance of
the fate of Indigenous peoples in this forum. I also thank my
colleagues, the organizers of these NGO Presentations, for being
patient with the submission of this presentation. My name is Richard
Salvador and I represent the Pacific Islands' Association of
Non-Governmental Organizations, based in Port Vila, Vanuatu. In this
capacity, I have been involved in and serve on the Global Council of
the Abolition 2000 Network which many of you are familiar with.
During the preparations for this presentation, via email discussions
across continents and oceans, me and my colleagues struggled to find
relevant words to capture the real essence of our message and still
stay within the narrow confines of the NPT. This is a difficult process
when we attempt to confine an issue with broad implications on the
environmental and human health contexts of Indigenous peoples'
existence into the narrow limitations of the NPT. You will begin to see
why when you take a broader view of what nuclear power and nuclear
weapons production have done to Indigenous peoples. I shall briefly
share the story of one group of Indigenous peoples, the Adnyamathanha
of Australia, and their problems with uranium mining, which produces
the raw materials for nuclear weapons and nuclear power and the
terrible situation they are forced to live in. But this is, as we know,
just one aspect of a larger story of nuclear colonialism that
undermines livelihoods of Indigenous peoples.
Often we feel short-changed whenever we are asked to present our case
before the NPT States Parties because of so many structural limitations
inherent in the real focus of the NPT itself. This is a treaty whose
purpose seeks to monitor the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and
related nuclear technologies; these are activities whose ultimate
consequences exceed the clearly defined goals of the NPT in its
attempts to control and safeguard these dangerous materials. As such,
the NPT fails to address critical matters that profoundly affect
Indigenous peoples' safety and human rights. The real issue for many
Indigenous peoples who have been victimized by the Nuclear Age is that
of responsibility on the part of NPT States Parties for so much
environmental devastation and negative human health consequences. I
need only to list some of the critical areas of Indigenous peoples'
experience with uranium mining, the results of these mining activities,
nuclear testings and nuclear power storage to illustrate a terrible
situation that the Nuclear Age has bequeathed to us. In this instance,
we call on NPT Member States to take very seriously the responsibility
for what they have inflicted on Indigenous lands and peoples around the
world. If we cannot address the importance of any continuing
responsibility for what the Nuclear Age has inflicted on Indigenous
peoples, who will do so? And where will they do it?
Firstly, I want to share the moving story related to us, by Ms. Jillian
Marsh, a
member of the Adnyamathanha of Australia and this year's Co-convenor of
the NGO Presentation on Indigenous Peoples. She was unable to come and
join us but she helped us to frame the issues as they really are in the
context of the NPT. Her peoples' story strikes a chord in a terrible
situation that appeals to our sense of humanity and calls into question
everything this Treaty CHOOSES not to address, the true story behind
the untold sufferings of the Nuclear Age. This and future conferences
of the NPT Parties must be held accountable for what nuclear weapons
production and nuclear technology have done. There are also
responsibilities that each States Party must accept. In this instance,
we call on Australia, the United States, and Canada to rethink their
responsibilities for the terrible toll uranium mining companies from
these three countries are inflicting on the Adnyamathanha People.
The Adnyamathanha People are dealing with the first stage of the
nuclear fuel cycle - uranium mining on their land. Heathgate Resources,
a subsidiary of the US company, General Atomics, opened the Beverley
Uranium Mine in February 2001 after decades of planning and thwarted
attempts. Also on Adnyamathanha land, the Honeymoon Uranium Mine owned
by Southern Cross Resources, a Canadian company, has been aggressively
pushing forward in an attempt to start mining this year. The processes
of establishing a uranium mine on Indigenous lands within Australia are
at the heart of what makes this industry so problematic.
There are evidence that these mining activities, as in many similar
places where Indigenous peoples live, exact a toll so heavy only
accusations of genocide seem appropriate. As an Adnyamathanha person
involved in managing cultural heritage over the past 10 years, Ms.
Marsh has witnessed a steady decline in the hopes and aspirations of
other Adnyamathanha concerned about cultural heritage, specifically
their rights to land and their rights to be recognized as spiritual
trustees of their land.
Over recent years the process of these mines becoming operational has
seen repeated attacks on the Adnyamathanha people. Women and men are
being physically assaulted in Native Title meetings, in the presence of
lawyers employed under Commonwealth funding grants to administer Native
Title. Children as young as 9 years old are being sprayed in the eyes
with capsicum spray by police at a site of protest, whilst adults are
being confined in police vehicles for up to 7 hours in 40 degree
celcius heat, without water.
Public meetings are being held by mining companies accompanied by armed
police and chaired by the current local member of Parliament. At the
request of members of Parliament, Adnyamathanha people are "escorted"
from the meeting by armed police for demanding an independent Chair.
These experiences are far from peaceful, and do not empower
Adnyamathanha in relation to managing their heritage in a culturally
appropriate manner. Bullying, bribery, emotional and physical abuse,
racism and prejudice are the terms of reference used by the Australian
government, the mining industry, and the legal system. Those
Adnyamathanha who openly challenge the legal system and the government
policies as an inadequate and inappropriate framework for consultation
are punished, marginalized and reputed as "radical" and "unreasonable".
To many of us, the story of the Adnyamathanha is a sad but familiar
one. It is estimated that 70% of uranium deposits around the world are
located on Indigenous peoples' lands. Over 70% of uranium mining are
done on Indigenous lands, according to Winona LaDuke (See her "Native
North America: The Political Economy of Radioactive Colonialism," In
Churchill, Ward and Winona LaDuke, The State of Native America:
Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance. Boston, MA: South End Press,
1992). Arjun Makhijani, scientist and president of The Institute for
Energy and Environmental Research, has also shared how uranium mining
extraction is fraught with racism (See his "Racism, Resources and
Nuclear Weapons: Some Reflections on the Rodney King Case,"
<www.totse.com/en/politics/green_planet/racism.html>)
But this is just one aspect of the effects of nuclear chain. As for
nuclear testing, of the eight nations in the world that have detonated
nuclear weapons during the last 55 years, five have used the lands of
indigenous peoples. The United States, Russia, Britain, France and
China have tested their nuclear might on lands held sacred by the
people of First Nations. The Western Shoshone nation of North America,
the Marshall Islanders, and other South Pacific Islanders, Australian
Aboriginals, the Kazakhs, and Tibetans are but a few of those whose
land has been consistently contaminated with nuclear poison (see WILPF,
Fact Sheet, "Indigenous Peoples and the Nuclear Age: Making the
Connections").
In the Pacific Islands, an area which I represent and come from, and
know something about, the situation is equally devastating. Marshall
Islanders are struggling still to deal with the very real effects of
US's atomic tests. These tax this small Micronesian island's resources
as a small island developing state. We ask that America not simply walk
away from assuming its continuing responsibilities for the damages
inflicted by the atomic tests just because Marshall Islands is now an
independent nation. While America has been somewhat open with the
results of its tests, it has been much slower for the Polynesian
islands ruled by France. We commend France for what it has done so far
in terms of acknowledging some damage to the environment and strongly
urge the French Government to continue on this positive path toward
opening more of the archives of its nuclear tests in Fangataufa and
Mururoa (See "The Nuclear History of Micronesia and the Pacific",
Abolition 2000 website, <www.abolition2000.org>)
Nuclear tests on native lands include:
* A total of 106 nuclear tests have been conducted by the US in the
Pacific, plus an additional 24 tests in the Christmas Islands just off
Australia.
* 12 atmospheric tests were detonated in Australia between 1952 and
1957 by the UK, three at Monte Bello, two at Emu Field and seven at
Maralinga.
* 14 nuclear tests were conducted in Algeria by the French, 4
atmospheric and 10 underground. From 1966 - 1990, a further 167 tests
were conducted by the French on the atolls of Mururoa and Fangataufa in
Polynesia.
Other affected communities include:
* The Kazakhs. Of the 713 tests conducted by Russia, 467 were at the
Kazakhstan Test Site.
* Tibetan people. Lop Nor, near Tibet in the Sinkiang Province is home
to the Uighur people, and also the place of Chinese nuclear tests.
* The Sami. An indigenous community in Norway whose practice of life as
herds people was radically altered by their (continuing) experience of
Chernobyl. Lichen, a main food source for reindeer, in their region was
heavily contaminated by radioactive rain, causing the contamination of
their herds (WILPF Fact Sheet, ibid).
With most of the mining activities taking place on these lands,
combined with a legacy of environmental racism in uranium mining
extraction, added to nuclear testings and nuclear waste storage, the
combined result is tantamount to a legacy of genocide.
The international community has a right to know and an obligation to
understand the devastation and disregard the nuclear industry
perpetuates within the lives of Indigenous peoples.
While the NPT seeks to address the threat posed by nuclear weapons in
the world while making provision for the peaceful uses of nuclear
technology in Article IV, it fails to recognize or address the
disproportionate impact of these activities on indigenous people and
lands. The nuclear industry continues to perpetuate on-going and
systematic invasion of Indigenous
Peoples' countries and the destruction of Indigenous lands and
cultures. While the threat of use of nuclear weapons by the eight
nations who hold these weapons of mass destruction serves to create a
real fear in the world, in indigenous communities the existence of
uranium mines, nuclear waste dumps and nuclear test sites are a daily
threat to life and to the continued existence of culture.
All of these lead us to question the very notion of right to "peaceful
use" in the NPT. Only a narrow reading, even a denial, of the real
life, non-peaceful situation Indigenous communities face as they
struggle to survive with the leftover poison of the Nuclear Age allows
NPT States Parties to deliberate year after year about the proper
"safeguarding" practices with little notice of the actual impacts of
nuclear weapons production and technology on entire nations of peoples.
As previous Indigenous speakers have raised to your attention in
previous NPT forums, these activities are only one segment within the
cycle of the nuclear industry. The negotiation and decision-making
processes that take place in the context of mineral exploration and
commercial mining, the storage of nuclear waste, and the conducting of
atomic tests which mostly take place on Indigenous lands are far from
peaceful. Article IV's reference to the "peaceful" uses, development,
research and production of nuclear energy which are considered to be an
inalienable right of all Member States of the Treaty need to be
considered in the context of a more fundamental God-given inalienable
right of human beings to life, liberty, and security.
Dr. Rosalie Bertell has conducted studies on the true impacts of the
Nuclear Age on the environment and human health. She "has attempted to
piece together a global casualty list from the nuclear establishments
own data. The figures she has come up with are chilling - but entirely
plausible. (See Eduardo Goncalves, "The Secret Nuclear War," in The
Ecologist, March 22, 2001).
Using the official radiation risk estimates published in 1991 by the
International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP), and the
total radiation exposure data to the global population calculated by
the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation
(UNSCEAR) in 1993, she has come up with a terrifying tally: 358 million
cancers from nuclear bomb production and testing 9.7 million cancers
from bomb and plant accidents 6.6 million cancers from the routine
discharges of nuclear power plants (5 million of them among populations
living nearby).
As many as 175 million of these cancers could be fatal. Added to this
number are no fewer than 235 million genetically damaged and diseased
people, and a staggering 588 million children born with what are called
teratogenic effects diseases such as brain damage, mental disabilities,
spina bifida, genital deformities, and childhood cancers. Furthermore,
says Bertell, we should include the problem of non-fatal cancers and of
other damage which is debilitating but not counted for insurance and
liability purposes such as the 500 million babies lost as stillbirths
because they were exposed to radiation whilst still in the womb, but
are not counted as official radiation victims. It is what the nuclear
holocaust peace campaigners always warned of if war between the old
superpowers broke out, yet it has already happened and with barely a
shot being fired. Its toll is greater than that of all the wars in
history put together, yet no-one is counted as among the war dead.
Its virtually infinite killing and maiming power leads [Dr.] Bertell to
demand that we learn a new language to express a terrifying
possibility: The concept of species annihilation means a relatively
swift, deliberately induced end to history, culture, science,
biological reproduction and memory. It is the ultimate human rejection
of the gift of life, an act which requires a new word to describe it:
omnicide" (Eduardo Goncalves, "The Secret Nuclear War," ibid.; see also
R. Bertell, "Victims of the Nuclear Age," The Ecologist, November 1999,
pp.408-411).
In light of these, there has never been any "peaceful use" of nuclear
weapons and nuclear technology. Indigenous peoples have spoken out
about their situation, calling for justice in whatever way it can come.
The "Declaration of Salzburg" is one of many documents which describe
the real impacts of the Nuclear Age by Indigenous peoples themselves.
It is a Declaration produced by the September 1992 World Uranium
Hearing in Salzburg). This Declaration was accepted by the UN Working
Group on Indigenous Peoples and it is now an official UN document,
available in English, Spanish, Russian and Chinese, copies of which may
be obtained from the Center for Human Rights, Geneva, Switzerland
(E/CN.4/Sub.2/AC.4/1994/7, 6 June 1994). We ask that you take this
Declaration as the collective voice of Indigenous peoples on these
matters and seek to resolve the outstanding issues of environmental
pollution and negative human health. The Declaration and an
accompanying Statement are found here:
Declaration of Salzburg:
<www.nuclear-free.com/english/salzburg.htm>
Indigenous peoples statement:
<www.nuclear-free.com/english/indig.htm>
It may be highly unrealistic to call for a rewriting of the Treaty's
provisions on "peaceful use,' and this is not what we are asking today.
More importantly, we ask that NPT States Parties offer to meet with
representatives of Indigenous peoples suffering from nuclear poisoning
as a gesture of acknowledgement. For many festering wounds,
acknowledgement of the problem is an important initial step to healing.
Whatever solutions are forthcoming for many Indigenous peoples on these
matters, for which we continue to seek, acknowledgement by this and
future NPT conferences will help to increase awareness and add fuel to
international efforts to deal with the ongoing legacy of nuclear
weapons production and fuel chain.
We also request that NPT States Parties expand current discussions on
NPT and IAEA safeguards mandates to include some critique offered by
those who critically examine the actual impacts of nuclear
technologies. This will be seen as a step toward accepting the
responsibilities for the serious damages inflicted on Indigenous
peoples and their immediate environmental surroundings. In light of
these, we recommend that at this and future prepcoms before 2005, NPT
States Parties consider enabling a delegation of Indigenous people to
have direct input on matters before the NPT on crucial areas where
their environments and livelihoods have been severely devastated.
Without appearing to be hopelessly over optimistic, we recommend that
you remain open and willing to cooperate with NGO groups to explore all
possible solutions because even absent direct input to NPT matters, the
possibility exists for this and future NPT conferences to mandate, as
an initial step, open-ended discussions between States Parties and
Indigenous peoples on the best ways to proceed. Policy-wise, this
conference could mandate a process whereby States Parties work directly
with Indigenous peoples to ameliorate negative impacts of nuclear
technology and then report at NPT conference.
At the Review Conference in 2000, a colleague of mine, another woman
from Australia, Ms. Jacqui Katona, a representative of the Mirrar
Aboriginal people, spoke to you regarding the creation of a committee
through which Indigenous peoples could directly make their concerns
known. Some States positively responded to the idea. We hope that there
are still interests in pursuing this as a policy matter for this and
the next prepcom.
Finally as a person representing the Pacific, I must say something
about military colonialism in general. There is need to address the
proliferation of missile technology and the continued use of Pacific
Island nations for military use and control. What I have described
above, nuclear colonialism, is like a cancer that must be rooted out at
its root. There is little that we meaningfully distinguish between
uranium mining and its draconian practices, testing of nuclear weapons
AND colonialism. Indeed the two are like synonymous concepts as far as
we are concerned. From where we stand, the two are systems of resource
extraction and misuse/abuse of our lands which, in the final analysis,
strip our of our dignity and violates our human rights. The narrow
constraints of the NPT do not even begin to touch on so many important,
and related, issues. We strongly urge you to consider these our
regional concerns, expressed by our respective civil society groups, in
your deliberations.
I end by saying that we have all come here from around the world, from
across great distances, both representing governments and our
communities where many of us are engaged in the daily struggles of
survival as communities. The mass of the world's population have
entrusted us all, therefore, with a serious responsibility to consider
the troubling manner in which countless nations have treated the earth
and peoples by scorching and or polluting the planet beyond
Nature's immediate ability to heal itself in pursuit of 'security'. But
there can never be real security when security is based on a narrow,
anti environmental, and therefore, unsustainable model of peace and
security. A critical assessment of the concept of security and the
means by which Nation-states pursue security is in order, and we hope
that this NPT forum will contribute to a re-thinking of current models
of security.
From start to end of the nuclear chain, we in many Indigenous
communities have borne the brunt of the nuclear age. There is hardly
any security when our environment is polluted beyond repair and a
portion of humanity becomes the sacrificial lambs for a
military-imposed "peace." We urge you to help us move to new levels of
empathy, understanding, and peaceful co-existence.
Thank you all for your attention.
------------------------>
"Besides industrial pollutants, African Americans, Latinos, Asians,
Pacific Islanders, Native Americans and Native Hawaiians have been
systematically exposed to the dangers and perils of nuclear testing.
The combines result of this exposure should be a crime against
humanity, and the perpetrators of these criminal and insane acts should
be brought to justice and severally penalized. As it turns out, it is
the nations of France, United States, China and others who perpetrate
the crimes, and in the language of "national security" and war
preparation, these criminal acts are legitimized, made to appear sane."
-- Richard Salvador, Environmental Racism.
------------------------>
"Racism makes the continuing production of nuclear waste possible. If
the white people who make decisions about nuclear waste felt that the
people of color in poor areas are as valuable as the decision makers'
own mothers and fathers and sons and daughters, would they continue to
dump nuclear waste in those areas? If tailings from uranium mining were
located next to the homes of investment bankers instead of the homes of
indigenous people, would uranium mining continue? The continuation of
the nuclear fuel cycle depends ... on the practice of human sacrifice.
It depends on affluent whites deciding to risk the health and lives of
people who are not affluent or white. This is what 'acceptable risk'
often means in practice."
-- Anne Herbert and Margaret Pavel, Nuclear Guardianship Forum, Issue
#3, Spring 1994, p.16.
------------------------>
"Strict compliance with security regulations at every stage of the fuel
cycle - including the physical protection of nuclear installations, the
transport of fuels, the reprocessing of spent fuel, and the long-term
isolation of radioactive waste - presupposed social and political
institutions endowed with a degree of vigilance and permanence for
which there was little historical precedent. The very vulnerability of
the nuclear edifice pointed to an increasingly centralised and
bureaucratised political order wedded to rising levels of secrecy and
hostile to any manifestation of dissent. The expanding power of the
nuclear state and its increasing recourse to the techniques of
repression represented, then, for the ecological movement a fundamental
threat to individual freedom. ...... The nuclear project reinforced the
technocratic tendencies of the modern industrial state and the
resulting erosion of civil liberties by providing additional
opportunities and justification for the twin processes of
bureaucratisation and stratification."
-- Joseph Camilleri, 1984, The State and Nuclear Power:
Conflict and Control in the Western World, Great Britain: Wheatsheaf
Books Ltd.
------------------------>
"The US government targeted American Indians (for nuclear waste
disposal) for several reasons: their lands are some of the most
isolated in North America, they are some of the most impoverished and,
consequently, most politically vulnerable and, perhaps most important,
tribal sovereignty can be used to bypass state environmental laws. How
ironic that, after centuries of attempting to destroy it, the US
government is suddenly interested in promoting American Indian
sovereignty - just so it can dump its lethal garbage! All Indian
treaties and agreements with the US government have been broken.
Today's Indians remember yesterday's broken promises. ... The Indians
cannot trust the federal government and certainly cannot trust the
nuclear industry whose driving force is monetary profit."
-- Grace Thorpe, "Radioactive Racism? Native Americans and the nuclear
waste legacy", Indian Country Today, March 1995.
------------------------>
<www.shundahai.org>
Dedicated to Breaking the Nuclear Chain
Shundahai is a Newe (Western Shoshone) word meaning "Peace and Harmony
with all Creation"
Shundahai Network was formed at the Nevada Nuclear Test Site in 1994,
by a council of long-term nuclear disarmament activists, at the request
of Corbin Harney, a Western Shoshone Spiritual Leader. We have evolved
into an international network of activists and organizations bridging
the gap between the environmental, peace and justice and indigenous
land rights communities.
------------------------>
NAU prof believes mining of uranium hikes cancer rates
Michael Marizco
Arizona Daily Sun
Sept. 15, 2002
FLAGSTAFF - With cancer rates higher for Native Americans than any
other population in this country, Michael Amundson, an assistant
professor of history at Northern Arizona University, has one suggestion
for the NAU scientists who received $4.5 million to study the issue.
Look at a map, find the uranium mines, then superimpose them on a map
of where the poorest people in the country live. The two maps, he said,
will be almost identical.
"People with the least amount of power get the most environmental
damage," said Amundson, who has detailed that damage in a new book,
Yellowcake Towns, published by the University Press of Colorado.
Yellowcake was the nickname given to processed uranium ore.
------------------------>
Environmental Racism and Nuclear Development
By the WISE-Amsterdam Collective
WISE News Communique 387-388
March 28, 1993
<www.antenna.nl/wise>
A nuclear society cannot exist without racism. It is impossible to even
imagine a harmonious and sustainable society with nuclear power and
weapons yet free of racism. On the other hand, it is impossible to
imagine a harmonious and sustainable society without nuclear power and
weapons but still racist.
Last year, the year that "celebrated" the 500th anniversary of
Columbus's voyage, was a year that brought many reminders of this along
with its stark reminders of the legacy of 500 years of colonialism,
racial injustice and human rights problems. Forums such as the World
Uranium Hearing and the Second Global Radiation Victims Conference held
in September focused attention on a new kind of colonialism -- nuclear
colonialism -- and we began hearing the term "environmental racism"
coming up more and more in discussion. This special issue of the News
Communique was conceived as our way of helping to keep international
attention focused on these issues, as well as a way of contributing to
the discussion, and to the search for solutions.
Environmental racism is defined by Arjun Makhijani ... as a "particular
form that is reflected in the fact that many of the effects of
environmental problems hit specific groups in the society the hardest."
Those groups are victims of prejudice, whether racial or economic.
Examples can be drawn from all over the world, but the nuclear
establishment especially provides graphic illustrations: Each phase of
nuclear development -- both civilian and military -- has a deadly
impact on all forms of life, but those peoples who have been hit the
hardest have been the traditional landholders.
Among those hardest hit by the Chernobyl catastrophe, for example, were
the Sami reindeer herders and landowners living in northern
Scandinavia, Finland and the former USSR. The Sami are a semi-nomadic
people who follow the huge herds of reindeer on their natural migration
from the uplands in summer to lowland pastures in winter. They have
made a compromise between their culture and the outside world by
selling their reindeer (from which they derive their staple food, much
of their clothing, tools and shelter) to their southern neighbors. In
this way they are able to retain their traditional ways, at the same
time accepting some of the technological advances offered by
'civilization'. When Chernobyl's fallout dropped onto the feeding
grounds of their reindeer herds, this way of life, even the very
existence of these people, became threatened.
All too often it is people like the Sami who are the first to pay the
costs of humankind's efforts to control the atom. This has been true
from the very beginning of nuclear development, and it is true all
along the nuclear chain -- a chain that begins in those few areas still
occupied by their traditional landholders with uranium mining, and ends
on those same lands with weapons testing and waste storage.
By another irony, it happens that the majority of the world's uranium
reserves are on traditional lands. In the US, on what land is left to
the Navajos, there were at one time a total of 42 uranium mines in
operation, in addition to seven uranium mills. Shiprock Mine, formerly
operated by the Kerr-McGee corporation, employed Navajo miners at
two-thirds the normal pay rate. By 1960 radiation levels in the
Shiprock mine were 90 times the permissible level. 'Diseconomies' of
uranium closed the mine in 1970, causing the loss of any health
insurance the miners might have had. A world glut of uranium supplies
then closed most of the other mines. But the damage had already been
done. By 1980, of the 150 Navajo miners employed by Kerr-McGee 38 were
already dead of cancer and another 95 had cancer and lung diseases.
Meanwhile, Kerr-McGee had left behind 70 acres of raw uranium tailings
(which retain 85% of their radioactivity) just 60 feet from the
community's only significant water supply. People continue to sicken
and die. They lose the ability to bear children. Reproductive cancer
among Navajo teenagers is 17 times the national average.
This same scenario is elsewhere being played out again and again. On
Aboriginal lands in Australia, the Kokotha are fighting exploitation
and development of uranium resources on their lands by Australian and
French mining companies. In Namibia, while still under illegal
occupation by South Africa, uranium was mined and other resources
plundered with the help of the British-based multinational Rio Tinto
Zinc. Even now, three years after independence from occupation by South
Africa, the mining continues. In Canada, because of destruction of
their lands from uranium mining by Canadian corporations, Adele Ratt of
the Cree Nation in La Ronge declared the entire north of Saskatchewan
to be in a state of emergency. In the Pacific, the Tahitians and other
Pacific Islanders are still feeling the devastating effects of French
nuclear weapons testing, despite the current moratorium. Elsewhere in
the Pacific, in the Marshall Islands, already devastated by US nuclear
tests, the islanders' homes are being considered by the US as a dump
site for nuclear wastes from the US mainland. In the former Soviet
Union information is slowly coming to light about the effects of its
nuclear weapons testing program on the Kazakh minority living near the
Semipalatinsk test site, and on tribal societies such as the Samoyeds,
Khanty, Mansi, Evenks and Chukchee, among others, living to the north
of the Novaya Zemlya test site in Siberia. In addition, it only
recently became known that there had been a secret nuclear weapons
testing site in Chukotka during the 1950's and 1960's, further exposing
the Chukchee people to fallout. The mortality rate resulting from
cancer among the Chukchee is thought to be the highest in the world.
The fact that the much of the information concerning the effects on
these peoples has only recently come to light is not surprising. Racism
produces disinformation -- precisely about those groups that it
marginalizes. How much more do we not know, for instance about the
conditions in the uranium mines in Argentina, in the Andes (the last
refuge for traditional land holders in that region)? Or in Columbia,
where holes drilled by companies exploring for uranium were left open,
but only the local people know about it because the companies simply
forgot about it when they found they could not exploit the uranium
economically? Or in Brazil? In Morocco?
At any rate, all of the above examples clearly illustrate the term
"environmental racism" as it is currently defined. But we would like to
broaden that definition, thereby broadening the discussion.
Racism, by itself, is a symptom of the deep sickness at the heart of
our society. But racism never exists by itself. The sickness of which
it is a symptom is rooted in the shattering of what was once a strong
connection the people who walked the earth had with the land and all
living systems. To understand this rupture -- a rupture which underlies
the entwined oppressions of race, sex, class and ecological destruction
-- we need to look at two things: first, at the current model of
development, then at the history of the last 500 years which led to
this model.
The current model of development includes a system that benefits a
relatively small part of the world's population who can be found in the
industrialized countries and in the local elites of Central and Eastern
Europe and the South. For this model to operate, political choices have
to be made. In the case of nuclear development, one of the choices has
been to ignore the social costs. When social costs are ignored,
selected groups of people are made victims. This is marginalization.
More is involved here than even the marginalization of people.
Knowledge is also marginalized, set aside, lost. Traditional ways of
thinking and practical knowledge disappear forever. With the
development of a nuclear (nuclearized?) society, we are becoming poorer
in knowledge and solutions. We have lost wisdom, impoverishing
ourselves by cutting ourselves off from receiving what Starhawk, author
of Dreaming the Dark, calls "the rich gifts of vision that come from
those who see from a different vantage point."
This model also compartmentalizes and divides. It restricts our
thinking and our actions for change. To illustrate this in relation to
environmental racism and nuclear development, it gives us two
movements: the anti-racist movement and the environmentalist movement.
With its specialization and compartmentalization, the current model
pushes us to be nuclear and racist, or anti-nuclear, or anti-racist. By
accepting its divisions, we find ourselves still caught within its
confines. In this way we play the game of those enforcing this model,
of those in power. We need to be creative and change the rules. We must
redefine power and reshape it. We must see that it becomes something
shared with others, something empowering, and not something exercised
over them or used against them. And we need to link these two
movements, now separated under the current model, and move together to
create a healthy society, based on justice, equality and
sustainability, where people are no longer afraid of differences in
others, or afraid to be different. But to do that, we first have to
make the connections between all systems of domination. And we must
recognize that the dominant culture is willing -- to a frightening
extent -- to write off the lives and interests of those groups of
people it considers of low value.
We also need to understand how we got stuck with the current model of
society and its divisions in the first place.
When Columbus' ships first arrived in what Europeans so arrogantly
called the "New World", it is estimated that between 70 million and 120
million people lived in the Americas. This was a population larger than
that found at that time in Europe. The systems of government developed
by the people the Europeans encountered were, says historian Howard
Zinn in A People's History of the United States, "complex, where human
relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations
among men, women, children, and nature were more beautifully worked out
than perhaps any place in the world".
These societies had developed scientific systems of agriculture based
on the conditions of their environment. For centuries they had, just as
had other traditional landholders across the world, engaged in
sustainable land management and land-use in the areas in which they
lived. They were able to work in harmony with the environment to
maximise benefits without destroying it.
The European invaders carried with them a new ethic and practices which
brought about a change in these relations -- between nature and people
and between the people themselves. The invaders were quick to clear
huge tracts of land, over-plant indigenous crops for export and
introduce alien crops better suited to the agricultural techniques and
climate of Europe. This caused the destruction of much flora and fauna,
a depletion of nutrients in the soil and the eventual degradation of
the land. Their mining activities further degraded the land and
resulted in entire nations throughout the Americas in being displaced,
enslaved or completely destroyed.
For the Europeans back in Europe, the 16th and 17th centuries -- the
period which marked the beginning of European colonial expansionism --
was a time when Western Culture was undergoing crucial changes. It was
the time of the Renaissance and Reformation, when a flowering of art,
science and humanism took place. But it was also a time marked by
persecutions. Even as the Renaissance bloomed in the late 15th century,
the persecution, torture and burnings of women (and sometimes men)
accused of being Witches was increasing, and Christian heretics,
individuals and whole communities were wiped being out.
These persecutions ensured that those who would benefit from the
changes occurring in society would be the rising monied-professional
classes. And they made possible the extensive and irresponsible and
even ruthless exploitation of women, working people and nature. They
are also an expression of the weakening of traditional restraints and
an increase in new pressures that were linked to other changes going on
at the time, including the expropriation of land and natural resources
and the expropriation of knowledge.
Though the feudal society which this new order superseded was an
authoritarian, hierarchical system, it had nevertheless been based on
an organic model in which people still retained important ties to the
land on which they lived. Feudal society was a complex system of
interlocking rights and responsibilities. Under this system the lords
possessed the land but did not own it as we understand ownership of
private property today. Thus European peasants -- free and serf -- had
access to it. The land was expected to provide a livelihood. Profit was
not yet its primary purpose. Feudal society was still guided by an
economic principle of use, thus land had value because it provided
subsistence, not because it was seen as a resource to be exploited for
maximum gain. But with the rise of a market economy, along with the
declining fertility of the land (for, unlike traditional landholders,
the Europeans did not practice sustainable land management), that was
changing.
Whole tracts of land that had once seen common use were being
expropriated by the lords -- now truly landlords -- and put to
producing for the market not what was needed, but what could be sold
for profit. The poor -- and now landless -- were forced into wage labor
at wages that did not provide even the subsistence income they had
previously expected. Their communities became fragmented, and the
decisions which had once been left to the villages or their
representatives were appropriated by the landlords along with the land.
Those who emigrated were primarily those who had been cut off from the
experience of a tie to the land and community -- some only for a
generation. They took with them this new ethic of private property and
the absolute right of ownership, which they imposed not only on the
Americas, but on Africa, India and the Far East as well. What is more,
they extended this ethic to the ownership of people. The property ethic
supported a ruthless slave trade, justified the taking of lands from
native peoples, and reinforced the European notion of the inferiority
of women.
This idea of the inferior status of women -- and the subsequent denial
of rights and power to them -- was new to the Americas where women were
held in enormous respect among native peoples. Communal power was often
found in the hands of the women, who were regarded as the keepers of
the family and of the nation. The European ideology of female
inferiority directly benefited the male-dominated power structures and
those in power, including the church hierarchy and the evolving
merchant class, and in its turn, reinforced the ideas used to justify
the slave trade and expropriation of land.
The ethic of ownership -- an ethic of extract, accumulate, control,
consume and discard -- shapes the landscape of our reality today, from
how the food we eat is grown to property speculation that is driving
people of color and poor working-class white families out of their
neighborhoods to how we produce our energy or whether we use money to
feed and educate people or use it to develop nuclear weapons. To oppose
it effectively, we simply cannot continue operating according to the
rules set under the current model which divides and compartmentalizes.
We must change our understanding to recognize that destruction is
inherent in every form of domination and that all forms of domination
are intertwined. It is domination that we need to challenge, and this
means changing our present relationships -- to the land, to authority,
to each other.
------------------------>
Hanford's nuclear guinea pigs sued US government
WISE News Communique #471
1997
<www.antenna.nl/wise>
Lawyers of individual American Indians announced 2 April that they
filed a class action suit, claiming the individuals were unwitting
guinea pigs for deliberate radiation experiments at Hanford Nuclear
Reservation, Washington.
Sued are the US government and its alleged partners, for violations of
their constitutional rights under 42 USC Section 1983, for infliction
of radiological injuries compensable under 42 USC Section 2210 (the
Price Anderson Act), civil conspiracy, assault, strict liability,
negligence and other violations. Alleged partners of the Government are
in this case Du Pont, the University of Washington, Rockwell
International and Battelle Pacific Northwest Laboratory.
The suit alleges that Native Americans have been subjected to
systematic, clinical experimentation of the hazardous effects of
ionizing radiation: planned, funded, coordinated, reviewed and
orchestrated by agencies of the US, including the Atomic Energy
Commission, the Departments of Energy and of Defense. From 1943 to 1972
a total of 740,000 curies of radioactivity were released at Hanford:
iodine, plutonium, phosphorus, zinc and other byproducts of plutonium
processing. More than 92% of the total amount was released between
December 1944 and December 1947. Two other major releases occurred in
1949 and 1951 just before and after the start of the Korean War. People
who were children at the time are thought to have received the highest
doses from drinking milk produced by cows grazing in pastures downwind
of Hanford.
The government continued monitoring the Native Americans to determine
which disease effects could be detected over time from systematic
exposure to repeated doses of radiation through their diet and way of
live. Recently federal officials announced they will set up a program
to monitor the health of 14,000 civilians who received the highest
radiation doses, but without any intention of financial compensation or
medical care. They will only be offered medical evaluations to detect
thyroid neoplasms, a type of cancer, and other thyroid conditions. The
group of individual Natives says the government arranged for radiation
to be released deliberately and repeatedly to monitor the effects of
high doses on plants, animals and people. The suit says all of
Hanford's neighbours suffered, but the Indians were especially at risk
because of their unique lifestyles and diet. They suffered
significantly more intense radiological exposure than non-Native
Americans. This fact was known by the US Government and underlies their
selection for study of the health effects without their knowledge or
consent; despite the fact that the US had developed policies and
procedures as early as 1946 which required informed consent from
subjects of human radiation experiments. This is a direct violation of
their constitutional right of body integrity and of established
government policies.
The residents of the areas around Hanford have suffered: cancers of
thyroid, bone and skin; arthritis, diabetes and other auto-immune
disorders, hypo-thyroidism, blood disorders and other serious injuries
as a direct result from the Hanford radiation releases since 1943. In
addition, the government consistently failed to disclose or acknowledge
to the public the dangerous conditions it created and the resulting
adverse public health effect, but instead practised misrepresentation,
concealment and/or false and misleading reassurances.
The Native Americans act like this to expose the conduct of the US
government concerning human radiation experiments, to protect the
Treaty rights of Native American people to live their way of live, to
protect the human dignity of all American citizens from violation, to
restore the cultural and natural resources of Native Americans, to
ensure their constitutional protection and to provide a remedy for the
physical and spiritual harm caused to them by these secrete radiation
experiments. Maybe they will in the near future be financially
compensated by the US government.
The new Energy secretary Pena plans to pay $6.5 million in compensation
for radiation tests on 17 persons, injected with plutonium or uranium
and about $50 million to 600 workers who mined uranium. Clinton is now
implementing recommendations from a recent federal probe into radiation
experiments that government agencies and research labs carried out on
humans over three decades. A report issued end of March "Building the
Public Trust" cites the steps taken to right the wrongs of the
thousands of human radiation experiments, conducted from 1945 to 1975.
Pena says most of the victims are dead so the living relatives will be
financially compensated. Other measures to be taken in future to
improve openness and ethics:
* Signing of a memorandum by the president that would require informed
consent from potential subjects of secret experiments and a formal,
routine accounting of secret human studies
* Amendments to the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 to
compensate uranium miners who were denied payments under current law
* Transfer of thousands of declassified documents to the National
Archives.
This makes it more probable that Native Indians will get compensation
for the experiments.
Sources:
* UPI Science News, 20 and 28 March and 2 April 1997
* Atomic Harvest, M. D'Antonio, Crown Publishers, New York, 1993
* US DOE, "Building the Public Trust", 28 March 1997.
Contact: Native Americans for a Clean environment, PO Box 1671,
Tahlequah OK 74465, US
Tel: +1-918-4584322; Fax: +1-918-4580322
------------------------>
Louisiana blacks win nuclear war
by Tony Allen-Mills
London Sunday Times
May 11, 1997
Homer, Lousiana
When the chiefs of the British nuclear industry launched a $750m bid to
break into the American uranium market, they reckoned without Miss
Essie.
Essie Youngblood, 77, the maiden granddaughter of a Georgian slave, and
fellow residents of two of America's poorest villages have dealt a
crushing blow to British Nuclear Fuels (BNF) and its international
partners in the uranium-enrichment project in Claiborne parish,
northern Louisiana.
In a historic ruling issued this month, a nuclear regulatory commission
tribunal in Washington denied the consortium an operating licence on
the unprecedented grounds that racism may have played a part in the
decision to site a uranium processing plant on the doorsteps of two
black villages.
"They wanted to put it here because they thought we wouldn't be able to
afford a lawyer to fight them," said Youngblood. "They thought nobody
here had an education, and that we wouldn't know what to do. Well, we
banded together and we won."
After almost a decade of campaigning, a unique coalition of angry black
families and white pensioners has achieved what no environmental group
has managed before in America.
Known as Cant for Citizens Against Nuclear Trash this army from the
backwoods hamlets of Forest Grove (population 150) and Center Springs
(population 100) has persuaded a national tribunal to recognise one of
the black community's sorest complaints: that whenever the time comes
to build a new waste dump, sludge plant, incinerator, landfill, lead
smelter, oil refinery, sewage farm or any other bilious facility, it
always seems to end up in African-American neighbourhoods.
"This isn't a case of Nimby [not in my back yard]," said Toney Johnson,
a local white estate agent. "It's a textbook case of Pibby place in
black back yards."
It had all seemed so simple in the 1980s, when the American nuclear
market was opening up to competition and European fuel producers were
seeking a potentially lucrative opening. With its Dutch and German
partners in Urenco, a state-owned uranium combine, BNF linked up with a
group of American developers to propose a new enrichment plant.
Championing their cause was the most powerful pro-nuclear politician in
Washington, Senator Bennett Johnston, chairman of the Senate committee
on energy and natural resources. His patronage was duly rewarded. The
consortium agreed to spend their millions in Louisiana Johnston's home
state.
On a late winter morning in 1989, in the courthouse square of Homer, a
placid rural town close to the border with Arkansas, Johnston brought
his constituents joyous news: a "chemical" plant would be opening.
Homer's economy would be transformed.
Even after details emerged of the plant's nuclear purpose, the Homer
business establishment was thrilled. As for any noxious side effects,
the plant would be hidden in the woods where few from Homer roamed.
On her porch in those woods five miles away, Youngblood looked out
across the former cotton fields where her father had worked all his
life. The Forest Grove community was founded by freed slaves after the
civil war. Youngblood, a retired librarian, tried to envisage the
uranium plant that would now be built at the bottom of her garden. "We
thought we were being railroaded into something we didn't want," she
said. "We felt what they were doing was wrong."
Scattered through the pine woods that have long since supplanted most
of the former cotton plantations, dozens of angry black landowners were
reaching a similar conclusion.
"They kept telling us this uranium plant was so good," said Willie
Woods, a hefty former sawmill worker who later assumed the chairmanship
of Cant. "Well, if it was really so good, why did they want to dump it
out here?"
A few miles away, on the shores of Lake Claiborne, Norton Tompkins and
his wife Jeri digested the news with horror. Like a handful of other
retired white couples, they had settled by the beautiful lake for its
unspoilt peace and charm.
"The last thing we wanted to see," said Tompkins, "was nuclear
construction trucks tearing up our roads." Tompkins, 75, became
treasurer of Cant, and operator of the group's prize asset an elderly
photocopying machine.
In Homer, meanwhile, Toney Johnson smelt a rat. Although he belonged to
one of Homer's oldest white families and was a pillar of the local
business establishment, he did not share his colleagues' enthusiasm for
the profit-making all were promised. Nobody, it seemed to him, was
prepared to ask awkward questions about safety and pollution. It was
Johnson who gave Cant its name. "That's Cant, as in 'you can't do this
to us'," he said.
Homer was split down the middle as the prosperous business classes
white and black dismissed their opponents as "scientific illiterates"
incapable of understanding progress. In return, Cant attracted the
attention of the national anti-nuclear movement. High-powered
environmental lawyers flew in from New Orleans.
In the end, it was the stark accusation that yet another poor black
community was being lumbered with a controversial plant that was to
prove the project's undoing. Having studied 79 Louisiana sites, the
consortium's American engineers had weeded out every location anywhere
near a sizeable white community. All that was left was a supposedly
ideal backwater where the locals just happened to be 97% black.
Citing President Bill Clinton's 1994 executive order that all federal
agencies should act to protect black communities from so-called
environmental racism, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Atomic Safety
and Licensing Board duly dealt a blow that sounded to many last week
like a death knell. The board rejected the consortium's insistence that
only scientific criteria had been applied in site selection. The
commission concluded there was "more than sufficient" evidence to raise
a "reasonable inference" that racial considerations had been involved.
A British spokesman for Urenco said that despite 10 years of delays and
$33m of expenses to date, the consortium was determined to keep the
project alive. Partners are meeting in Washington tomorrow and are
likely to file an appeal. Pat Upson, Urenco's technical managing
director, said: "We are confident there was no racial discrimination,
and we believe we've got a very good case."
At Forest Grove's tiny Methodist church last week, they were already
planning a victory picnic. Nathalie Walker, Cant's lawyer, told the
group: "It's the first time in the nation that judges have recognised
that blacks have a valid claim in a case of environmental racism."
Then, with tears in his eyes, Johnson said: "I've lived around black
people all my life. Before this, I didn't know you all. Now I know you
as my friends. We've stuck through all this together." Miss Essie just
nodded and smiled.
------------------------>
Navajos acting to stop uranium rush in state
Mark Shaffer
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 2, 2006 12:00 AM
<www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0102uranium02.html>
The price of uranium has tripled in the past two years, bringing with
it the possibility of another uranium rush in Arizona, the state with
the richest deposits of the ore and, along with New Mexico, the worst
legacy associated with its mining.
Last year, 700 mining claims were filed and 100 test holes were bored
into the wild, remote high desert in northern Arizona.
Scott Florence, director of the Bureau of Land Management's Arizona
Strip district in St. George, Utah, said those numbers are
significantly higher than any year since the frenzy of the 1980s.
"Finding the right mine site is a real art. But it seems like everyone
and their mother is trying now," he said.
Secondary supplies of uranium on the world market have virtually dried
up, and China, India and Japan are clamoring for uranium for their
burgeoning domestic nuclear-power industries. Uranium now fetches $36 a
pound on the spot market. Four years ago, it was going for just over $7
a pound.
But not everyone is happy about the search for new mine sites. Navajo
Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., stirred to action by the memory of
how dangerous uranium mining can be, issued an executive order in
November banning negotiations with uranium companies or uranium
exploration on the three-state Navajo Nation, which was engulfed by a
public health tragedy after the first wave of uranium mining began on
its reservation in the 1950s. Dozens of premature deaths of Navajo
miners and passed-on genetic defects have been attributed to uranium
exposure.
"You look around the reservation and see so many elderly people who are
crippled and can barely breathe," said Robert Stewart Sr. of Tuba City,
a Navajo who worked for five years in a mine in the mid- to late
1950s." This pretty much devastated much of a generation."
The most easily accessible uranium deposits in open-pit mines beneath
the Navajos' land were tapped out in the Cold War frenzy to find
weapons-grade materials. Then the marketplace took care of the next
wave of development during the late 1980s with a round of bankruptcies
after the price of uranium fell to less than $10 a pound and stayed
there.
Environmental concerns
Before uranium prices crashed 20 years ago and stalled exploration,
conservationists feared the environmental impacts of development of
uranium mines surrounding the Grand Canyon on water and roadless areas.
Today, Shirley's order banning exploration and negotiation is expected
to ratchet up the pressure on state, federal and private lands between
Interstate 40 and the Utah border, where there are potentially dozens
of uranium-ore bodies that would make financial sense to mine if market
prices remain at their highest levels in 25 years.
And despite the creation in 2000 of two national monuments north of the
Grand Canyon - Grand Canyon-Parashantand Vermilion Cliffs - many of the
same fears remain about the possibility of having a number of uranium
mines in the region.
"The richest area of uranium deposits is in a 50- to 75-mile area
between the two monuments, and the exploration there won't be
affected," Florence said. "The creation of the monuments restricts any
future mining claims, but pre-existing claims have grandfathered
rights."
George Billingsley, a senior geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey
in Flagstaff, knows all about the deposits in those areas.
He has been mapping them for years, and his wall is filled with red
lines showing uranium-ore bodies from the Grand Wash Cliffs in far
northwestern Arizona south and paralleling the rim of the Grand Canyon
to Kanab Canyon, where they line that canyon in its route toward Utah.
"So far, I have about 2,000 breccia pipes plotted," Billingsley said,
referring to deep, cylindrical geologic formations, seldom more than
100 yards wide, in which a section of earth collapses into underground
caves, then fills the opening with loose rock, known as breccia. As
water seeps through the breccia formations over thousands of years,
traces of uranium begin to appear.
Billingsley said that only about 1 percent of the rock deposits in the
red-wall limestone canyon walls have been "sufficiently mineralized"
with uranium and other minerals to attract mining interests. But
Arizona's reserves are the best in this country. Many of the deposits
on the Arizona Strip have been measured as producing from 14 to 16
pounds of yellowcake, the processed ore from which fuel is refined, per
ton of ore. That compares with only 3 pounds of yellowcake per ton from
older mines in New Mexico and Wyoming. One pound of yellowcake produces
as much energy as 15 train cars of coal.
Billingsley acknowledged that he has mapped only a small part of
northern Arizona for uranium deposits and has not yet begun to look at
the vast Chinle Formation, where the Navajo mines were. That area is
replete with petrified wood, which forms under conditions also
conducive to uranium development.
Companies are eager
Those kinds of conditions leave uranium companies, such as
International Uranium Corp. of Denver, salivating. It took over partly
developed mines left behind when another Denver company, Energy Fuels
Nuclear, declared bankruptcy in the 1990s. International Uranium hopes
to have four mines operating soon between the North Rim of the Grand
Canyon and the town of Fredonia. International Uranium also owns one of
only two domestic uranium mills that have stayed open, the White Mesa
Mill in Blanding, Utah.
Harold Roberts, vice president of International Uranium, said the
company is considering opening Canyon Mine, south of the Grand Canyon,
a site that was partly developed before the uranium market crashed in
the late 1980s.
"The mines are more developed north of the Grand Canyon, but we are
very excited about the prospects south of the Canyon between Flagstaff
and the national park," Roberts said. "But even though the market looks
good now at $35 a pound, we still have a ways to go before this becomes
an all-out rush like it did in 1979, when uranium got to $43 a pound.
The wages and insurance are all considerably higher now."
Another big incentive may become reality soon, said Lyle Krahn, a
spokesman for Cameco Corp. of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada's main
uranium producer, which also has mines in Wyoming and Nebraska.
"The U.S. has been inching ever closer to announcing 10 new
nuclear-power generating sites, and this would have big ramifications
for our industry," Krahn said.
A deadly legacy
All of which leaves members of the Navajo Nation with a bad taste as
the pressures increase to mine uranium.
George Hardeen, a spokesman for Shirley, said the Navajo president
spent two days in Washington meeting with members of Congress to
re-emphasize tribal sovereignty and to try to keep uranium firms from
"going in the back door" with the Interior Department and negotiating
their own mining contracts.
"Uranium left a deadly legacy on the Navajo Nation, which (Shirley) has
called genocide," Hardeen said. "The tribe is giving up millions of
dollars in royalties to keep history from repeating itself."
One reminder of that era is Stewart, 74, who worked in processing mills
near Monument Valley and Tuba City.
He is one of hundreds of former Navajo uranium miners who have filed
claims with the U.S. Justice Department to receive up to $150,000 in
compensation for health problems under a special fund set up for miners
and their families.
Stewart's breath is short as he recounts years of lung disease caused
by 16-hour days of breaking large uranium ore rocks with a
sledgehammer. Stewart said he later was working in a lab, trying to
extract iron from yellowcake, when there was an explosion. He said he
got some of the yellowcake on his hands.
Phil Harrison,a Shiprock, N.M.,community activist who has been aiding
the miners in their claims, said that less than 10 percent have
received any compensation from the federal government.
"The problems all start with proving they were in the area and, of
course, my clients can't produce private property records because they
live on the reservation," Harrison said. "This whole thing has just
been a real travesty, and I hope people will remember the past in their
decisions for the future."
-----
Dozens of Navajo uranium miners in Arizona died prematurely of
mining-related diseases and passed on genetic defects after the first
wave of uranium mining on their reservation in the late 1950s.
Now, as worldwide demand grows and with Arizona sitting atop the
highest-quality deposits in the country, Navajo Nation President Joe
Shirley Jr. has issued an executive order banning any uranium
development on the reservation.
Shirley recently answered reporter Mark Shaffer's questions about
uranium and its effects on the Navajo.
Q. How would you characterize the legacy that uranium mining has left
on the Navajo Nation?
A. As long as there is no adequate redress to what has been perpetrated
on a people, I see a nation continuing to die. I see medicine people
and elderly continuing to die. And they denote our culture and our way
of life. When they die, knowing the stories, the sacred stories, the
sacred songs, we die as a nation, as Diné people. The legacy
that has been left behind by the U.S. government is that the Navajo
people will be no more. It's OK, devastation to Navajo people at that
time when we were getting exposed to the uranium ore. It's still
devastation today with us because many of my people are still dying
because of the exposure to uranium ore.
Q. Has the tribe received sufficient federal help in mitigating the
danger of uranium tailings?
A. No. The federal government has never put forward adequate funds to
do anything to help ourselves in mitigating what has been wrought by
the dangers of the uranium tailings, and I still know that around the
Cove area there are still mines that are open with uranium tailings
coming out of these mines. When it rains, it starts going out into the
riverbeds, into the lakes that the livestock drink from.
Q. Do you think that economic pressures to mine uranium are going to
continue to build on the Navajo Nation given the unemployment situation
and closure of Black Mesa coal mine?
A. No, I don't think so. I think the whole nation pretty much knows
what the mining of uranium has done to us as a people, as a nation.
What it has done to our culture and our way of life. . . . The
Diné Natural Resources Protection Act is a good law. It should
have been done a long time ago. I don't think there will be pressure
created to do away with it. The mining of uranium has done too much
havoc to us as a people. We're hurting for revenues, yes, we're hurting
for jobs, but we're not going to get into something that has killed us
and will continue to kill us.
Q. Why did you take the strong action of an executive order banning
conversations between tribal employees and energy companies regarding
uranium exploration without turning the inquiries over to the nation's
Attorney General's Office first?
A. As chief executive officer of the executive branch helping to mind
affairs for the Navajo Nation government and as president elected to
oversee affairs of the people, one of my responsibilities is to enforce
the law. . . . The Navajo Nation Council, working with the president
and working with the people, the grass roots, have put in place a law
that bans the further mining of uranium, and it is my responsibility to
use my authority to enforce that law. And putting forth that executive
order is exactly what I've done, that's exactly what I did is enforce
the law.
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