Antinuclear

Angelina Stuart wants the nuclear waste facility, to provide jobs for her children and grandchildren

ANGELINA STUART – Submission to Selection process for a national radioactive waste management facility in South Australia Submission 112

My name is Angelina Stuart, formally McKenzie, and I am the oldest sister of the McKenzie family. I was born in January 1943 on the land. My mother and father were living on the eastern side of the Flinders Ranges. That’s named Viliwarinha and it’s my birthplace – I was born out where the dingos were howling.

My late father was a strong Adnyamathanha man. As me and my siblings travelled through the Flinders Ranges, Dad would tell us Dreamtime stories about certain places. We were told the stories of the landscape that gave us a map of the area – the hills and creeks, these were the stories my dad told us. My dad made recordings and we still have his voice to listen to today.

My two older brothers and one sister who has now passed on, were born in the heart of the Flinders Ranges as well in 1938, 1940, and 1949, and I was born in 1943. Two siblings were then born in 1947 and 1950 in Beltana. There were 4 born in Hawker in 1944, 1952, 1956 and 1959. When we moved to Port Augusta, and that was the first time I saw Wallerberdina. After that, 3 siblings were born in Port Augusta, along with my five children.

I moved back to the land in 1998 to Yappala Station, next to Wallerberdina. In the mid-nineties I was one to put a claim for Station.

It is very upsetting to me that stories are being told that shouldn’t be told, and that stories are being said are ours, even though they are not our stories. The one that is distressing, is the story of the seven sisters because it isn’t our story – my father told me the Dreamtime story, and it was a different story. The story being told of the seven sisters isn’t right – it belongs to the other side of Lake Torrens, not near Wallerberdina.

On this land, this site at Wallerberdina, I’ve been out there with the heritage assessment with RPS. I know where they walked, and where the site is, and there are no visuals sites on the ground, I didn’t see anything. Any little cuttings would be from people passing through. It’s a lie to say the stories and lore of the land would disappear if a facility was built on Wallerberdina.

This process has given everyone a chance to sit down and meet. I really appreciate that we’ve been able to sit down and talk, and share our culture. If the facility did go ahead, I would want to see work done by Adnyamathanha to explain to non-Indigenous and other groups the value of our land, the spiritual side of it, so that the lore of the land and the tradition of the area around it is carried on. It is still there and it will always be there.

Thinking about my grandkids and great grandkids, I want to see development on the land, so that they can return to the land and surrounding areas, and so they can come back and get opportunities of employment. They need to be able to come back to the land.

August 13, 2018 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, Federal nuclear waste dump