South Australia’s Aboriginal Heritage Act requires TRUE consultation with Traditional Owners
the chair of the Andyamathanha Traditional Land Association, Vince Coulthard, says the aim of the Supreme Court challenge was not to block mining, but to challenge Government process.
He says Aboriginal Affairs Minister Grace Portolesi is legally required to consult with Traditional Owners before making a decision on exploration. But Mr Coulthard- who received the Premier’s NAIDOC award last year for work in his community- says that process never occurred
Aboriginal leader hits back at mining claim ABC News, 16 Jan 12, An Aboriginal leader in South Australia’s far north has rejected claims by explorer Argonaut Resources that the state’s Aboriginal Heritage Act is anti-mining.
In 2010, the Government granted Argonaut a licence to explore 6300 hectares of land near Lake Torrens in a joint venture with Straits Resources. Traditional Owners appealed against that decision, taking their case
to the South Australian Supreme Court. Their appeal was upheld, prompting Argonaut to claim the Act gives too
much power to Traditional Owners to veto mining……. Continue reading
Aboriginal land threatened by uranium mining
Australia’s push to increase uranium mine threatens aboriginal land, RADIO Free Speech NEWS , 01/06/2012 Australia is one of the largest exporters of uranium, a metal essential for nuclear power and weapons production. The country sits on the world’s largest uranium reserves and it’s poised to increase its role in the nuclear industry. The Australian government has made moves to become a major exporter of uranium to India, a growing nuclear power. But opponents — many from the country’s indigenous communities — are fighting the expansion. FSRN’s Jessie Boylan reports from Melbourne. http://fsrn.org/audio/australia%E2%80%99s-push-increase-uranium-mine-threatens-aboriginal-land/9671Call for Constitutional change, to end Australia’s discrimination against Aborigines
The council recommended “the removal of those remaining sections of the Constitution which discriminate on the basis of race”; a preamble recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the first peoples of Australia, as well as their prior occupation and ownership; and the repeal of “the anachronistic race power” contained in section 51 (xxvi), which allows laws to be made that benefit or discriminate against Aborigines.
Australia was one of the only modern democracies that did not guarantee racial equality in its Constitution and it would be an “unfortunate irony” if Australians voted to recognise Aborigines, but the capacity for discrimination remained within the Constitution.
Lawyers backed new race power BY: STUART RINTOUL The Australian January 6 A PANEL that recommended constitutional reform to recognise and protect Aboriginal people and culture had the strong backing of the Law Council of Australia. A submission by the council recommended the key changes to the Constitution ultimately adopted by the panel in its report, which will be handed to Julia Gillard this month.
The legal profession’s peak body said a minimalist approach confined to recognising Aboriginal people in the preamble to the Constitution “would be of little if any practical effect”. It supported “an approach to constitutional recognition which goes beyond the preamble to the Imperial Act and secures enforceable rights”. Continue reading
South Australian government silent on Aboriginal Heritage Act, and its implications for uranium mining
The Government, however, remains silent on its responsibility in implementing the requirements of the Aboriginal Heritage Act,
“The traditional owners”.. are not even named in this news release.
The traditional owner group, known as the Yura Language Consultative Group, is disappointed the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs has failed to investigate its requests for a ministerial determination over the Beverley Four Mile and Mt Gee area as being culturally significant and intimately connected, despite a legal obligation to do so under the SA Aboriginal Heritage Act.
Marsh: Cultural significance snubbed, The Advertiser, by:Jillian Marsh December 14, 2011 http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/opinion/marsh-cultural-significance-snubbed/story-e6freai3-1226221235838 THE news release entitled “Arkaroola to be protected forever” by the SA Government’s pledging a commitment of “unprecedented protection” is welcome news. This protection, on the basis of a comprehensive three-step process, is particularly welcome for traditional owners – members of the Adnyamathanha community.
This announcement follows the persistent public outcry over the past few years over exploration leases being granted in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary and, in particular, Mt Gee. Despite a shift in state political agencies towards a more sympathetic view of conservation concerns, all political parties remain hesitant in acknowledging the cultural significance of this region for the traditional owners. Continue reading
Aboriginal homelands vulnerable to land grab, as Northern Territory Intervention is widened
As part of the 2007 “intervention” legislation, Aboriginal land granted under the 1976 Land Rights Act was compulsorily acquired by the government through five-year leases. These will be replaced with “voluntary” forty-year leases that remove all previous restrictions on how town camp and “Community Living” land could be used.
Over the past four years the government has attempted to press local communities to sign long-term leases by cutting funds for essential services to the homeland communities.
Australia: Labor to extend NT “intervention” for a decade, World Socialist Website, By Susan Allan, 12 December 2011 The Labor government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard is intensifying its social austerity cutbacks with a raft of proposed new laws that continue the Northern Territory (NT) “intervention” for another ten years and expand its punitive measures to include all welfare recipients, indigenous and non-indigenous alike, Australia-wide. Continue reading
Court upholds Jabbir Jabbir people and the Goolarabooloo people against W.A. govt’s land grab attempt
Court quashes Kimberley gas hub land grab ABC News, December 06, 2011 Western Australia’s Supreme Court has ruled invalid the State Government’s move to compulsorily acquire land for a gas hub in the Kimberley. Chief Justice Wayne Martin ruled three notices of intention to acquire the land at James Price Point were invalid because they did not contain a description of the land. However his declaration does not prevent the Lands Minister from issuing further notices of intent to take land in the area. The claimant’s lawyers say the ruling means the land deal struck between the government and the Kimberley Land Council is now invalid, putting the future of the Browse gas project in doubt.
The action was brought by traditional land owners the Jabbir Jabbir people and the Goolarabooloo people. Michael Orlov, lawyer for the Goolarabooloo people, told reporters outside court that Lands Minister Brendon Grylls will need to commence the process again…..”We’re not going to be pushed around by the WA Government. We’re there to show that we can do it, so can every Indigenous person in Western Australia.”…http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-06/court-quashes-kimberley-gas-hub-land-grab/3715390?section=wa
Australian government policies force Aborigines off homelands (convenient for the nuclear industry)
As Amnesty International has noted, the Government has decided to direct virtually all funding and investment in the Northern Territory to 21 “growth towns”. Thus, the 500 communities, which have about 35 per cent of the NT’s Indigenous population, were allocated $7.1 million out of the $672 million housing program. They note that “the Commonwealth Government has transferred the responsibility for homelands to the Northern Territory Government, whose own policy
clearly states no new homes on homelands in the Northern Territory”.
The result will be to force Indigenous communities from the land that has “social, cultural and economic significance to them”.
Destroying Indigenous communities and cultures, The Drum, Michael Brull , 1 Dec 11, Jenny Macklin has just delivered her second reading speech for the new intervention legislation. She had sought to soften the ground for this by announcing the new “evidence” which she claimed vindicated her measures, in the absence of any evidence of improving socio-economic conditions. Continue reading
Non Government Organisations support Aboriginals, urge repeal of punitive Intervention legislation
“The compulsory nature of income management and its blanket imposition (in combination with other changes, such as local government reform, shire amalgamations and losses of local councils; changes to CDEP; the loss of the permit system; and changes in land tenure) are likely to have contributed to people’s feeling of a loss of freedom, empowerment and community control.”.
Aboriginals of Australia: NGOs Urge Government to Repeal Intervention Legislation Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) 26 Nov 11 Despite government-sanctioned reports that ‘welfare quarantining’ has resulted in the disenfranchisement of indigenous communities in their own affairs, Canberra has voted to extend the legislation. NGOs are particularly concerned with the development of a measure which would suspend welfare payments to parents whose children exhibit recidivism in low school attendance. Continue reading
Maralinga’s hidden legacy of radioactivity AND asbestos
Maralinga sites need more repair work, files show, The Age, Philip Dorling, November 12, 2011 MORE than a decade after the Howard government declared the clean-up of Maralinga to be finished, the Australian government is continuing to support remediation work at the former British nuclear weapons test site.
Confidential federal government files released under freedom of information also show Canberra bureaucrats have at times been primarily concerned with ”perceptions” of radioactive contamination, while rejecting a request by the Maralinga Tjarutja Aboriginal community for a site near the Maralinga village to be cleared of high levels of toxic uranium contamination.
Files released by the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism show that erosion of the massive Taranaki burial trench north of Maralinga, described by federal bureaucrats as ”a large radioactive waste repository”, has required significant remediation work. Other burial pits scattered across the former nuclear test range have also been subject to subsidence and erosion, exposing asbestos-contaminated debris…..
The Taranaki trench was excavated in the mid-1990s and used to bury radioactive-contaminated debris and soil, principally from numerous ”minor trials”, British nuclear weapons safety and development experiments conducted between 1956 and 1963 that caused the heaviest radioactive contamination at Maralinga. Records of a Maralinga Lands and Environmental Management Committee meeting in October last year show that ”erosion of the Taranaki trench was noted” and that repair work funded by the Commonwealth would be carried out by the Maralinga Tjarutja. An annual survey of 85 debris pits revealed that 19 pits had been subject to erosion or subsidence, with eight requiring ”major work” and at least four containing exposed asbestos…..
The released files also show that the Australian government declined requests by Maralinga Tjarutja to clean up the trials site closest to the Maralinga Village. Situated east of the Maralinga airstrip, the Kuli site was used by British nuclear weapons scientists to conduct 262 trials that explosively dispersed 7.4 tonnes of uranium into the environment……… http://www.theage.com.au/national/maralinga-sites-need-more-repair-work-files-show-20111111-1nbpp.html#ixzz1dck3m6z7
Aboriginal culture may yet save Australia for European pastoralists, Aborigines and environmentalists
Honour invasion warriors’, Canberra Times, BY BREANNA TUCKER, 04 Nov, 2011 “…………..Professor Flannery pointed out that Australia would do well to take lessons from its elders.
He said technology had made the world smaller, and communication and building strong links had become the key to successful business. But far from being covered in dust in the history books, Aboriginal people had pioneered the structure in which such relationships needed to be build.
”Aborigines were the only people who, without the assistance of any transport, forged a community of knowledge and interconnectedness that spanned an entire continent,” Professor Flannery said. ”If you look at the records, people from the Kimberley knew the names of people living in the Great Australian Bight.
”They did not trade in physical goods, they traded in intellectual property, in songs and knowledge. The maintenance of that connectedness is an echo of the world we’re now moving into because knowledge is everything in the modern world.”
Professor Flannery ended by reflecting on Australian politics, in which he said Aboriginal people and Australians were perhaps more aligned than they realised. Where the nation was once divided between European pastoralists, Aborigines and environmentalists, the interests of all three groups were now merging.
”There is a thirst out there for a new sort of partnership, reflecting a new reality and that reality is that Europeans on the land, Aboriginal people and environmentalists now have a very strong common thread.
”But unless we acknowledge and really come to terms with our past, we won’t be able to fully take the benefits of the diverse place Australia has become.” http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/general/honour-invasion-warriors/2346731.aspx
Aboriginal elder warns of Kalta – nature’s revenge for huge Olympic Dam uranium mine
THE LIZARDS REVENGE, DLF – Desert Liberation Front, Response to the governments decision to expand Olympic Dam mine. Sleeping underneath the ground there is an old lizard, Kalta the sleepy lizard. The lizard ain’t so sleepy anymore.
BHP is mining right into that Lizards body. The government has just approved an expansion of the Olympic Dam uranium mine, making it the biggest uranium mine in the world.
Kalta is angry and wants revenge. Arabana elder Kevin Buzzacot is calling the people of the world to help the lizard shut down the mine. He is calling for people to come and heal the land in the name of peace and justice for the next 10,000 generations to come.
The land is being irreversibly poisoned in and around Roxby Downs by the tailings dam causing dust and ground water contamination, and contamination of its workers.
The uranium is taken all over the world and used to kill the land and all its creatures. It’s destroying lives not only in Fukashima, with the reactor meltdown, but in the depleted uranium shells that children play with in the streets of Iraq and Kosovo.
With the governments numerous attempts to put a nuclear waste dump at Muckaty in the Northern Territory there is a danger that radioactive waste will be brought back, opening Australia up to accepting nuclear waste from all over the world. Lets stop the deadly cycle where it starts.
The land the lizard and the creatures of this earth are summoning everybody who gives a shit to the gates of Roxby Downs on the 14th of july 2012 for The Lizards Revenge – This is an open invitation to all people and a special call out to artists, musicians and activist community groups and media to get involved in the creation of this autonomous zone for the peace and healing of this land.
Australian government policies drive Aborigines off their healthy lives on homelands
More than one-third of the NT’s Aboriginal population lives in 500 remote homeland communities…..people were more healthy living in small communities on traditional homelands
Aboriginal policies ‘ethnic cleansing’, SMH, Lisa Martin, October 9, 2011 –Starving Aboriginal people off their traditional homelands is akin to “ethnic cleansing”, the Amnesty International boss has been told during his Central Australia visit.Amnesty International chief Salil Shetty visited communities in Utopia on the weekend describing the plight of locals as “devastating.”….. The human rights group profiled the Utopian region, in an August report that claimed homeland communities were being starved of money for proper housing, maintenance and basic services like rubbish removal.
Amnesty says the policies are aimed at driving Aborigines off their homelands and herding them into 21 “hub towns” where the federal and NT governments were splashing out cash for resources and services. Community leader Rosalie Kunoth Monks told Mr Shetty how desperately her people wanted to stay on their land. Continue reading
Historic Native title win for Western Australian Aboriginals over mining company
Native title blocks Weld Range mine project, PAUL CLEARY , The Australian, September 24, 2011 THE Wajarri Yamatji people of Western Australia’s Weld Range have long believed that their land was special. Now, the National Native Title Tribunal has decided the rock art, ochre mines and ancient ceremonial grounds are more valuable than $7 billion of minerals in the ground.
A ruling this week by tribunal deputy president Chris Sumner marked just the second time that it has rejected a mining application. Weld Range contains the Wilgie Mia Aboriginal site, given national heritage listing this year by the federal government.
Mr Sumner said it was an area of “outstanding importance”. It includes an ochre mine that has been worked for 30,000 years.
Traditional owner Colin Hamlet said he was “feeling really proud that we’re actually getting some notice”. He said the region offered great tourism potential because it had “a wealth of stuff”. Simon Hawkins, the chief executive of the Yamatji Marlpa Aboriginal Corporation, which represented the Wajarri Yamatji people, said the success reflected the “consistent approach” of the traditional owners in outlining the heritage value of the land……http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/native-title-blocks-weld-range-mine-project/story-e6frgczx-1226144919702
Traditional Aboriginal landowners excluded from Rio Tinto land agreement
The Bark Petition: An expression of legal ownership, Green Left, September 18, 2011, By Emma Murphy Yirrkala, in north-east Arnhem land, is home to the famous 1963 “Bark Petition”. This was a protest action by the Yolngu people that led to the first native title litigation in Australia’s history. Continue reading
Jeff McMullen’s passionate call against a second Aboriginal Intervention
the fight for the homelands is the new frontline.
Federal, Northern Territory and state government policy is now in collusion — and it’s across both sides of the political spectrum.
Assimilation is the essence of this government approach and what they are trying to do is, ever so slowly, prise Aborginal people up from their settlements on the homelands and move them for economic rationalisation and to clear the way for the the various kinds of development that have always taken the wealth out of Aboriginal land…..the contest with the miners, and that appetite, that greed for the wealth on Aboriginal lands, is bringing Aboriginal society once more to the crossroads……
This intervention started with a vicious lie: the one that said all of these communities had pedophile rings.
The Australian Crime Commission has now erased that lie, saying there were, and there are, no pedophile rings…….
Jeff McMullen: Don’t buy the NT intervention lie, Green Left, September 17, 2011, Outside prescribed Aboriginal communities in the NT ‘those shameful signs still exist’. Jeff McMullen, a prominent journalist and Aboriginal rights advocate, gave the address below at the Sydney launch of Walk With Us: Aboriginal Elders Call Out to Australian People to Walk with them in their Quest for Justice at Gleebooks, Sydney, on September 1. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 