Senator Scott Ludlam speaks on ANFA, uranium, Aboriginals, and Navajo
In 2008, a five-year cleanup plan of the Navajo lands was proposed and implemented by the US EPA, which estimated that 30 per cent of all Navajo still lack uncontaminated drinking water. It is an experience that is familiar to Aboriginal people here in Australia
Adjournment speech – Fukushima 6 months on – Australia’s Nuclear Free Alliance Spokesperson Scott Ludlam 14th September 2011“…….I had the enormous good fortune before I departed for Canberra to spend Sunday, 11 September at Seven Mile Camp on the outskirts of Alice Springs at a meeting of the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance-ANFA ……. I spent my time there in the company of a number of people: Uncle Kevin Buzzacott, who has spent the latter part of his life fighting nuclear dispossession of the land of his people by the Olympic Dam uranium mine at Roxby Downs in central South Australia; Mitch, whose sense of humour and fierce wit and passion for her people leave an indelible trace on the memory of anybody who spends time with her; the indestructible Barb Shaw, who has unfortunately spent far too much of her time having to fight the negative impacts of the Northern Territory intervention that was so unwisely carried forward by this government; and Aunty Isabel and Bunny Naparrula, who travelled down from Tennant Creek to speak to that group of people about this Commonwealth government’s shameful proposal to continue the Howard government’s radioactive dispossession of their people with the proposed imposition of a radioactive waste dump which would collect the Commonwealth obligated nuclear material which principally resides at the moment at Lucas Heights in central South Australia-though there is also a certain amount at overseas reprocessing sites in France. They do not want that material there, and they have led an extraordinary campaign, which I have been privileged to be a part of, to prevent that material being dumped in a shed on a cattle station on their traditional land so that the Commonwealth government can wash its hands of it and walk away.
ANFA has been going since 1997. It was formed in Alice Springs in response to the Howard government’s unleashing of the uranium sector to vastly more disappointing results than I imagine they were anticipating and in particular in response to the challenge of the proposed Jabiluka mine in Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. ANFA, which was formed as the Alliance Against Uranium, has stayed very strong since then. That ANFA meeting was an amazing gathering of people whom you might consider some of the most marginalised and disadvantaged in the country. Aboriginal communities, activists, elders and some of the new leaders coming through gather once a year-this is the fourth one that I have had the extreme good fortune to attend-to share their stories of dispossession and of that e campaigns that they have waged and in many cases won against foreign and domestic uranium mining companies and against the extraordinarily misguided ambitions of successive Commonwealth governments in seeking to leave this toxic time capsule of radioactive waste on their country.
We were very fortunate to host at that meeting a couple of guests from overseas-people with quite intimate experiences of the nuclear industry and of uranium mining. One of them was Ammon Russell, who is a representative of the Navajo Nation in the United States. They have had intimate experience with uranium mining. The Navajo Nation encompasses some parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, and their area was a key target for uranium mining in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, when there were more than 1,000 uranium mines on the Navajo lands alone. The Navajo people suffered the immediate impacts of unventilated mines and of the fact that there were then no occupational health and safety measures whatsoever. In fact, in 1962 the first publication of a statistical correlation between cancer and uranium mining was published by the US public health service as a result of the enormous impacts suffered by the Navajo people, particularly the miners and their families who were mining that material so that the United States government could produce the nuclear weapons that fuelled their part in the Cold War.
As of 2009, the federal government in the United States had funded nearly 22,000 people a sum of just under $1½ billion in reparations for the colossal harm that was caused. I do not know how you compensate people for the loss of the lives of families, for the children born sick or deformed and for the lives cut short. Nonetheless, the US government has been writing out cheques to the tune of $1.4 billion for the damage caused. In 2008, a five-year cleanup plan of the Navajo lands was proposed and implemented by the US EPA, which estimated that 30 per cent of all Navajo still lack uncontaminated drinking water. It is an experience that is familiar to Aboriginal people here in Australia. Ammon’s words were keenly listened to by the people sitting around the campfire and around the circle at Seven Mile because the experience here, while it is different in some important respects, still bears a huge resemblance to what the Navajo suffered. The forced dispossession, the lies of the government who said that this activity was safe, the promise of jobs that either never eventuated or turned out to be lethal when they arrived and the walking away and the washing of the hands and the erasing of the history of the dispossession of these people seemed very similar.
It was wonderful to spend time in the company of Aboriginal people here in Australia who have given up their lives to fight the impacts of the actions of household industry names here. These companies include BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Cameco and Mitsubishi, which attempted to establish mines in Western Australia. Many Australians have shares in these companies, and many of us probably invest indirectly in them through our superannuation; but they have an extraordinarily dark story, and it is important that it be told….
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