Antinuclear

Our Anangu story is not a happy one but it was a privilege to speak up at the UN — for my family and my own people and for indigenous peoples around the world who have suffered the effects of nuclear testing since the dawn of this nuclear age. I felt a great responsibility to acknowledge the many indigenous people who had lost lives and land, and suffered other harm and sickness, including my father Yami Lester.

Dad was blinded by the British nuclear testing at Emu Field in 1953 and has never laid eyes on his Country since, nor ever on his son and two daughters, his 12 grandchildren and two great grandchildren. I shared our family’s story and urged the 130 nations gathered there to produce a strong treaty that will not only ban these destructive weapons but formally recognise the disproportionate impact of nuclear weapon activities on indigenous peoples.

Yet, in the back of my mind in New York, amid all that history making and all that hope, was the knowledge that this fight is not even close to being over at home, that we never seem to be able to draw to a close this dangerous industry in South Australia.

Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Kokatha, Adnyamathanha and other Aboriginal people of South Australia have been fighting this nuclear problem now for decades, since my father heard a British official falsely claiming that Anangu had been consulted on the tests which sent the ‘black mist’ which poisoned our people and land.

Dad’s campaigning helped pave the way for the Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia in 1985. But it didn’t take long for this injustice to be forgotten, for our traditional lands to once more to be seen as empty wastelands and for this struggle to become intergenerational.

In 1998 the Howard Government announced its plan to build a national radioactive waste dump in the SA Outback. This time it was the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, senior Aboriginal woman from Coober Pedy — among them my Kami (nana) Eileen Kampakuta Brown — who had to step up for the fight with their “Irati Wanti — the poison, leave it” campaign. It took a huge toll on those old women but they had learnt of the danger from their experience of Maralinga and Emu Field.

Then two years ago came the threat again, with the Royal Commission into the expansion of the nuclear fuel cycle in South Australia and the proposal to ship, store and bury up to one-third of the world’s high-level long-lived radioactive waste. Where? Not in Adelaide, of course.

But as my Kami said, this radioactive risk is not just a problem for our mob, it’s a problem for all South Australians, and the proposal was resoundingly rejected.

Meanwhile, the Federal Government has been looking at Adnyamathanha country in the Flinders Ranges for a national low and intermediate-level nuclear dump. Facing strong Aboriginal resistance, it is also proposing a site on the Eyre Peninsula. Aboriginal people are not the only opponents of nuclear waste, but we have borne the brunt of this industry and have intimate knowledge of its costs.

My father lost his eyesight because of nuclear weapons testing, but he has never lost his vision of a cleaner and safer future free of nuclear threats from weapons and waste. It’s time this country and this state shared that vision.

Karina Lester is a Yankunytjatjara Anangu woman, who works with the University of Adelaide’s Mobile Language Team as the Aboriginal Co-Manager and Language Worker. She is a member of the Natural Resources Management Council