On
Whale Dreaming
Nurrdalinji
This issue is dedicated to the memory and spirit of Mr Wilson Jabarda, Jungai and Nurrdalinji leader. Mr Wilson, a powerful contributor to this edition, passed away just before we went to print. May your spirit rest in power with the ancestors, and inspire new generations to lead the fight to stop fossil fuel destruction on Aboriginal Land. It is time that Mr Wilson’s fight to protect country be taken up by all who walk in this land.
“Uncle, your spirit will never diminish, but grow brighter. Your voice will never be forgotten, but become louder. Your fight will not end, but become mightier.”
- Kerry Klimm“Your legacy lives on with the unfurling of new flowers, as clearly as river water dancing over noisy water stones. May all who knew you feel peace as they transition towards a new relationship with you. Thank you for you have been, all you are and all you have touched. Stretching into new space.”
– Alana Marsh“Fracking is not our story, Country is our story! Without Water there is no life! - Nurrdalinji warrior of the water Wise words, story and energy comes from one who defends the sacred. May his message carry forward strong into the future for All. Deep Solidarity and united we stand blood fire, in the fight for Sacred Country. Respect to all the Nurrdalinji People’s.”
– Yaraan Couzens-Bundle“My thoughts and condolences to the Nurrdalinji people on the passing of one of their warriors. I know his words will live on and the spirit of his fight will continue as long as Country is endangered. I hope everyone reads his words carefully.”
– Dr Amy McQuire“Giving thanks for your wisdom from the Baaka to the Beetaloo. From Barkindji to Gudanji-Wambaya to Nurrdalinji. Thankyou. For your unwavering love for your people, Country and a yearning passion to protect them both. May your journey to eternal dreaming be safely guided by the warm embrace of your Ancestors who walked silently with you into each of the fights your legacy leaves behind. You will live on through your family, your land and waters.”
– Jennetta Quinn-BatesMr WIlson’s family have requested donations to cover Sorry Business and ongoing support be made via www.paypal.me/JohnnyWilsonSnr
Edition #146 − September 2023
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This issue contains references to Aboriginal people who have passed.
Front cover Kerry Klimm 2023, “Rise”. www.flashblak.com.au; @flashblak
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Friends of the Earth India extends its solidarity with the people of Barsu Solgaon, Ratnagiri, and condemns the suppression of the protestors of anti refinery movement. The local community, under the banner of ‘Barsu Solgaon Panchkroshi Refinery Virodhi Sanghathan’ along with environmentalists across the Konkan region and Maharashtra, have been opposing the setting up of Ratnagiri Refinery and Petrochemicals Limited (RRPCL).
The project was initially proposed in 2015 at Nanar village, Rajapur, in the Sindhudurg district, with a total investment of 3 lakh crore and a refining capacity of 60 million tonnes per annum, making it one of the largest refineries in the world. The company will have a 50% shareholding from Saudi Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company and the rest from Indian Oil Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, and Bharat Petroleum Corporation.
Despite restrictions, villagers, especially women, reached the proposed project site to stop the land survey. Around 50-60 women protestors blocked the road by lying on the ground to stop the survey cars from moving towards the proposed project site at Barsu plateau. Police lathi-charged the protesters, and 45 women protesters were detained and destroyed the tents where women and children were camping. Police continue to arrest people. As of now, more than 100 protestors have been arrested. Find out more: foe.org.au/cr146b
Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) is a federation of autonomous organisations from all over the world. Our members, in over 70 countries, campaign on the most urgent environmental and social issues, while working towards sustainable societies. FoEI currently has five international programs: Climate Justice and Energy; Economic Justice, Resisting Neoliberalism; Food Sovereignty; Forests and Biodiversity; and Resisting Mining, Oil and Gas.
For decades Friends of the Earth Indonesia/WALHI has been developing a community-led model to protect the country’s forests. It is based on recognising the land rights of subsistence farmers, collective management of non-timber forest products and traditional knowledge. WALHI is currently working with farmers and peasant unions across the country to defend land rights and promote community control of natural resources. WALHI supports their struggle by providing free legal services, training in community organising and connecting local producers directly with consumers. Their approach is working. Not only have individual communities won land rights in the courts, but families have benefited from improved vegetable sales. This model is already being massively scaled up due to its success. The government has promised 12.7 million hectares of forest area for Community Forest Management.
In 2022 the total area of communitymanaged areas supported by Friends of the Earth Indonesia/WALHI has reached 1.1 million ha. A total of 161,019 households from 28 provinces benefit from the protection and development provided by this Community-based Area Management.2 This inspiring initiative has achieved so much on the pathway to systemic change, but much more is needed to be done.
Find out more in Friends of the Earth International’s pathways to system change report: foe.org.au/cr146a
The Philippines has 421 principal rivers spread across 119 proclaimed watersheds. Aside from providing water to drink for 110 million Filipinos, these are also the source of irrigation for almost a million hectares of agricultural lands across the nation, and a significant source of electricity comprising 10% of the current power mix.
But the Philippine government’s emphasis on big dam and hydro power infrastructure, while providing quick benefits of water distribution and power generation, are destructive to watersheds and disruptive to affected resource-dependent communities.
Listen to a conversation with Leon Dulce, as part of Real World Radio here. foe.org.au/cr146c
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In a win that’s been a long time coming, news broke this week that Australia’s largest independent coal miner Whitehaven Coal is currently unbankable. Earlier this week, Whitehaven announced it had failed to renew its $1 billion corporate loan, which had been in place since 2020. The loan facility included lending commitments from Australia’s big banks NAB and Westpac, as well as Japanese
megabanks Mizuho, MUFG and SMBC among a group of 13 total lenders. The banks’ refusal to renew Whitehaven’s loan forces the company to finance more of this expenditure internally (i.e. with its own cash reserves, instead of using other people’s money) which makes it more difficult overall for the company to pursue its climate-wrecking coal expansion plans. Get involved with Market Forces to learn more.
Illustration: Sofia Sabbagh
The Victorian State Government has announced a historical decision: Native forest clearfell logging will end on January 1st, 2024.
With logging due to end by January 1, 2024, we will continue advocating for the best protections possible for forests over the next 7 months and working closely with communities and the broader movement to ensure the best possible outcome for the forests of Victoria. The future of forests should be cared for the benefit of people, biodiversity, water and land, not exploited for profit and cheap products. Management of forests should braid First Nations Cultural Knowledge together with peer-reviewed integrity based ecological studies and maintain respect for both knowledge systems. Get involved with the Forests Campaign to be part of the future for Victoria’s forests! melbournefoe.org/forests
Larrakia Traditional Owners and environmentalists fighting to save Lee Point/Binyabara from development win a one month reprieve from land clearing. Larrakia Traditional Owners say they were not properly consulted over the project by Defence Housing Australia. Larrakia Danggalaba
traditional custodian Tibby Quall spoke about how this development would destroy his family’s connection to the land. “They will destroy the Kenbi Dreaming track, which holds our lores and customs. Dariba Nunggalinya (Old Man Rock) is like a creator, it’s from the beginning of the world – that’s how long Aboriginal people have been here. We’ve been here for thousands of years – without our land, we can’t survive, it makes us who we are.” The land is also the habitat of the endangered Gouldian finch, which has further spurred on protesters to fight for Binyabara.
For decades, successive federal governments have been attempting to establish a national radioactive waste dump. After a long legal battle, Barngarla’s voice is heard as the Federal Government abandons Kimba nuclear waste dump. On July 18, 2023 the Federal Court concluded that the former National Party Minister Keith Pitt’s decision to site the facility at Napandee was invalid due to apprehension of bias and set the declaration aside.
See article on p. 34 . Join the Nuclear Free Collective to learn more.
A landmark court case between Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (YAC) and Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) kicked off on August 7th. YAC says FMG conducted mining operations on traditional lands without adequate permission. YAC is seeking more than $500 million in compensation from FMG over their operations at the Solomon Hub iron ore mine.
Yindjibarndi woman Esther Guiness said in her testimony that the Yindjibarndi community had been divided between families who supported YAC and others who were part of a breakaway group supported by FMG. She said it made her sad. Ms Guiness said she had worked at FMG’s Solomon Hub, but that she had been forced to quit, because she had been visited by angry spirits who were upset because their homes had been destroyed by FMG’s mining activity. On Country hearings have been conducted, in which Yindjibarndi man Kevin Guinness told the court FMG had not received permission to mine or gone about the process in the correct manner. ‘“First of all, they need to see the rightful owner of the country, and they should come with an open heart and feeling and respectful of the ngurrara of that country,” he said. “I am concerned with the impact of mining on our water. Water is important for animals, birds, trees,” he said.
Corporation has divided the once-united community. “We shared our culture as one. We shared language as one to our young generations. We carried that lore as one,” he said. “Now, the mining company man been come, he split us up like that.
The Court visited various sacred Yindjibarndi areas which elders said have been disturbed by mining activity, including a Yindjibarndi male burial place, a walled-in enclave on a cliff face, and the mine site’s tailing dam, which the company built on top of a Yindjibarndi sacred site, flooding the area.
At Bangkangarra, an area the Yindjibarndi hold exclusive possession Native Title rights over, the Court heard from witnesses including YAC CEO Michael Woodley, lore man Angus Mack and elder Stanley Warrie. The proceedings were opened by a traditional Yindjibarndi smoking ceremony, administered by locals and elders. Elder Stanley Warrie testified and said the damage to his land from FMG’s mining was extremely upsetting. He told the court the experience felt like somebody was pulling his heart out, and he felt like his history and religion were being ripped up.
Reprinted from Ngaarda Media. Written by Conrad MacLean, Tangiora Hinaki and Gerard Mazza. Follow Ngaara Media or Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation for further updates.
Mr. Guiness said FMG’s support of breakaway Yindjibarndi group, Wirlu-Murra Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Yindjibarndi on country for YAC court case. Image
The core of fighting for country lies with getting behind the people who care for it.
This issue contains references to Aboriginal people who have passed.
Nick Chesterfield
Welcome to Chain Reaction’s Strong Blak Resistance, the full BlakOut Takeover Issue. This issue showcases the voices of real change from the First Nations organisers, community leaders, and warriors. Voices fighting for Country at the coalface of resistance to coloniser plunder extractivism, rejecting the false solutions of Green Capitalism, and leading in asserting and adapting sustainably sovereign Blak solutions to the two centuries of damage to our ancient Land and climate.
We dedicate this issue to the warrior Mr Wilson, the late chair of Nurrdalinji mob protecting country from fracking in the Beetaloo basin, who died suddenly on August 29. With the graceful permission of his daughter Joni, we have been able to publish his powerful interview that examines the injury to his Country & countrymen, a call for active solidarity and his vision of a gas free future.
Uncle, may your spirit rest in power with the ancestors, and inspire new generations to lead the fight to stop fossil fuel destruction on Aboriginal Land.
We also acknowledge the elders past and present on all the unceded Lands that this issue was produced on, and the legacy of our elders and warriors who came before in paving the way of our Strong Blak Resistance & Protecting Country. We also honour and hold close the memory of all the other First Nations souls that have passed in the time we’ve compiled this edition – parents, cousins, children, aunties, uncles, grandparents, siblings, friends – we hear your strength, we mourn your loss, and we dedicate ourselves to abolish and heal from these colonising systems, in your memory.
Scars rip across unceded Aboriginal Land wherever we walk. An ancient Land nurtured by loving kinship, the oldest continuous scientific land management system in Earth’s History, and interconnected experiences and obligations to every single being that exists in harmony with each other. All life on our Land and Sea Country is our family, and we are bound to it, for all of time. Scars to our spirit, our bodies and our Land, scars inflicted by settlercolonialism without let-up since they arrived, destruction and plunder being all they know what to do. Scars inflicted by a people that think they actually understand the stolen land on which they stand, arrogantly thinking they know better than us how to repair the Land and Sea Country they’ve destroyed
As far as the eye can see, these are the scars of surviving a Stray-Alien culture of rape and pillage. But our warriors resisted, survived and are reborn, guided by our Elders and those who came before, a resurgence of Strong Blak Resistance – a seed that is constant in this ancient Land, and being watered by a new generation of mob finding new ways to resist and heal.
We face incredible threats – a vast machine of manufactured consent; public affairs for plunderers masquerading as journalism, yet silencing real reporting on the threats to the health of the continent we all share. We survive in an economy made from artificial scarcity, and false solutions put forward by greenwashed capital exist to plunder our ancient Land in a thousand new innovations. All these are being challenged from the best place – the grassroots of the people with their toes in the soil.
It is an honour to amplify and weave together powerful voices of this Land, of frontline defenders of country and warriors of resistance to the extractivist colony, inspired by sixty millenia of care, community and custodianship of all beings across Land and Sea Country Still standing strong against coloniser’s brutal plunder of 250 years, and in living their sovereign solutions, adapting new
ways and new allies to heal the damage caused by a terminally broken system of the invaders.
In a time where many settlers are beginning to wake up to the issues raised by Land Rights and Land Back movements, yet conversely a time where white-saviour solutions to First Nations demands still refuse to listen to real voices from our communities (causing yet another layer of deep trauma through the Referendum process), we are saying – it is time to listen up, and stand alongside us, or simply get out of the way.
When I was asked to canvas Blak feeling about the upcoming referendum for guidance to settlers trying to be allies for mob, I audibly groaned “here we go again – the colony has another wondrous idea it wants to impose on us.”
Once again,the cultural load burden of educating whitefellas again falls to mob. For years we have been asking you to educate yourselves. The coloniser’s referendum imposed brutal trauma, with the waves of racism from both Yes and No, once again. Not just from racist colonisers opposed to any form of Aboriginal representation, but from people meant to be allies. Just more harm with real impacts on the lives of those on the frontline.
This has been a very hard issue to curate, not just in outreach to the voices fighting to protect their country. The most dedicated fighters are the most under pressure, and simply don’t have time to do pages of writing.
This issue was originally focused on showcasing the campaigns of caring for country, but the imposition of the referendum changed the tack. Navigating the insidious and casual violence of the colony at every step in the process, with the responsibility to cultural safety always borne by Blakfullas (still unheeded by settlers in the conservation movement), the trauma imposed by the Referendum process meant that many people approached simply felt
too unsafe and unlistened to by? the colony, to contribute. Putting aside the cynicism of decades of experience fighting extractivism, we reached out to grassroots Land Defenders in favour of Yes. But our requests were ignored, refused or unable to be met.
We have asked a simple question: “Does the Referendum provide any utility for Aboriginal People protecting Country from destruction?” As a result, whilst there is a significant bias towards dismissal of the referendum as a coloniserimposed sideshow, the focus of this issue is demonstrating the continued need for growing practical allyship for Land and Sea Country protectors & decolonisation in the environmental movement.
Strong Blak Voices in this issue aren’t here to be polite. You stand on Aboriginal Land, you are here to Pay the Rent. Connection to land only comes from listening to those whose Law has maintained this land for 65,000 years. These are steps you already take, in a small way by wanting to decolonise your daily practice of fighting to protect country, and so Blak voices here will be demanding to Step Up and Show Up, and centre the people on whose land you are part of the theft. Hard truths will be confronted, a take-it-or-leaveit call to settler-coloniser Greenies who consider themselves allies to First Nations resistance to extractivism.
Uncomfortability creates change.
We present some big yarns – yarns that are so big we are also producing this into podcasts – and allowing for extended reads in the digital version of this magazine.
A theme runs through Blak resistance: we are still quarry – and a quarry - for empire, capitalism and colonialism.
Boe Spearim speaks strong that the Frontier Wars have never stopped, just transformed, and examines the history of Blak resistance up to today. He says allies must respect the first environmentalists, to learn from the history of constant resistance, work with mob, and show up in places like the Pilliga.
Dr Amy McGuire writes about the inescapable connections between coloniser violence, criminalisation of
protest, and environmental defence and the violence that extractivists, and white men, still impose on Blakfullas – especially the violence against Aboriginal women, and the Disappeared. As greenies you all know the extreme violence that extractivists impose on land defenders. In the eyes of the plunder-state, if you side with Blakfullas, then you must be violently punished. So it is incumbent on greenies to fight alongside Blak Women to dismantle the carceral violence system as a key tactic in fighting for environmental justice.
Yaraan Couzens-Bundle tells the story of Land and Sea Country protection bringing together defence of the Sacred Djap Warrung trees from a needless highway, and the fight to defend sea country against the ravages of seismic blasting and extractivism.
Jennetta Quinn-Bates examines the struggle to Save the Darling Baaka from industrial water theft and corruption, and also why the Voice cannot be trusted to deliver justice.
Powerful use of art as a changemaking medium for expressing survival & resistance in the colony, and protecting country, is shown and explained beautifully by Kerry Klimm
Kado Muir illustrates that at every turn of the colony, the plunder never ends. The myth of the so-called Green Revolution in the transition to renewables shows it is just the same old plunderers in charge – and they are uninterested in degrowth.
Uncontrolled Rare Earths and “Critical/ Strategic” Mining show that more than ever, allies need to step up to ensure that the process to mine more battery components doesn’t sacrifice massive swathes of Aboriginal Land.
It’s not all doomscrolling.
Alana Marsh shows the beauty of interconnectedness into the story of the Dingo and connection to their dreaming, and the regenerating songlines nurtures the hope that is necessary to create change.
Auntie Rissah Vox offers a call-to-arms for caring for our elders in their homes. There are some wins in the movements as people are becoming more educated
to our impact on this land. Small wins such as the victory of the Bangarla people in stopping the National Nuclear Waste Depository that was being put on their Land without consent near Kimba. The big win of stopping Native Forest Logging in Victoria; and a temporary win at Binybara/Lee Point in Darwin, with Larrakia mob & allies stopping the Gouldian Finch habitat destruction for the time being through direct action.
White environmentalism has worked extremely hard over the last decades, especially in issues around illegal logging, and of course in anti-nuclear work – and it has achieved significant wins. Those wins have all had one thing in common – working closely in support of traditional owners to maintain country. Allies are spread so thin. There is a call to pool resources, to drop the white egos in greenies movements and to drop the gatekeeping.
Blakfullas have made it clear they want all settlers in this country to show they have earned the right to live on our ancient continent – by stepping up to defend this land, in order to come the right way and pay the rent. Because if you aren’t going to work with traditional owners to defend the ability of this country to sustain life, what even is the point of you?
Lessons need to be learned, urgently. As Boe Spearim makes clear, “At the end of the day, if we don’t resist and continue to occupy, and re-speak our languages, and ceremonies, and be seen within this colony, then they get a continent for free.”
Nick Chesterfield is a man of Kaurna, Nunga, Kulin & Celtic Nations heritage all impacted by extractivism of the British colonial System. He is a journalist with several decades of experience of walking alongside & reporting for First Nations led, grassroots resistance movements against extractivism and resisting militarism & genocide in West Papua & First Nations across so-called Australia, and Melanesia.
Nick Chesterfield’s article “Defending Country through building Sovereign Blak Journalism capacity” appears in the online edition of this issue.
Tell us about yourself and your mob. Yama, Mirim Kumari Kuma Marwari. I’m Boe Spearim, a Gamilaraay, Kooma and Murrawarri man. I’m a radio host and warrior. Born in Western Sydney but grew up in the Southside of Brisbane out of War of the Aboriginal Resistance as well as Treaty Before Voice, and the Embassy in Musgrave Park, and put together the Frontier Wars podcast.
One of the biggest resets in public consciousness is of the myth that blakfullas just let colonisation take over. Tell us about how black resistance began.
The resistance began as early as 1770. Lieutenant James Cook was sailing with the Endeavour to find the Great Southern Land. He is seen in history as an amazing navigator, however he stumbled upon land that was already occupied by various different Indigenous Peoples. To a lot of Indigenous people around the world, he’s just seen as another coloniser. It came to a head in 1770 in Sydney for the Gweagal people of the Dharawal nation in a place now known as Botany Bay. Cook and his men got off the ship and rowed to the shore. At the beachfront of what is now known as Botany Bay, there was a conflict in which Cook and his men fired on the blakfullas, who in retaliation used their choice of weapons like the boomerang and spear. In that skirmish Cook and his men ended up taking a bunch of what would now be identified as artefactsthey were clearly weapons like shields, boomerangs and spears.
I don’t know what was going through the minds of the mob after this –whether they thought Cook and his men would come back or not. But, we do know that eight years after this incident everything changed for the worst – the invasion and violent occupation of the British. After the invasion of the First
Fleet in 1788, it took them 50 years before they “discovered” my country, Gamilaraay country. In the 1820s and 1830s they started to come through Western Sydney then on into Wiradjuri country through places like Bathurst, where well known Aboriginal warrior and resistance leader Windradyne and other Wiradjuri fought battles. From there the Europeans went over the plateau country and headed towards Gamilaraay, my Country. I am missing a few key things within that – but I just wanted to explain how fast and how far they got to.
They moved through our Countries under military protection. If cattle owners were moving to different stations they were escorted by the Native Mounted Police. Especially when they were going further from the colony, like up to my Country, they were hiring stockman and squatters and arming them with guns - teaching them how to corral, how to track, how to maim, how to murder and massacre, and then how to cover that up.
A lot of the white soldiers who fought in the Frontier Wars had fought in other wars across the globe. Some of the white soldiers had fought in other
wars. These were very experienced, very dangerous people, and their idea of warfare was totally different to the idea of warfare of us mob.
Richmond Hill was one of the first massacres, down in Sydney on Dharug Country. One of first big battles on the continent happened between Dharug mob and the Mounted Police, or British military. You also had Governors sanctioning massacres, like Governor Macquarie. At that time, [the Colony] weren’t getting enough traction further outside of the Sydney colony because of how stauch the mob was. So Macquarie assigned his special military force, the NSW Corps, to find particular Aboriginal people, kill them, and bring the women and children back as prisoners of war. I find it interesting, because what we have seen played out today, especially in the 1990s, is this thinking that whitefellas shouldn’t have a guilty conscience because blakfullas gave them the land, or they laid down and died, or were aimlessly wandering. But what we know is they did bring Aboriginal men, women and children back to Sydney as prisoners of war. You only do that if you are engaging in a war.
We still get this constant line that there never was a war. What we do know is there were hundreds of massacres and if not hundreds of battles that happened in different parts of this country. Aboriginal people engaged within that conflict space. Today, Aboriginal people are constantly faced with a high visibility when it comes to incarceration, and the brutalization of our bodies, our land, our children. If you ask any Aboriginal person who can articulate it, they might say the war has not ended.
What sort of tactics were being used to resist invasion in those Frontier War times?
There was always the question of how to remove these Europeans from our land. In the early days, fire was the best form to remove whitefellas. The last resort would be, we’ll burn everything on your property. Our mob are master fire-keepers. There’s a story of how mob would use fire to corral whitefellas into crocodile-infested waters - especially whitefellas that were harming people. We also used the land, the terrain, to defeat whitefellas. There’s the story of Multuggerah using Meewah (Tabletop Mountain) just off Toowoomba, to roll
big boulders down. And using knowledge of rough scrubby Country to evade men on horses. As time went by, there were mob who would use guns as well. It was never a fair war. I guess war isn’t fair. Especially when your opposition has a form of warfare that is so alien, and has no regulation or Law to what they’re doing. You see the times where European’s would massacre mob by catching them off guard, like when they were going through the process of Ceremony.
Tell us a bit more about the Native Mounted Police, and why they were so brutal?
The Native Mounted Police existed in Queensland from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. It was a very brutal organisation - it had one purpose; to protect the land from resistance from Indigenous peoples. They existed in all corners of Queensland, always moving. The Native Mounted Police used blakfullas to hunt other blakfullas. They took mob from different parts of the continent, so they wouldn’t know the people they were hunting. Some of the mob [in the Mounted Police] were survivors of massacres themselves, and brought up by whitefellas. Sometimes
they were coerced. Maybe children were in boarding schools, or their wives were captives. There were people that ran away as well, maybe ashamed of what they did.
It got to a point when, here in Queensland, people were shocked by how gruesome this force was. The Government decided to change them from native mounted police to trackers. That kept going right up until the 1920s, the 1930s – the high intensity tracking, and massacres were still being carried out and organised.
The Colony also used criminalisation to stop Aboriginal resistance, right? Our mob were part of the convict penal system, because of our resistance to invasion. We were forced to build most of these prisons, like Rottnest Island. Other Indigenous men, in particular from Aotearoa to South Africa to other British colonies, were sentenced to a life here in Australia because of their role in fighting against invasion in their own lands.
As early as the 1850s there were investigations into Aboriginal people dying in the penal system. These prisons were the breeding ground for infections and sickness. Mob would die within weeks.
Boe Spearim and Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance - Invasion Day
Then you have Dundalli. When he was hung, there were reporters and people who came all the way from Sydney to see. He was publicly executed because they wanted to show blakfullas: “you want to be a resistance like Dundalli, this is what’s going to happen - you’re going to be hung brutally”. Up to this day, we still see the high representation of our mob who are incarcerated. We’ve always been part of the carceral system in the colony, that has been shown as a way to pacify our people. At the end of the day, if we don’t resist and continue to occupy, and re-speak our languages, and ceremonies, and be seen within this colony, then they get a continent for free.
Dhakiarr’s case got picked up by communists. That’s sort of one of the first formalised collaborations between Aboriginal people and the Communist Party. They even organised a strike in the Pilbara to fall on May Day. They calculated it months in advance – one of the blakfullas who could travel between stations passed on the dates to different stations.
bunch [of representatives], because they were having meetings and not being accountable to the people who voted them in.
After this sort of Frontier period, mob’s still resisting but in a sort of new form and fashion, depending on where you are and where you were stationed, your occupation. From having cotton strikes in Wee-Waa, to in the Pilbara, hundreds of Aboriginal men and their families walked off multiple cattle stations to the Wave Hill walk-off, and then we see the activism coming out of the cities, the formation of political Aboriginal organisations advocating against the Protection Board, advocating for more rights, advocating for freehold land to be given back to blakfullas. Depending on where you were and your influence, Aboriginal People were Resisting.
We were also witnessing and being educated on what was happening outside Australia. We had the blakfullas who worked on the docks, and when other People of Colour came to the cities on ships, they would kick back and have chill times together. This is where the relationship between the Aboriginal movement and the Marcus Garvey movement found a crossroads. We had staunch Aboriginal leaders and political leaders that were Garveyites here in Australia, which supported the notion of black liberation globally, and understood what Garvey was saying. This goes through all the way down the line up until now – we see this cross-cultural gathering and meeting of different Indigenous and People of Colour and oppressed people, from all over the world. From the PLO, to the IRA, to the Native American movements, to the Black Power movement, the Maori movement, the Pacific Island movement, the West Papua movement - learning from each other. The Freedom Ridesthat’s a prime example of seeing what is happening in other parts of the world and adapting that to us.
Of course, resistance is ongoing today. Can you speak a bit to what’s happening on your Country right now, with the Santos fracking development?
So Santos have been given the go ahead to drill almost 1000 gas wells on Gomeroi Country in the Pilliga, above the Great Artesian Basin, which is one of the biggest underground water aquifers in the Southern Hemisphere. That’s just the first stage. We’ve been through a process where the Native Title body has said no, after a restructure of the Native Title representatives. We had to get rid of a
Then after we said no, Santos took the Native Title body through the (Native Title) Tribunal. A bunch of us went to that, and after a couple of hearings, the judge gave findings in support of Santos, and there may have been a counter (action) to that as well.
I know mob have been going along to Country, and doing cultural heritage assessments, which will halt any kind of construction. I know there’s been a staunch union presence and support for Gomeroi mob against Santos. That’s not going to stop the decision. But hopefully having a huge presence and numbers can add to some sort of threatening presence that changes their mind and decision for wanting to destroy Country.
Be aware of what’s happening, and support Gomeroi people with their decisions, whether it’s occupying Country, or donating to Gomeroi people, to continue being on Country, to inform mob on Country that this is what’s happening if there’s another vote, we need your support.
There’s been a couple of groups that have given a bunch of cash to us, so we can go on Country, and literally go door to door and get the support of Gomeroi fellas. Especially for our cultural heritage, you actually need to go back on Country and talk to a whole bunch of people. That takes resources to do. So we’ve had a couple of trips back home, which is amazing. We probably need a supported campaign, rather than individual campaigners.
But the downfall for me, when it comes to greenie groups, is many come from a paternalistic point of view, thinking blakfullas can’t do this. There’s a lot of white people who get jobs in environmental movements to protect black fellas, where they may know next to nothing about the Country and the people. I’d love to see more blakfullas
employed by these groups - outside of SEED, or mob-run groups.
I think this is where the lines change in regards to the responsibility of blackfullas and greenies when fighting for country. Greenies, their responsibility isn’t to the majority of people within those communities affected by a whole gamut of issues, from racism, to incarceration, to police brutality. These are the hats that we wear when we leave our houses, anywhere in this country. When we’re occupying and advocating we talk from these places, because we know that at any moment our family members could be affected by these exact things. So this is why our movement and struggle goes beyond a movement that is shaped just to fight against the extractive industry. We fight on many different fronts. We might not be an organisation or a well oiled machine, but we get the job done, and we defend our communities and our Country and our people. And often it goes unrecognised. I’ve worked with many solid, deadly whitefellas - but they’ll never understand what we go through as blakfullas; this is our life, and the lives of the people who came before us, that fought from 1770. Our mob are tired of this.
One thing that it has done is spurred a lot of our mob on to fight against the push of assimilation. There’s a lot of mob out here now advocating against [the Voice], which is deadly. There’s a whole lot of groups that are calling for Treaty, or reparations, and have been doing that for over 40 years. They’re sick and tired of Government approved or appointed positions that don’t do much to harness true self-determination and justice, and freedom for our people. The ones who do advocate for them, you hardly hear them.
The Voice won’t really have the power to advocate. Based on the whim of the Prime Minister of the day, people could be sacked and changed to a bunch of people who see eye-to-eye with the Government, who will toe the line. This is what it is. We’ve had advisory
bodies for decades, and no-one listened to them. Every year there’s a Closing the Gap report released, and it seems we’re getting further and further away from that - it seems they’re not listening. The process has been unfair to a lot of progressive mob, where they’ve gone to the point of not allowing certain parts of our community, like respected activists and elders, access to these meetings. Which they’ve come out and said publicly as well.
So, there’s a whole lot of contradictions in what they’ve said and done that should be red flags for everybody.
Is there any mechanism in which it can provide protection for Country?
No, definitely not. The Albanese Government is very supportive of all these new gas projects that are happening. I asked Megan Davis, “is the advisory body in support of what the PM has said, or do they oppose the Narrabri gas project?” And they really couldn’t answer that. Then again, we’ve got to ask ourselves, has any Government given us true and meaningful change? Anything we have, we’ve fought for. Sadly, that continues to happen to this day. We’ll continue to fight for and die for, until we have adequate justice and freedom.
If you think about your vision for the future of Country, what does that look like to you?
Healing on Country, healing with Country. Stopping the destruction of Country – from mining, to minimising the damage of farming. Give that land back. Occupying Country, not just for the sake of living on it, but practising language and culture, and all these other things.
Ceremony, and re-lighting that fire for Country, and for ourselves. That’s a part of that healing. Having the freedom to visit Country, while it’s there. And if it’s not there, having the tools and cultural understanding to bring it back – to carve those trees out with coolamons and canoes, and other things we need to live and breathe with Country.
At the end of the day, if we don’t resist and continue to occupy, and re-speak our languages, and ceremonies, and be seen within this colony, then they get a continent for free. First, their intent was to kill us off and breed us out with eugenics and the stolen generation. Then, their intent was to put us “out of sight, out of mind” on the reserves, on the missions. But they failed on all those fronts. We’ve seen many strong blakfullas - male, female, queer and trans that are on the frontline defending our communities, whether that be against uranium, against deaths in custody, the destruction of country, to the protection of our young. Mob on all fronts, resisting, fighting, and making noise. And just, Vote No.
Frontier Wars Podcast by Boe Spearim Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) Black People’s Union –linktr.ee/blackpeoplesunion
“Gamil Means No” –@GamilaraayNextGeneration
To hear the extended interview with Boe as a podcast, go to foe.org.au/cr146.
An Interview with Mr Wilson Jabarda - Chair of Nurrdalinji Aboriginal Corporation. Mr Wilson passed away suddenly on August 29, just after this interview was finished. He is referred to by his cultural name in this interview. www.nurrdalinji.org.au/passing_of_our_chairman_mr_wilson
My name is Mr Wilson Jabarda. I’m a traditional owner and a Jungai (lawman) guy. Here on West Birini, I’m a GudanjiWambaya man in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Beetaloo Basin. This is my grandfather’s country, my mother’s father – so I am Jungai for this country. I’m not alone for this country, for my grandfather Junga. I’m like a policeman, I have to look after this country.
My heart is my country, is in my country here. And I must preserve everything here. I must look after it. I must obey my law. I’ve been through cultural ceremony. We accept the responsibilities that must take place here on Country as a jungai. The responsibilities must come from me, to look after my Country. I must hand that down to my son, when time for them to come to look after Country. Country is important, Country is life, Country is connection
Nurrdalinji represents nine of 11 determination areas within the Beetaloo Basin area. Nurrdalinji is an Alawa word meaning “mixed tribe”. So there’s not one tribe in this – literally, there is a mixed tribe. We have over nearly 60 members at the present moment of Nurrdalinji. Nurrdalinji was set up because we weren’t being heard. We were not given information about what’s happening on Country. We were worried about what’s happening on Country, particularly fracking.
We’re concerned that families are being intentionally divided by companies. We are not and have never been properly consulted about fracking plans. We also want the NLC [Northern Land Council] to do its job properly, give us the advice and
information we need to make necessary decisions and represent our wishes. The government is doing the wrong thing backing fracking on our country. You know, it will impact our sacred sites, many of which is connected to water, it will poison our water, our animals, and upset our songlines that run across our country. These things were passed down for us to look after! Our water, our aquifer, once this gets damaged up there, down here is damaged as well. So it’s everybody’s concern, everybody’s fight to stop and protect our water.
I’m so happy that Nurrdalinji was established. Now, we are like a thorn at their side. And we will always be a thorn to their side. Poking them. Making them know that hey, we’re not gone. We’re not forgotten, we’re the traditional owners of Beetaloo Basin and we’re still here, and we want our voices heard. This is our Country.
What impacts have you noticed on Country from fracking and climate change?
I have to see the changes every day, the grass, the heat, the changes that’s going on in Country now. I mean, where I am now, there’s water running from the hoses, I’ve got plenty of birds. But I just drive up the road there where an old creek is – there’s nothing. There’s no life there. There’s a lot of changes that’s going on here on Country, but you need to be on Country, you need to see firsthand experience of what’s happening on Country. But we have a lot of land councils or gas companies living out in towns making our decisions on what should happen on our Country. That is very frightening. Why should other people make decisions for us on Country? But that is what the Land Council is doing.
The whole of this fracking that’s on Country at the moment is scaring and
polluting our country, our animals. Our water. I didn’t used to have to go far. Now it’s like you would just drive all day now trying to find a place where water might be soaked. And there’s hardly any animals around this country anymore.
Fracking is not our story. We don’t want to be going 10, 20 years down the track and learn my kids about fracking! Country is our story, ancestors, sacred sites, songlines, dreaming.
Have the traditional owners ever given free, full, and prior consent to gas exploration and production?
In the beginning, when they were asked to do exploration on Country, that’s when they’ve given that permission. “You just look, you come back, you tell them what you find. We’ll go on from there”. But Aboriginal people didn’t actually know properly what they were agreeing to for the exploration stage. The gas company said, “We’re going to look at that Country, we’re not going to touch anything. But if we do find something we’ll come back”. We believe back then, when they signed that agreement, that was a hook line and sinker to the production stage. Because there wasn’t one time where these gas
companies came back - “hey, okay, we found gas there, now we come back and talk to you fellas, so we’ll do this…” None of that happened.
The gas companies only tell the elders the good side. “You are gonna get these royalties and benefits. You’re gonna get jobs out in your community. You’re gonna get this, you’re gonna get that.”
A traditional owner should be with these gas companies at all times. Watching. Telling them “hey, you can’t go over there. There’s something over there. That belong to Aboriginal people over there. That’s sacred sites around the area there. There’s a story over there. There’s a campsite that’s been there for a long time. No, you can’t go there.”
The only time we have a veto is at the exploration stage. No more after that. No more rights.
How did the Northern Land Council (NLC) come to represent treasured traditional owners?
When NLC first set up, the old people were on NLC and had it running. Everybody knew where their Country was. That was back then. Today, people at NLC working who just come out of
college, who don’t know nothing about nothing. And I’ve heard that from a few old people. I’ve heard from a lot of friends and families as well. They’re just not listening to traditional owners anymore. They have a PBC, Prescribed Body Corporate, made up from executive members of the NLC. These people are the ones making decisions for traditional owners on Country. Now Nurrdalinji has tried to say and argue with them, hey, we want to have our own PBC so that we can make decisions for what happens on our Country. NLC threatened us with taking us to the tribunal, to court again, because they want to run the Country. They want to make decisions for Aboriginal people on Country. They think they know what’s best. I mean, I’ve just had a house built out here – my friend, you should come and have a look at it. I call it a cheap container. The NLC is spending so much money on community out here that has nobody living on them. The NLC makes decisions for you. They sort your house out - they want it the way they want, not you. Nobody comes here to talk to you – how do you want your house to design your own house, so in the heat it can be cool? They think they’re doing
Members of Nurrdalinji corporation visiting Santos gas well on Tanumbirini (supplied Nurrdalinji)
something for you, making your life better - but they’re not.
Now, all we’re trying to tell NLC: ask traditional owners. Work with us! We do not want fracking. Help us to protect our Country! Help us to make the right decisions.
You’ve defeated one company before, the Origin Energy proposal, with campaign pressure. Now, Tamboran has bought up rights to develop Beetaloo. So, moving forward, what tactics are available to Nurrdalinji?
We believe just being united, standing up strong. And lobbying, and speaking to these people face to face. And making sure that our traditional owners know the full extent of what hydraulic fracturing is really all about. Nurrdalinji take our traditional owners out on Country and show them the gas that’s flaring out of the ground, out of these big chimneys. The look on their face… it’s something you don’t want to see. The hurt in their heart, in their soul of what is happening on Country.
We do need help. We need support from a range of corporations to come in and join Nurrdalinji, join the traditional owners of the Beetaloo Basin. We need to hit where the heart is. Stop supplying these people with money. And listen, listen to the Aboriginal people. Because our Country, we must care for it. We have nowhere to go. If our water is damaged? We can’t reverse the cycle. We must say no to fracking because we cannot take the risk of our water being poisoned, contaminated. Without water, there is no life. The gas company and the Northern Territory Government, they must know that these traditional owners from within the Beetaloo Basin will not stop until we are being heard, until they know that this Country is not for sale. This is our country, we have a right to protect it. We have a right to fight for it. Just like any other country going to war to fight for country. We are just the same. Except we are Aboriginal people or First Nation people of this country demanding a stop to what’s going on. We would love everyone to come out to stand with us. Everyone who opposes fracking.
How have pastoralists come on board with you as allies? Given historically that pastoralists have always been at the forefront of destructive extractivism and genocide of your lands and people?
The pastoralists have been so good with traditional owners, because they do care for Country. They do care about their work, their cattle, and how it won’t work with the fracking mob. Now, what’s been happening out there, these people have been spraying these contaminated water out on the roads just to keep the dust down, out in the paddocks where the birds are, poisoning our birds. And then the sad thing is nobody’s taking responsibility for it. So pastoralists are working with TOs now standing up together to say no. To say no, pastoralists do have rights, TOs do have rights, we have a right to protect our Country, we have a right to stand together. The pastoralists have been really welcoming the traditional owners on Country, so that we may share this country together. So we may fight for this country together. Because at the end of the day, this is where we live. This is where our future is. We
Gas well flare up. Credit: Nurrdalinji Aboriginal Corporationmust think about the next generation. Our people, our kids. So we must do what is right for them. It was given to us by our old fellas. Now we pass that on to the next generation.
What do you wish to see for the future on your country? And what models of sustainable care for country can your people show the world?
Well, the end of the story is that we don’t want no fracking.
At the moment there are many of my people are living in crowded houses. The government is spending so much money on gas companies. Why not put it towards the community? So that my people can have better housing, better lights, solar power, good roads out to the community?
There’s a ranger programme here. Let’s get that up and started so that these rangers could go around, look at our sacred sites, keep an eye on our sacred sites, keep an eye on the water and just observe, observing the country itself. Making sure that everything is okay. We get so many tourists a year. They come because it’s pristine. But once fracking destroys everything, there’s gonna be nothing! And what is the Territory government gonna do then?
Do you think that the voice to parliament will provide any utility for traditional owners to protect country?
I want to give you my true feeling for this voice. Now what I want to know, will this voice have room in there to solve the crisis that’s happening in the Northern Territory for my people?
The homelessness, the overcrowding in houses? I think about what is happening now on Country. Why can’t we fix the problems here now, like the homelessness, the youth crime in Alice Springs, the alcohol restrictions, the domestic violence, just to name a few? Why can’t we accept these problems here first, before jumping towards a voice? Or, will the voice have time and
money to spend on these issues that we have at the present moment? Will this voice cover all that? Or should we just leave the voice on pause for a while and fix the problems here in the Northern Territory at present? And prioritise them.
Will the Voice help the fight against Beetaloo?
You know, some say yes. It’s going to be a barrier to break down the gap, close the gap. How can we do that? How do we know that? When, like I said, there’s problems that need to be prioritised here in the Northern Territory, that need to be dealt with.
What’s the final message you’d like to close with?
Firstly, to the Northern Territory, government, and Natasha Fyles – be a true blue Aussie, and come to the Beetaloo Basin. The Chief Minister should come to the Beetaloo Basin, meet with us, traditional owners here, let her see firsthand what is taking place on Country. Let her hear firsthand what my people want.
The second thing we want is for the Northern Land Council to do its job properly, to represent the native titles of people of the Northern Territory, the traditional owners of this Country. We want that Northern Land Council to stand behind us, to help us to fight
fracking, to help us keep in our heads the knowledge, the stories, of what’s been passed down from our elders to us now. And what we’re going to pass on to our children and our next generation. And the last thing we want, we would love the fracking mob just to leave our country, leave us alone.
I speak this from the heart, and experiences living on Country, and seeing the daily changes of what’s going on. Listen to us. Listen to our voice. Listen to what we need. Because our water, our country, our song line, and our sacred sites are all very crucial to us, are so important to us, that we must cherish it and look after it with our life. So that we must pass that on to the next generation. First Nation people must carry on and must live the way we’ve lived all these years. We will stand and fight against fracking no matter what. It is our country. We have a right to protect it. Thank you.
www.nurrdalinji.org.au
Donate: www.paypal.me/JohnnyWilsonSnr
Read about the impacts on drinking water: www.foe.org.au/northern_territory_ drinking_water_report_2023
To hear the extended interview with Mr Wilson as a podcast, go to foe.org.au/cr146.
Interview with Kado
MuirTell us about your Country, and the colonial history of extractivism there?
My particular Country is out in the three deserts – The Great Victoria Desert, Gibson Desert, and the Little Sandy Desert. That’s the traditional homelands, but my elders, just before the atomic bomb test, walked out of the desert into the pastoral countries, and settled in the northern goldfields regions of Western Australia. We still hold our rights and interests in the desert country, but we’ve also, over a couple of generations, established ourselves in the Goldfields region as well. A lot of the desert peoples, when they moved into different centres, brought or retained a lot of the old ways, the old customs and laws.
The colonial impacts on the Goldfields region is different to other parts of Australia. Elsewhere, the original colonial
impacts and the frontier was built on the expansion of pastoralism, which resulted in very intense and traumatic conflicts between the Aboriginal peoples and the pastoralists. Most of the Goldfields region was established by prospecting for gold, and then mining. Gold was discovered in Coolgardie in the 1890s; around this area was possibly the last frontier of the British Empire. So the impacts were geographically retained or limited in the initial stage, but also much, much higher. Along the coastline, the original impacts were from the whaling and sealing industry, and the press-ganging and kidnapping of women, and men into servitude on whaling and sealing ships. The first transgressions of the empire into our territories and this goldfield region were essentially explorers. A chap called Hunt came out and sunk a
series of [water] wells. The thing in this part of the world is a very, very limited water supply.
Extractivism is a measure of, let’s say units or volume, that you extract from the environment. Down here in the Great Western Woodlands and the country of Ngadju and Kalamaia people, and others, the groundwater is hyper-saline – it’s 10 times saltier than the ocean. The Ngadjal people there actually had to modify trees to become vessels and containers for water. So they basically, on a young tree, would place a rock, and as the tree grew, each growth spurt they’ll come back and place a larger rock in there. The tree grew into a container. They maintained a lot of these trees throughout the Great Western woodlands.
So the only water they had access to these trees, and gnamma holes and soaks at the base of granite rocks –water that runs off the granite into the clay and stays under the sand, or forming in the gnamma holes in the actual granite itself. So across the various parts of the woodlands, and some of the heath country between Koolgarlie and Southern Cross, are numerous outcrops of granites, which were basically the traditional sources of water. Then also the extraction of water from the tree roots, and especially up towards the eastern side up towards the Nullarbor, there’s historic written accounts by European explorers talking about piles of mallee roots at the camps. I think the Mirning and Ngadju people basically extracted water.
So in the natural accounting formula, access to water is the number one priority. Once the explorers sunk these wells, it opened up territory that allowed for people, men with horses, to travel.
Prior to that the range of a horse is probably 30-40 miles without water, and then it becomes difficult and dangerous
to actually travel without water. So what they would do is follow the traditional water points of the local Aboriginal people, watch for the smoke signals, the evidence of people’s livelihoods. In that measure of the units, or the volume that you extract, a family of Aboriginal people living in this environment would survive on, let’s say, 10 litres of water over a week, or something like that, as they move between places. The advent of explorers, they came in with the camels or horsesthey’d need hundreds of them.
So did this lead to significant conflict around these granites and around the culturally modified trees?
Well, the culturally modified trees would have been visible to the explorers. But the granites… there’s probably unknown deaths and accounts, so there’s only a few that trickled through in the records. Granite Creek, for instance, which is just out of Leonora, which is a major waterpoint you see in the historic records, is easily 100 Aboriginal people living around Granite Creek in the records. You know, police filing reports on the observations on movements of Aboriginal people. Within 10-15 years of settlement in this region, you’re only talking about two or three people – and so the question is what happened to everyone else? And there’s no accounts of it…
Is that because of omission, deliberate destruction of records, or they just didn’t bother?
Omission. Because of the settlement in this region. Here, the imperative was following gold. Once there was initial infrastructure, the building, the exploration, and naming of places by explorers, the construction of the water points allowed mining.
With the discovery of gold, Coolgardie became a flashpoint. This was the largest discovery of gold since the Victorian and Californian gold rushes. So the numbers to understand is – Day Zero, you might have had 50 to 100 Aboriginal people living in an area of land that was probably 100-200 square kilometres. And that’s what is sustainably supported. Overnight, it went from zero white men to 50,000 in the space of three months. So there was absolute devastation. The modern day analogy would be West Papua and Tibet. Well, that’s the context of extractivism – is looking at the collusion between capital and governance, and then the development of infrastructure that then supports it. You know, it’s Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, which basically talks about the mobilisation of people, construction of infrastructure, the elements of wealth.
Here you see thinking of water points, identification of access routes, and then the gradual construction of additional infrastructure. Here in the Goldfields, there’s no potable water of scale, the original sector was around building massive condensation plants, extracting water from salt lakes?. That then led to two major pieces of infrastructure being brought into the Goldfields region to sustain the mining industry – the railway, which followed a lot of the traditional water sources, and then the construction of the Goldfields water pipeline, which is probably the largest project of its kind in the world at the time, creating a river that’s flowing inland that’s been flowing now for 110 years.
What is happening at the moment, is the upgrading of the community telecommunications, – we’ve probably got better internet and mobile phone access out here than people living in cities –, and the sealing of the highways. There’s a lot of discussion about the sealing of the Great Outback Highway. It’s about mining extraction & national security.. BHP has just taken over a company called Oz Minerals, and they’re basically looking at developing a major copper mine in Ngaanyatjarra Lands, what they call the West Musgraves project. This is clearly a case study on the connection between upgrading the roads and extractivism.
The [colonial] steps were discover, documentation, destabilisation of population, massacres and murders that are not accounted for. The survivors sort of start congregating around the town for security, you get witnesses around towns. The next step is they’re placing them into settlements and missions, or relocating them entirely from country. So that all happened inside the frontier.
Green Capitalism is pushing tech fixes for the climate destruction caused by coloniser capitalism. With the push for Transition and Rare Earth minerals to continue consumer consumption, where do you feel Aboriginal Land and respect for country will get a look in? What needs to happen specifically – both legally, and from a movement perspective – to confront the plunder that mining for transition minerals will be bulldozing over Country? WA and Federal Labor are also pushing to fast track development applications for “critical minerals” – what impacts will this have on Country?
Is there any way of stopping this?
You got to follow the money trail initially. I think the environmental movement can do a lot more work on holding the agents’ capital to account. There’s an example of renewable energy – somebody was saying, “well, a lot of the investment comes out of Europe
for that, and, you know, the Europeans don’t understand cultural heritage obligations.” But I flipped that around. I think it’s more the case that the Australians are not explaining [cultural heritage] once when they gain money.
I think Europeans are quite well versed on the importance of cultural heritage, and protection of cultural heritage - but the Australians are making convenient omissions in their pitch.
So my mob have got what we call a sustainability framework, identifying what our needs are, linking that back to UNSDG [United Nations Sustainable Development Goal] interpretation, and using that as a reference point to negotiate and measure the development activities. As an example, without mentioning names, you know, there’s petroleum exploration activity going on in some parts of the country out here. The discussion we’re having is, we actually want to preserve the environmental integrity of our Country. There is opportunity there to generate revenue from simple environmental projects, as opposed to going into oil capitalism.
The mining sector is ramping up. So the region’s very, very busy at the moment with nickel, rare earths, copper and lithium. There’s a massive new road constructed into a mine site just down the track here, just south of Laverton. There’s this thing that’s happening now with the alignment between the extractive sector and the industrial military complex. So we as traditional owners have always been up against national interest – our resistance to a project is measured
against the interests of the nation. That’s now escalated to national security, so it becomes a harder task.
I think Australia as a whole is grappling to come to terms with this stuff. The role of our military is coming under a lot of scrutiny with how they performed in Afghanistan, and places like that. So they’re starting to make a dent on the Australian national conscience.
Part of the privilege of being in a western society is we can point to access and benefit sharing, and the guilt complex, to be able to try and balance, or close the gap. You can’t make those same appeals in non-western societies. But for activism, identifying greenwashing, and stuff like that, is actually important work. Because of greenwashing there’s encroachment of the competing interests, still wanting to do business the old way. You know, thorough return on investment capital, cutting corners and the transparency and accountability.
Given all this, does the Voice offer any meaningful change?
Putting aside questions around sovereignty and jurisdiction and governance and all those sorts of things - you know, the discussion around sovereignty is one of the unfinished business and it’s not going to get resolved with the voice. But the voice is essentially a simple process: if you’re going to pass laws relating to, or that has an impact on, Australian and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, then maybe you should ask them. That’s
Photo credit: Nicduncan.comthe model - ask first needs to be built into every interaction, whether it’s constructing a mine, or passing a law. The other side of it though, is the questions around undue influence. Which is just ludicrous, because there are parties out there wielding massive undue influence on the political institutions, which are industrial lobby groups. And that all goes unnoticed, unseen, and basically people take it for granted. So this is the difference. There is a body of interests that can take down a government. And they’ve done that repeatedly, whether it’s Kevin Rudd, or Gough Whitlam, or whoever – they can take down a government if the government is opposed to their interests. I think in the context of this interview around extractivism, there is a lobby group out there that actually controls and holds Government in Australia, particularly Western Australia, as a
captured state, and they get their way. So there’s those guys, and then there’s the institution of the Voice where everyone’s getting hysterical. And the Voice is not going to have any impact on Government, apart from saying “you can do that better, or don’t do this”. Kado Muir is a Ngalia man who has been working for many years protecting country from the ravages of mining colonialism. Kado is a cross-cultural intellect, Indigenous futurist, strategic thinker and community based researcher. He is trained as an Anthropologist with over 30 years’ experience, working in Aboriginal Language, Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Management, Traditional Ecological Knowledge and defining Customary Wealth in First Nations, post native title. kadomuir.com.au
To hear the extended interview with Kado as a podcast, go to foe.org.au/cr146.
https://www.reclaimthevoid.com.au/ was born from Ngalia elders in Leonora, Western Australia, expressing their pain and grief at ‘those gaping mining holes left all over our country’. The vision is to cover a mining pit with a large-scale ‘dot’ artwork made up of thousands of handmade circular rag-rugs woven from discarded fabric. Woven by people from all walks of life and backgrounds, the rugs will be joined together into a giant textile artwork which shows an overall pattern that carries the story of the Tjukurrpa of the country on which the pit is situated. Reclaim the Void is a bold cross-cultural project. It seeks to raise awareness of the story of country and its importance in Aboriginal culture in both its physical and spiritual dimensions. We invite you to join us.
Amy McQuire
The mainstream media has so often been violent towards Aboriginal people. It not only expresses its violence through representation, but through silence, and in this country, the most silenced voices are often that of Aboriginal women. Aboriginal women are often accused of being silent on issues of violence particularly, while at the same time, being burdened with the task of breaking a supposed ‘silence’. But it is not that Aboriginal women haven’t been silent: it’s just that they have spoken in a language that Australia refuses to hear. They speak a truth that is fundamentally threatening to the very origin of this settler-colony. Through their presence, Aboriginal women resist the very aspiration of this colony: that of Indigenous disappearance. Over the past few years, I’ve been working as a journalist specifically on cases of Aboriginal women who have been deemed ‘missing’ or murdered. It is a crisis that is still silenced, because the parameters in which the mainstream media, courts and governments speak of it is too limited; always orientated towards interpersonal violence, whose solutions are always carceral. While sitting in on inquests in Queensland, my home state, into the cases of Aboriginal women, I realised that the word ‘missing’ was silencing in itself. The word ‘missing’ came with several connotations: one, that the women were just ‘missing’ and would one day re-appear, that the police were doing everything they could, and would not tire until they were found, and the most heinous: that the women had been responsible for going ‘missing’ in the first place. Because of the ambiguity associated with the ‘missing’, there was an obscuring of any potential perpetrator, any suggestion that the women had been targeted for violence.
So I turned to a different framework, gifted by the warriorship of activist Charandev Singh, who had begun thinking of this crisis not as cases
of ‘missing’ and ‘murdered’, but of ‘enforced disappearance’. It was through ‘disappearance’ that I was able to see what was happening more clearly. It was a tool to break through the silence, and uncover the multiple forms of violence, for which there was not just one perpetrator, but many. In Latin America, a new term was coined to recognise the widespread practice of disappearing tens of thousands of political dissidents and activists from the 1970s onwards. The term was ‘enforced disappearance,’ a practice that involved the active disappearing of thousands of people in a move to wipe what governments deemed an affront from these societies. The use of disappearing was deliberate, as Argentina’s first commander in chief Jorge Rafael Videla said in 1979: “They are not alive or dead. They are disappeared”. Jacqueline Adams describes these ‘enforced disappearances’ as “usually involving the detaining or abducting of the dissident, holding them, torturing them, killing them and disposing them in places they are unlikely to be found. These spaces included “unmarked holes, old mines, rivers and the ocean”, but also the spaces of disappearance that are set up to ensure they are never found: the apathy of the police services, the refusals of the courts, the silence of the media, and the acquiescence of the state and in turn, society. To be disappeared means there are many actors involved beyond the original perpetrators. The sheer horror of the ‘disappearing’ is such that it is difficult to grasp, because when a person is disappeared, it is not only that person who becomes a victim, but those who have been harmed by the disappearance.
‘Enforced Disappearance’ is not a distinctly Latin American phenomenon. It has been reported across the world – in Asia, Africa and Europe, and in our own region – West Papua. It is a global issue. It is a definition that has changed to incorporate other forms of disappearance, and in Australia, founded on the inevitability of disappearance, I see how it is operating. In the days of the frontier, Aboriginal men, women and children were forcibly disappeared from their homelands, either through direct acts of violence, like widespread massacres used to clear the land for settlers, and then through the violence of the protection acts, which forcibly moved Aboriginal people from their country, into reserves and missions, where they were separated from white space into spaces that were likened to jails. These acts of disappearance continued through the incarceration system, where Aboriginal people have been contained
Credit: IG@CharandevSingh
and disappeared into watchhouses and prisons, and where Aboriginal children are disappeared into the ‘child protection’ system.
‘Disappearance’ works through denying Aboriginal people the right to live on their country, and not just live on it, but to care for it. There is an ongoing genocide in the extractive industries where we must continue to fight for the protection of our country and sacred sites, the holders of story, law and ancestors, which is intrinsically tied to the wellbeing of our bodies. In 2020, two sacred rock shelters at Juukan Gorge, in Western Australia, were destroyed legally by mining company Rio Tinto – an act of cultural genocide that led to short-lived outrage, and a change to heritage laws, only to have those laws wound back after a political stoush based on the concerns of pastoralists, and the fear drummed up by the coming Referendum on the Voice to Parliament. By destroying sacred sites, and denying access to country, the state is working towards always disappearing us, a continuing process that does not end, but instead is translated in different modes and structures. As Aboriginal women, our bodies are tied to this land. The destruction of the land is not separate from the continual targeting of our bodies for violence. As I worked on the cases of Aboriginal women who had been disappeared in Queensland, I realised that Aboriginal women were most vulnerable when they were away from their country. While the state views our communities as havens of abuse and violence, all of the women whose cases I worked on had been disappeared away from their country. They had disappeared after being criminalised, and after being released from incarceration. The photographs on their ‘missing persons’ alerts
were of them as criminalised persons: they were all pictured by their mugshots. It was in these spaces that they became vulnerable to white perpetrators and because they were both racialized and criminalised, the police failed utterly in searching for them and investigating their cases. While they were alive, they were acutely visible to police for criminalisation, but when they were ‘disappeared’, they were seen as unworthy victims, unworthy of searching for, and unworthy of care. In all these stories, it was the families who rose up to search for them, and to fight for their worth, and their right to return home to country, so their spirits could rest. The denial of our right to live freely on country is tied to the ways our bodies are targeted for violence.
Australia currently operates under a framework of disappearance: one in which there are the direct perpetrators of violence, but then a continuing violence of those who are complicit in maintaining these acts of disappearance: the police, for failing to search and sanction, leading to environments of impunity, the state, through its callous apathy and refusal to act which suggests acquiescence, and the media, for its silencing and violent acts of representation, which ultimately result in the ‘second disappearances’ of the bodies. It is only through acts of presencing, and resistance shown by families, that we are able to not only see the violence but can define a form of black justice: one grounded in love, care and black power.
Amy McQuire is a Darumbal and South Sea Islander journalist and writer currently employed at QUT as a postdoctoral fellow. She has an investigative podcast Curtain which looks at the wrongful conviction of Aboriginal man Kevin Henry as well as the wider violence of the ‘justice’ system.
The family of Ms Benard reflecting in Gimuy (Cairns) during the Coronial Inquest. Credit: IG@CharandevSIngh
An Interview with Yaraan Couzens-Bundle
Tell us about you, your mob, and the land and sea country for which you speak.
My name is Yaraan Couzens Bundle and I’m a proud Gunditjmara, Yuin, and Bidjara woman. I’m a whale dreaming custodian on my Gunditjmara bloodline. My old people have been here since time immemorial. We have this concept called deep time, and we’ve been here since the first creation. I’m sitting on Koornkopanoot-speaking country in Warrnambool. I’m the proud founder of SOPEC, Southern Ocean Protection Embassy and Collective.
My family and bloodline are directly connected to Koontapul, our word for Southern Right Whale. She is the oldest storyteller in the world and connected to the oldest creation stories that come from our Country.
The country makes up the shape of the Koontabpul’s body - the story on country - so that the head of the whale down through the blowhole, and the body, and the fins, and the tail, and the whole body of Koontapul is what is shown along our Country. It extends from our spirit into our physical and spiritual body. And all that belongs to our matrilineal country. The purpose of having those kinships is to maintain the sacred balance of our place of belonging on Country. That means to be a custodian of these sacred stories is absolutely phenomenal in my eyes. Every day, I am in such deep gratitude of how clever my old people were, and are, and how we are built, were born to carry this on.
It is a great honour and privilege to be able to be a custodian of the whale dreaming the Koontapul yakeenij, and that’s our word for whale dreaming, and all the other kinship relationships that we have to our country. The relationship was always reciprocal – we’ll never take
from Country without giving back to it. The sea sustained my people for aeons. We owe the bounty of our people and the rich amount of food and resources that we were able to have and maintain, and give back to that sea country. So that extends from the Koontapul yakeenij, on the Gunditjmara side. One of those jobs in particular is that the Koontapul, as part of our Women’s Business – they are our midwives, and we are theirs. It goes beyond just being a food source.
Another example of our connection to sea country is on my father’s side. So my mother’s side is Gunditjmara, and on my father’s side is Yuin from the south coast of so-called New South Wales. Our connection was with the dolphins. My uncles and my grandfathers used to call in the dolphins and they would have a kinship, family connection of hunting together so the dolphins would herd the fish in for the fishermen and every one would get a feed.
Another really sacred connection is the story of the orcas, the killer whales. My grandfathers and my uncles used to hunt the baleen whales with the orca family. They would go out to sea on the signal of the orca coming up to the headland breaching out of the water, singing out to the old fellas there. The old fellas would jump in their long boats, their canoes, and go out and follow these orcas. The orcas would do the herding of the baleen whales in close enough for the whalers to get them. Then there was the law of the tongue, which the orcas had to have the first feed and they would usually take the tongue and sometimes the liver. Then the rest would be given to the humans, and [the orcas] would swim with the boat and the whale carcass back into the bay. Then it would all happen again next
time when they were hunting whales. So that story is part of how the Eden whaling station and industry was built, and also how it was finished. A lot of people don’t know why it was finished, they just think the orcas passed on. One of the stories I got told was that the old people were doing ceremony with the orcas in a smaller, quieter bay. They were being spied on by the Ngamatitj, that’s our Gunditjmara word for whitefellas. And one of the whitefellas came up, and seeing that the grandmother and the orcas were still in the bay when the mob moved off, he rowed out in his rowboat, and he shot the grandmother and killed her. Then after that, there was no more orcas, and that relationship was gone, and the orcas left. The whale industry crashed after that in that area. So yeah, it just shows the greed of the Ngamatitj, and the continuation of that greed is the same greed and poison that we’re fighting on sea country today.
When colonialism started to impact your lands, what were the main waves of dispossession and violence?
Gunditjmara country and so called Victoria have their own invasion day. It wasn’t just Botany Bay, and Cook the murderer. It was also the Henty family, the mass murderers. They came up from Tasmania, and they landed in the Portland Bay in 1834. They’ve still got their plaques today, which on the anniversary of that invasion day, we go and cover in ochre and our handprints, and tell them that we’re still here. The same blood that they tried to destroy is the same blood flow flowing through us now. They tried to massacre all of us. One of the largest known recorded massacre sites in so called Victoria is the Convincing Ground.
Part of the story of my old people is that a war was started over a whale carcass. The mob came in to do ceremony and several clans gathered there, and others from all the way up into what we know as the Volcanic Plains area. And the whitefellas come in and tried to claim that whale, and ended up massacring men, women and children in the hundreds. My people were shot in cold blooded murder for homesteads to be established, and our villages destroyed and pushed into piles of rocks, and sheep farms and pastures established. That happened all over Gunditjmara country and up into Tjapwurrung country, which is where I also belong to.
If you look on the national massacre map, you’ll see that basically, our whole
country is covered in red dots. That includes our connection to our sacred Burnang (Dingo) - the apex predator on the land, and that interconnectedness to the water. To this day they can’t shoot us anymore, but they still shoot and kill the dingoes. The genocide is still happening to our people and our country at a really high rate.
Can you speak a bit to how this has impacted your women, particularly?
Just to speak to this subject briefly because it’s so emotional, the hurt is really raw. I think that it definitely needs to be mentioned that our old, clever women, the women I come from, they prepared seven generations ahead. So they knew what was happening in the
time of colonisation. They took that women’s business into their physical bodies and their spiritual bodies, but they also hid clues for us in the country, for the future generations to find. Because they knew of the violence that was being perpetrated on to all of us, and black women in particular. There’s a whole new generation of Gunditjmara youngbloods that are recognising their strength and the love and, and powerful gifts that our old people left us in our blood, and that it wasn’t just the intergenerational trauma. It was intergenerational love and connection for our country and our responsibilities, which it isn’t hard when you do it properly.
Poonoong Poonoong (Hopkins River) mouth on Gunditjmara Country Songline. Credit: Yaraan Couzens-Bundle
Why and how did you create SOPEC, the Southern Ocean Protection Embassy?
I’m a saltwater and a freshwater defender. Our freshwater is intrinsically connected and linked to the serpent, the Rainbow Serpent dreaming, and it’s very, very sacred. You know, water is all life, basically. So, I created the Southern Ocean Protection Embassy as a last stand for Sea Country. That collective is open to mob and anyone who wants to join and walk alongside us in our fight for Country. It was created in defence of the whale songline, and in fact, defence of our whole sea country. We’re reestablishing our place of belonging when it comes to cultural Law way. It’s a beautiful revival story as well –where those teachers aren’t always there to teach us in person, Country speaks and the sea country speaks very strongly to my blood, and it’s one of the deep connections that I have to Gunditjmara country and, and one of the oldest coastlines in the world. The saltwater and the freshwater, they’re their own living entities, they’re alive, they breathe – you know, the waves going in and out and the tides and the swells, that’s the ocean breathing. And it’s literally the blue lung of our planet. So when I learned about the seismic blasting and all the industrialization that they want to do to our sea country, I thought, ‘Hold on a minute, I need to do something about this, I need to make sure that the languages of the ocean are protected into the future.’ “They” being the gas companies, and the state and federal governments who get royalties from the gas companies (who don’t actually pay tax), and are there to make massive profits.
I’m a language defender as well. So I hold that very close to my heart –what languages are being saved, and how I’m learning to speak them again, and share them and teach them into community. And the vibrations of what those language words are saying, and the meaning of those; the frequencies from your heart centre, the vibrations of the sounds, they belong to country, and they’ve belonged to country for
thousands of years. This is our cultural heritage that needs to be treated with the utmost respect and protection, and be protected into the future.
These huge companies, international companies want to seismic blast 55,000 hectares of sea country. And it covers almost the most of the length of Gunditjmara sea country. There’s another one that wants to blast,only three kilometres offshore, off Port Fairy and Warrnambool and Portland area. And, again, that’s too close to our sacred burial Island, Deen Maar. These companies, they’re not welcome. The wind farms, to get their permanent infrastructure into the sea bed, they have to seismic blast to provide a picture of where this is going to go, in 45 metredeep blue whale feeding ground. From the little tiny zooplankton, all the way up to the largest creature in the ocean, the blue whale, and everything in between, is at risk of major damage, and destruction, extinction.
The seismic blasting has a direct devastating impact to all sonar animals in the ocean. What it does is they misnavigate. It can actually haemorrhage and destroy their whole hearing and it can make them really vulnerable to predators. And, you know, newborn and young whales, evading predators because they can’t hear their mum.
It’s been said that the mothers use the shallow bays for resting and protection. They whisper to their children when the predators are going past. They have this amazing oceanic language that a lot of the world is still discovering, but that my people have held for thousands of years. It’s taking away their home, their physical body and their languages. And it’s just mass ecocide.
Are there alternative solutions?
I fully believe there is a way forward for wind and wave power, even sun power. There’s other ways that we can avert the climate crisis, and find those solutions to move forward. An example of that is seaweed farming, providing more forests in the oceans. In fact, the whale’s job in the ocean is helping to provide more oxygen for the rest of the world.
NOPSEMA is supposedly a Commonwealth independent Statutory Body that oversees safety for oil and gas explorations and operations in waters claimed by the colony of Australia. Have they failed in their job?
NOPSEMA have failed the First Nations mob and the wider Australian community, because I believe they’re in league with these gas companies on a much higher level.
I believe that the community consult person for one of these companies used to work for NOPSEMA. That says more than a thousand words. Another example is they’ve just approved the TGS & Schlumberger Environmental Plan for the 55,000 hectares they want for seismic blasting. This company] is under investigation, because they’ve gotten called out for blasting in areas they weren’t fully approved for. That’s just so corrupt. Now they want to up the ante from 2D to 3D seismic testing; be approved for one part, and under investigation for the other part. I don’t think that investigation is finished. Their environmental plan is what we’re trying to challenge at the moment.
NOPSEMA are actually the greatest liars and thieves, because they’re saying that they can minimise the damage through their environmental plan - but their (approval of) environmental plans can’t possibly understand the full extent of what they’re damaging, because they don’t know. Not enough research has been done to the species in the Southern Ocean. And so if they don’t know about those species, how are they going to manage not making them extinct?
When they first came to our country, we found out about it through an organisation called the Otway Climate Emergency Action Network. They only originally initiated consultations with the fishing industry, they tried to bypass us completely. And we found out about it and said, “Hold on a minute, we’re the main relevant people that you need to be speaking to and consulting with.” But consulting is not consent.
We want to make clear that we say absolutely no to all of the proposals, every single last one of them.
You’ve also been part of other campaigns and fights, like the Djap Wurrung birthing trees, and a basalt quarry on Gunditjmara Country. As a blak woman, what did resistance look like for you?
The Djab Wurrung birthing trees…. that was really full on, being on the frontline - living on the frontline at camp with my older daughter who was a baby then. She’s now five, and she was almost one at the time. So I actually got the honour and privilege to be breastfeeding her in a sacred women’s site, and to be able to reestablish our permanent ceremony ground. We lost in that fight. My countrymen and countrywomen were criminalised for defending country. Some of them even got locked up over it.
One of those trees actually even unfortunately got cut down, the Directions Tree. So my daughter Yaani and I went and collected the seeds for that tree. We still have some of the seeds, we’re planning to have a big community gathering – one for mob and one for everyone – that we can go back to Djab Wurrung country and plant these seeds of this rare yellow box that was cut down. Rejuvenate and help heal some of the loss that we experienced there. Another Gunditjmara sister girl, came to stay and live at the camp with her children as well. Both her and I went up to the sacred mother mountain that overlooks this part of women’s country. It’s less than a few kilometres away from the birthing trees. We collected some sacred stones from that mother mountain, and we took them back to camp and we built ceremony ground, which still stands today.
I’m proud to say, after Vicpol and Dan Andrews government removed us and Major Road Projects removed all the people and all the connections, those allies that were supporting us were a global family. So once they were all removed from that place physically, the spiritual fight continued on for us who belong to that part of Country, and our bloodlines belong to Djab Wurrung country. That was a powerful stance that us women could basically say, ‘No way, we’re still here. And you actually haven’t removed us because we are embodied in that ceremony ground, that stone circle. Country is part of us, and we are part of country.’
So they actually didn’t win, you know, and we’re still continuing that fight to this day. We’re still trying to assert those birthrights to the state government and major roads projects about who we are, where we come from, and why us women, in particular, need to be listened to about the sacredness of our country – and what’s at stake if all of that is destroyed.
One of other fights that I was part of, was against the basalt quarry on the Hopkins river out near what’s known as Framlingham Aboriginal Mission. We have our own cemetery out there where my family have the Couzens burial plot, each family’s within their own little place there. So defending literally defending the bones of our old people against these greedy farmers that wanted to go from farming to basalt mining. That case went to VCAT [Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal]. And we recently lost in VCAT, and VCAT said that the quarry can go ahead with restrictions in the cultural heritage management plan. All I want to say to that, is that the cultural heritage legislation is perpetrating violence to our people. It wasn’t written by a cultural law person. It was written by whitefellas, so it was made to manage the destruction of our cultural heritage not to protect it. That’s what I believe and that there’s a lot for the whitefella law that needs to be accountable. It’s another way, another tool, they use to oppress us.
There will be more resistance from Gunditjmara custodians and family groups before they start blowing up –I think it’s the size of three MCGs they want to do. Where they want to do this is on the edge of the Hopkins River –around that part of Country we call Poonoong-Poornoong, and it’s one of our sacred songlines. The headwaters, the birthplace of that river, is actually up on Djab Wurrung country, and then flows down into Gunditjmara Country and comes out down into the Southern Ocean. So it’s a very sacred river and songline place for us.
There’s a whole cave system that my grandfather told me about. The last quarry, only a few kilometres from where they want to do this, is part of that cave network system that runs through there. Another special kinship fella we connect with is the bentwing bat, and they frequent these caves, and they only belong in this part of the country. These little micro bats. They live on a higher frequency, same as the whales.
They just don’t know what they’re destroying. It’s major damage, having these detrimental ripple effects that go not only through us and our physical bodies, but from the past into the younger generations as well.
So it’s really, really disgusting, actually, that we have to defend so many places, and so many sacred places when we have this amazing knowledge and technology today. But they still ignore our local knowledge that could prevent all of this.
How can settler-colonisers/greenies support you mob? What are the steps they need to take to de-colonise?
Recently, I had one of my ally friends offer me support as a single mom to help care for my kids while I’m fighting for country. They said, “you know, we can’t do it without you, sis”. And I really felt that, I was like, yes, solid. Thank you. I’ll take you up on that offer one day. I don’t think she understood exactly what she was saying, because it is one of our precious cultural values that we care for family – no one gets left behind. So I think by her offering that it was a really beautiful gesture, and I appreciated it so much.
On another level, we need them [allies] to basically amplify our voices and our stories, not culturally appropriate [the stories] for their own agenda, or their own way of fighting to protect whatever they want. I think they have to actually put their hearts in the fight like we do.
I think they can go a bit more beyond the surface and find out the local language and people and nations and connections, and educate themselves on the true history of this ancient land. You know, our cultural identity and what we stand for and why we’re saying, land rights and land rights now. Because our old people have been saying that for a long, long time.
I think another way is that campaigns cost money, in this day and age, unfortunately. And we need to be
supported through all their different resources and the reach that their connections have, in our fight for Country. Yeah, pay the rent literally. Yeah, and I just think they need to come and sit with the aunties because the aunties will just tell you straight out. I think we have every right to say, you know, pull up. And learn to listen and come with your heartbeat, not your ego.
Given all that’s been lost, with all that’s still thriving - how can you repair the damage to Country?
It’s a good question. I used to want to be a marine biologist and find out as much as I could about the blue lung of our planet. But I think some of the damage done is irreparable. And a lot of the damage can be healed without human interference. Nature knows exactly what to do.
But also, we sing it. You know, we sing it back to life. And no other mob can do that. We all have a place of belonging to the countries that we have custodial responsibilities for. Last year when the ceremony was happening, the whale ceremony that I was leading and participating in, other locals and other mob were saying ‘Wow, what a bumper whale season we have this this year, you know!’, and I was saying ‘Yeah, that’s because the song is strong again!’ We’re singing and there was more of our mob that joined in that ceremony that year. There were so many babies last year, and it was amazing.
The whales need to hear and reconnect with our song rather than this seismic blasting that’s pushing them away from these sacred places that their grandmother lines of their kin have come
to for thousands of years. I think that’s a huge way that we can honour that growth and healing again, singing it back to life. But also, there’s other little, or not little but different, ways that we could support that with proper sustainable ecotourism. And seaweed farming.
I think it would come in a few different ways. Like I’ve mentioned, just get out of our sacred sites.
I think education is a huge part of that restorative justice. I think that all of our knowledge systems, you know, what we have left, what colonisation hasn’t suppressed, hidden and destroyed – we should honour that knowledge as the oldest living culture in the world. Surely there’s so much wisdom for everyone
else to learn, and honour and mostly respect in how that could help heal the earth. We say Country is priceless, but maybe they could put their resources and energy into education and really supporting a black university level of sharing our knowledge systems.
I also just think if we keep having these yarns, and keep supporting each other, there’s always powerful magic in that. In the strength of who we are and the strength of our blood It’s not just about intergenerational trauma – it’s this intergenerational love. The love in our blood, and the power in our blood from our old people. Those gifts that we were born with, we don’t have to search for. There is enough, and I think if we all come together and utilise that strength magic will happen. There’s nothing in my eyes that can break that kind of powerful magic because they tried to kill us all but here we still stand, here we still are.
I have this message for all the governments and corporations - “we will keep coming. We will keep coming like the waves of the ocean.”
I just think, for our mob too – come and take your place! Everyone has a place of belonging.
And, nyaki, which is look or watch, and wangki, listen now. Use your senses into the future. I think there’s not enough people that are honouring their full capacity as human beings. Come with your tumtumpe, your heartbeat, and nyaki mangaki, use your senses.
The Darling River has always been called the Baaka by Barkindji people. Barkindji means ‘people of the river.’ The river has nourished and sustained Traditional Owners since time immemorial.
Millions of people rely on the river and the water being healthy, so the ecosystems that depend on it can thrive. But, they’re barely surviving. And less than six months since the last mass fish kill, the fish are still dying.
The Baaka begins on Ngemba (Ngiyaampa) Country between Bourke and Brewarrina. It flows south-west, through New South Wales where it joins up with the Murray River on Barkindji Country in Wentworth on the New South Wales and Victorian border. It flows through the Walgett, Brewarrina, Bourke, Louth, Tilpa, Wilcannia, Menindee, Pooncarrie and Wentworth.
The Darling Baaka, combined with the Murray and the connected rivers, creeks and streams, make up the Murray Darling Basin. Together, the river system is the largest in the country, and one of the greatest in the world. Covering more than one million square kilometers and 77 000 kms of river, the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) streams from Queensland, through New South Wales, ACT into Victoria and South Australia.
The Basin provides sustenance to millions of people, habitats and species.
The Baaka has experienced years of consistent devastation. Mass fish kills, blue green algae blooms and critical water shortages have all had dire impacts on the river. Traditional Owners have long blamed the problems on government mismanagement, including the over extraction of water for irrigation and farming.
Many farmers have benefited exponentially from the Baaka’s demise. Cotton is one industry that has flourished as the lifeblood of our people slowly dies.
Laws and regulations have been made by various governments over the decades in attempts to better regulate the MDB. Then Prime Minister, John Howard introduced the Water Act 2007 in that same year. Prior to the Act, decisions pertaining to the MDB were at the discretion of basin state governments. The Water Act saw power over the MDB handed to the Commonwealth government. This gives the federal water minister ultimate authority over decisions pertaining to the MDB.
In 2016, residents of Wilcannia took to the street with signs protesting their anger at the drying up of the river. Locals had police and council support to close the town’s bridge to vehicles. Traditional Owners blamed government mismanagement and over allocation of water to upstream irrigators for the reason no water was reaching the town in central west New South Wales.
Governments at all levels have tried to downplay the interference and have insisted drought is a natural occurrence. But Barkindji people and others along the Darling Baaka have witnessed the collapse of thriving ecosystems as orchestrated tragedy plagues the river system and the people who rely on its nutrients. The 2018 Royal Commission would also find government entitlements were to blame for the poor health of the river and the Basin.
In 2018 Barkindji people organised a second protest, outraged over the sickly river they blocked the bridge off again several times. Blue Green Algae blooms had infested the stagnant waters of what was once the home of life and abundance. Elders expressed their fears for the future generations as some believed the river would never flow properly again.
In 2020 the Wilcannia Bridge was the centrepoint of further demonstrations. Barkindji people and their supporters expressed opposition to water being placed on the stock market and made available to trade, when it hadn’t run freely through their community in over five years.
Traditional Owners call the Baaka their mother because she has sustained our people. The devastation has seen locals in a state of despair, suicide has impacted people along the river. Aboriginal and non Aboriginal people have all felt trauma that the broken river system has inflicted on people living along its banks. From protests, news stories, to rap songs, art, exhibitions and campaigns to engage allies, Barkindji people continue to fight for the Baaka.
The Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) was established in 2008. A Commonwealth Government agency created under the 2007 Water Act introduced by then Prime Minister, John Howard. It’s been the MDBA’s role to monitor the Basin, implement and enforce the Murray Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) whilst reporting back to the government, amongst other responsibilities. Due to years of devastation, the MDBP was developed to increase the water in the river and to improve the ecosystem’s poor health. A draft plan was released in 2010 in response to the 2000s drought, hoping to secure sustainable, long-term ecological health for the basin. The $13bn MDBP was legislated in 2012. Subsequently, the MDB was the subject of a national royal commission, established in January 2018, into the mismanagement of the river system. A final report was released in January 2019. The Royal Commission also found government entitlements had contributed to the river systems decline.
The MDBA report featured submissions from Traditional Owners who interacted with the Authority. Many say they were not given any free, prior and informed consent to plans, they were given little to no notice of opportunities to participate, they say consultations were selective, tribal lines were not respected throughout the
dialogues and many felt silenced, unheard or left out of talks about the plan.1
Page 490 of 756 features a submission from my uncle. He said the government had maps of the river developed that did not properly reflect tribal lines.
“On this map we Barkandji are not in the list that needs to be consulted, it only lists the groups to the north of us. In effect this map says we Barkandji are not the traditional people of the Barka, even though we have a determined Native Title claim over most of it.” Uncle Badger Bates said in his evidence to the Royal Commission.
“That means most of the Barkandji people along the Barka are not even represented by anyone, especially my people from Menindee up to Wilcannia and up to Bourke.” Uncle Badger said. A goal of 2750GL, later amended to 2075GL, was set as the amount of water to be left in the river each year to boost native flora, fauna and habitats. The goal was set to be reached by June 2024 as part of the MDBP. Conditions were applied to recovering water to reach the desired target, including ensuring no socio- economic harm is done to communities.
However, a report by the Productivity Commission was critical of the MDBA’s dual role as the body tasked with developing and implementing the MDBP, as well as regulating its success. The Productivity Commission went as far as to say the MDBA should be broken up, claiming it would save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.2
Less than a year out from the target date, Federal government data suggests the overall target has been “exceeded” but more water is still needed due to not all areas meeting their targets, where other areas target’s were exceeded.3 Federal Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek has recently announced an extension of three
years to original plans and allocated more money to the original $13 billion set aside in 2012.
The latest motion will see farmers offered premium prices to sell water licences to the government. Federal legislation will need to be amended, because water buybacks were prohibited under former plans (largely due to estimated costs for the buybacks hitting almost $11 billion).
All MDB states agreed to support the former plan. Not all agree on the new proposal. Since the MDBP agreement was finalised, federal and state governments in New South Wales and South Australia have transitioned from Liberal to Labor. More than a decade since the MDB Plan was released, the government is looking to reverse legislation on ‘water buybacks,’ that have been a sticking point for the past 11 years.
The state of Victoria isn’t on board with the new proposals, and say they’ve contributed more water than any other state toward the target.
The federal government has expressed they would like the support of all states and territories. However, it’s not a requirement to push ahead with buying the water licenses.
Trading water happened for the first time in Australia in 1983, when water access rights were separated from land title. The first water trading scheme occurred in South Australia. In 1994, land and water rights were separated by Australia’s National Water Commission and by 2010 the market for water rights was worth at least $2.8billion.
As a TV news reporter I had the privilege of interviewing Uncle Badger Bates about ‘Barka: The Forgotten River,’ an art exhibition he helped create about the devastation of the Baaka. He spoke of this in that broadcast.
“We had to prove ourselves. We fought the government people for 19 years. 2015, they gave us Native Title, but when they done all this and they gave it back to us, the land, they took our water. They was taking it in 2014.” Uncle Badger Bates said. 4
The MDB was found by the 2018 royal commission to have been unwell due to over extraction of water as a result of government entitlements.
Murray Darling Basin Authority (MDBA) plans outline 11% or 4389 GL of water from the MDB is set aside for foreign investment. As of June 2021, countries like Canada, USA, China and the United Kingdom all had entitlements in MDB water.5
Anyone can buy water from the Murray Darling Basin. Water was listed on the stock market in
2020 and is no longer a luxury or basic human right. It’s a tradable commodity.
Online records indicate there are four companies operating in the ‘Regulated Water’ segment with publicly listed shares on the Australian Stock Exchange.
There are people who have generated great wealth and will continue to do so, as the government fails to meet environmental targets that have been set for years. In 2017, Liberal MP Angus Taylor and former Nationals leader, Barnaby Joyce were both put in the spotlight for their roles in the sale of a “water buyback” license. Purchased from a company, co-established by Taylor himself. The acquisition did not go to tender, even though there were nine separate offers.The “controversy” was dubbed ‘watergate’ by the public and media. The hashtags quickly followed.
Eastern Australian Agriculture successfully tendered to sell water back to the state government for $79 million. Over two years later, not a trickle of that water had been seen despite the company banking an immediate $52m profit on the sale. We’ve recently seen the Labor government backflip on opposing water buybacks as a way of meeting a goal set by the MBDP. Legislation is expected to be introduced in the federal parliament to do just that.
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are too familiar with the reports, royal commissions, advisory bodies, and abandoned recommendations that succeed them.
We are constantly reminded how powerless and tokenistic gestures are, just that.
As recommendations, reports and advice goes ignored, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to die preventable deaths, are imprisoned at 14 times the rate of non Indigenous people and are still having children removed in unacceptable numbers.
It’s been over 30 years now since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC). Yet we’re still reporting, sometimes weekly, on another death under the watchful eyes of police and corrections nationwide.
It’s not an accident. People don’t accidentally die at alarming rates. It’s the system working exactly how it was set up to work, back when the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act passed in the British Parliament in 1901.
The Voice to Parliament is not self determination for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Allowing the Parliament and, in essence, the Crown, to decide how representations will be made on behalf of Traditional Owners is dangerous. For those unaware of how Parliament and the constitution work, they are both tools used by the Monarchy (Crown) to maintain order in their colonies.
The Statement “From The Heart,” calls Aboriginal Sovereignty a spiritual notion. It states that our sovereignty “co-exists with the sovereignty of the Crown.” The Crown, meaning the King. I strongly believe my ancestors would not be happy with me agreeing to this after their tireless efforts to uphold that this ‘Always Was, Always Will Be Aboriginal Land.’ I will vote no, that’s if I vote at all.
The Voice To Parliament will have no veto power. It provides no agency for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to protect our Countries, waters , skies and people from harmful practices and destruction. The “Voice” will be purely advisory and history has proven our advice and recommendations will be ignored when they don’t align with government interests.
1. Murray Darling Basin Royal Commission, Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission Report, 2019. https://cdn.environment. sa.gov.au/environment/docs/murray-darling-basin-royalcommission-report.pdf
2. Knaus, Christopher, “Murray-Darling Basin Authority should be broken up, ‘damning’ report finds”, The Guardian, Jan 25 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/25/ murray-darling-basin-authority-should-be-broken-up-to-protectsystem-review-finds?CMP=soc_567
3. Australian Government – Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment, and Water, “Progress on MurrayDarling Basin water recovery”, 2023, https://www.dcceew. gov.au/water/policy/mdb/progress-recovery
4. NITV (nitv_au), “Help us with the fight”, Instagram, June 24 2021, https://www.instagram.com/p/CQfmcbdB45R/?igshid =MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D
5. Australian Government – Australian Taxation Office, “Register of foreign ownership of water entitlements”, 2021, https:// foreigninvestment.gov.au/sites/foreigninvestment.gov.au/ files/2023-06/register-water-entitlements-300621.pdf
As the Labor government campaigns recklessly for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament, here’s a glimpse at some of the ways they’re subsequently undermining traditional owners nationwide.
• Queensland have just turned their watch houses into permanent youth detention facilities, despite it going against the state Human Rights Act, which the state Labor government suspended to work around it. The only other time Queensland disregarded the human rights act was earlier in February, so they could imprison more children, as young as 10. Because we know whose children will be the greatest impacted by these changes.
• Uncle Adrian Burragubba and his son Cody McAvoy are still fighting against Adani, one of the World’s wealthiest conglomerates, to preserve what they can of Wangan and Jagalingou Land in the Galilee Basin from devastation from the Carmichael Coal Mine.
• As part of the Morrison Government’s “Gas-led Recovery” that the Santos-funded Albanese Government uncritically embraced, Gomeroi people are still battling to protect the Pilliga Forest from 850 gas wells being drilled by Santos’ multi billion dollar Narrabri Gas Project.
• This government have greenlighted fracking in the Beetaloo Basin. Something traditional owners and countless Northern Territory residents have long argued against. Furthermore, we have just heard of contractors in the Beetaloo being directed to spray contaminated fracking water for days, leaving people and Country exposed to harmful chemicals and toxins. Government have committed $1.5 billion to establish a Petrochemical hub to be built in Middle Arm Harbour, less than an hour from the Territories most populated city.
• People of all backgrounds are continuing to oppose seismic blasts that are causing whales to wash up and die in their dozens because death is more appealing than their home. Traditional Owners have asked the government to find unapproved seismic blasting by Woodside was unlawful.
• Woodside’s Scarborough Gas Project has not conducted proper consultations with custodians over the for-export project off Murujuga/ The Burrup Peninsula looking to release more than 878 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
• Destruction of the “world’s largest outdoor rock art gallery,” Murujuga, to build a $6.4 billion fertilizer factory. Murujuga is 40 000 years old and contains over a million petroglyphs.
• Approval of four new mining projects by federal Environment Minister Tanya Pliberseck. This includes an expansion of Mount Pleasant opencut coal mining operations in the Hunter Valley, approval of expanding Whitehaven’s Underground mine in Narrabri, extension to the Ensham Coal Mine in Queensland and the opening of the Isaac River Coal Mine in Queensland.
• Ensham Coal Mine expansion threatens destruction of koala, glider and other native habitats. Mount Pleasant risks wiping out an entire species of lizard as it produces enough coal to run a power station for over 125 years. Producing high volumes of methane, Narrabri’s Whitehaven Underground project will emit 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide before one piece of coal is burned. The project has already earned a reputation for their harmful practices, including serious environmental breaches and water theft.
• Aboriginal cultural heritage laws were overturned in Western Australia for the convenience of farmers.
• Yindjibarndi Traditional Owners are seeking $500m in compensation from Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s Fortescue Group for mining land without consent.
The number of government endorsed crimes against traditional owners, our youth, our countries, waters and skies continues.
Jennetta Quinn-Bates is a Malyangapa Barkindji Journalist specialising is Indigenous Affairs & elevating grassroots voices.
NB: References for these cases can be found online at www.foe.org.au/cr146.
Community campaigns led by Aboriginal First Nations have stopped five nuclear dump proposals since the turn of the century. Plans for a national nuclear waste dump in SA have been defeated in 2004, 2019 and 2023; a planned national nuclear dump in the Northern Territory was defeated in 2014; and a plan to turn SA into the world’s high-level nuclear waste dump was defeated in 2016.
The most recent victory was led by Barngarla Traditional Owners, who are unanimous in their opposition to a planned national nuclear waste dump near Kimba in SA. On July 18, the Federal Court quashed the declaration of the Kimba dump site in a case brought by the Barngarla Determination Aboriginal Corporation.
The Court ruled that the declaration of the dump site by the former Coalition government was invalid because it was infected by ‘apprehended bias’ and ‘pre-judgement’. Unless the federal Labor government challenges the Federal Court ruling, which seems unlikely, Barngarla Traditional Owners and Kimba farming families can celebrate a remarkable win following an seven-year battle.
Both the Coalition government, and more recently the Albanese Labor government, have been willing to impose a nuclear dump on Barngarla country despite the unanimous opposition of Traditional Owners.
The Coalition and Labor support legislation which allows for the imposition of a nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land without consultation or consent from the traditional owners.
The Coalition and Labor have shown themselves willing to violate the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, which calls on countries “to ensure that no storage or disposal of hazardous material shall take place in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples without their free prior and informed consent.”
Despite that entrenched, bipartisan racism, the Barngarla people have prevailed.
“I am so happy for the women’s sites and dreaming on our country that are not in the firing line of a waste dump. I fought for all this time for my grandparents and for my future generations as well.”– Barngarla Elder Aunty Dawn Taylor, July 2023. Barngarla Traditional Owners Jonas Dare, Maureen Atkinson and Jason Bilney following the July 18 Federal Court ruling.
“This result today is about truth telling. The Barngarla fought for 21 years for Native Title rights over our lands, including Kimba and we weren’t going to stop fighting for this. We have always opposed a nuclear waste dump on our country and today is a big win for our community and elders.”
“Every Australian, whether First Australians or more recent Australians have the right to independent scrutiny of Government. Today the Federal Court has set aside the declaration for the nuclear waste facility reinforcing how important these rights of independent review are. It has been a significant dispute which has created much pressure on Barngarla and their legal team they should be proud of their efforts to hold the government to account.”
“In this day and age, when we’re talking about Voice, Treaty and Truth, we can’t just turn around and say, ‘Oh, well, those are our values but in this particular instance, we’re going to ignore the voice of Aboriginal people’. I think that’s just preposterous and it’s inconsistent with what most South Australians would think.”
“Barngarla have never been respected or engaged by this Government at all in this process. After successfully winning native title after 21 years of fighting for our Country, we were then excluded from the community ballot, and the Government has continued to treat us unfairly, including not undertaking heritage assessments with us and abandoning the commitment to ‘broad community support’ at the last minute. We will continue to fight to protect and preserve our Country, like we have always done, and make sure that the Government’s failures are brought to light in the Court.”
“The Barngarla have opposed the radioactive waste dump at Kimba since it was first suggested. We have fought for seven years, to be heard, to be seen and to be respected. We welcome this decision and expect that this will be the end of this threat to our country, heritage and culture. We, the Barngarla have always stood strong and believe that this decision is reflective of staying steadfast; it shows that if you have a voice and want it to be heard, never give up. Continue to be loud. Continue to use your voice. Don’t rely on others to speak for you. Speak up for what’s right. Truth telling is what led us today. We are proud.”
Formed in 1997, the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance (formerly the Alliance Against Uranium) brings together Aboriginal people and relevant civil society groups concerned about existing or proposed nuclear developments in Australia, particularly on Aboriginal homelands. It has been a powerful black and green alliance from its inception. And it has grown over the years with every new struggle of First Nations groups that lead the fight against proposed nuclear projects in so-called Australia.
The Alliance provides a forum for sharing of knowledge, skills and experience. It is an opportunity to come together and find strength through our shared aims to protect country and culture from nuclear developments. The Alliance helped to build the successful campaign to stop the Jabiluka uranium mine in the Northern Territory, and more recently, numerous proposed nuclear waste dumps in South Australia and the NT, that have all been won due to the strong stance and powerful campaigns led by Traditional Custodians. At this year’s ANFA annual meeting, our statement outlined the challenges lying ahead.
Over the weekend of March 24-26th, the Australian Nuclear Free Alliance (ANFA) held its national gathering in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. ANFA is a network of Aboriginal and nonAboriginal people and groups who share concern and action around nuclear threats. ANFA has existed for over 25 years and has played an important role in many big fights including the successful effort to halt the Jabiluka uranium
project in Kakadu, hold off all attempts to mine uranium in Western Australia and multiple attempts to impose radioactive waste on Aboriginal lands, especially in South Australia. After three years of Covid disruption and against the backdrop of the recent shock AUKUS nuclear submarine announcement everyone was eager to come together, reconnect and reaffirm our commitment to work together against all forms of imposed nuclear projects.
We agreed to keep resisting the nuclear industry through opposition to:
• Uranium mining operations
• A planned national radioactive waste dump at Kimba on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia
• Increasing nuclear threats and war-fighting plans reflected in the newly announced and secretly developed AUKUS submarine plan
• And by joining the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons –nuclear weapons ban treaty
Over the weekend many people talked about the need for genuine respect and recognition and the importance of resistance to protect what really matters: community, Country and culture. One participant described it this way:
“When you are connected to country and you have your strength and truth and you stand united, you can achieve anything.”
Another person said:
“They come around saying we will get money and cars if we say yes to this nuclear project. To people of poverty this sounds good, but we know it’s not.”
Around the world, nuclear projects like mining, weapons testing and waste dumping impact Indigenous communities more than any other people. ANFA members live with this reality here in Australia:
“They talk about empty country that doesn’t have anyone living on it that they want to poison. There’s no such thing as empty country that no one lives on anywhere in Australia. Everywhere is someone’s country, someone’s home.”
ANFA agreed to stay connected and strong across the country to support all people standing up and saying no to nuclear projects and radioactive poison. Take action: anfa.org.au
Friends of the Earth would like to acknowledge that our work and lives across so-called Australia play out on lands that were stolen, and have been illegally occupied by the colonial state for over 200 years. This statement clarifies our position on the Voice, as the Referendum approaches and more groups take public stances on it.
We acknowledge the current public debate over the proposed Voice to Parliament, and begin by saying that we hold the deepest compassion and respect for First Nations Peoples at this sensitive and difficult time where the struggle for self determination is under question in the public eye. Friends of the Earth has been approached by several groups for confirmation of our organisation’s position on the Referendum, regarding whether or not we will be campaigning for people to vote a certain way. This statement articulates our position.
While this statement is our agreed-upon position as an organisation, Friends of the Earth Australia member groups and projects have autonomy to engage in the Referendum lead-up as they see appropriate, because we are a federation of aligned, autonomous groups.
Friends of the Earth has always supported sovereignty and self determination for First Nations Peoples of this land.
On this land and across the globe, we will always seek to deeply listen to the demands of First Nations Peoples and advocate for recognition of Indigenous sovereignty. We will always hold First Nations justice at the foundations of our work, guiding our intention to care for and love one another, the Earth and lands we live on. There can be no climate justice without First Nations justice.
As the Referendum approaches, we see diverse stances articulated which demonstrate the complex meanings of the Voice, and acknowledge that there are valid arguments both for the Blak/progressive ‘No’ and the ‘Yes’ votes.
We respect everyone whose campaigning efforts come from a place of good faith and desire to strengthen power and justice for First Nations Peoples. We wholeheartedly stand against the racist and colonial structural voices which are campaigning for a ‘No’ vote to further repress and disempower First Nations Peoples.
After much discussion and reflection, Friends of the Earth has come to the decision that we do not feel comfortable to add our weight to either the ‘Yes’ or Blak/progressive ‘No’ campaigns.
This position reflects the diversity of views held within our organisation, especially by the First Nations people we work with and stand in solidarity with. We understand that some will find this disappointing, however we ask that our position is honoured and respected for the nuanced reasoning that informs it.
We support the bravery and courage First Nations Peoples are yet again showing as they seek justice and the right to self-determination. The differing First Nations perspectives on the Voice should be listened to with respect and humility by non-Indigenous people. We encourage people to continue listening openly, and come voting time, make a decision from the heart that is informed by justice-centred values.
Friends of the Earth has always advocated for real, material, system change for First Nations communities.
We acknowledge that a ‘Yes’ to the Voice is not a simple remedy to the centuries of oppression and violence inflicted on First Nations Peoples by the colonial state.
Struggles for justice - including for Treaty; Sovereignty; self-determination of communities; rejecting community intervention and income management; land back and land management; funding communities not prisons (and connected fights to stop Blak deaths in custody, raise the age of criminal responsibility and get young people out of detention); preserving First Nations languages and culture; and keeping children on country and with their families - are long-waged battles against the colonial state by First Nations Peoples that will continue after the Voice Referendum. The months leading up to the Referendum will see heightened national attention on First Nations Peoples. As FoE will not be campaigning for either voting option, we will use our platforms and community microphones to amplify the diversity of struggles for justice that are being by First Nations Peoples. We will direct our members and broader communities to work they can support by donating their time, money, and other resources. We will also examine how our own campaigns can more strongly add weight to First Nations justice demands.
There is no climate justice without First Nations justice.
Now is a time for non-Indigenous people to learn more about the long-held demands for justice mentioned above, and commit to supporting these demands beyond the course of the Referendum. The information and resources we will share in coming months are to get people thinking about how their support for First Nations justice can continue beyond this year, and inform their existing work, communities and individual lives.
Always was and always will be Aboriginal land.
Including First Nations-run groups working for justice across many fronts (including climate and environmental protection, workers rights, and reversing incarceration rates) that we encourage people to learn about and support, can be found here – foe.org.au/support_beyond_the_referendum.
Cam Walker
Friends of the Earth Australia is turning 50 next year. During its first five decades, the federation has constantly changed and evolved as new generations of activists have joined the organisation, external politics have changed, and new issues have emerged. But from its inception, FoE has seen itself as being a radical ecology group that recognises the need to transform our cultural, political and economic systems to sustainable and equitable social systems if we are going to be able to protect the environment in the long term.
FoEA was a product of the new social movements of the early 1970s. Women’s liberation, gay and lesbian rights, a strong anti war movement, and the emerging Black Rights movements all influenced our political development in the early days. And so it made sense that connections and solidarity with First Nations people would always form the basis of our work.
Our longest running campaign – the struggle against nuclear power – has always been based on deep solidarity with traditional owners who have opposed uranium mining, nuclear testing, and waste dumping on their lands. A tour through old Chain Reaction magazines is a good reminder of the breadth of this work. From the struggle against the Ranger uranium mine in the Northern Territory in the 1970s, to meetings with the Oenpelli Aboriginal Community Council, to an early FoE national meeting held at Little Nalangie Rock in Arnhem Land, to the struggle against bauxite mine plans at Aurukun on Cape York peninsula, solidarity has always been important. In those days there were almost no laws to protect First Nations land and culture - the Aboriginal Land Rights Act was only established in 1976. This was federal legislation that provided the basis upon which Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory could claim rights to land based on traditional occupation. As the years went on, there were more opportunities for Aboriginal communities to gain power over their
future.he most obvious was the High CourtMabo v Queensland case, which led to the Native Title Act 1993 and established ‘native title’ in Australia. About this time, we started to grapple with the concept of wilderness. While campaigning to protect areas of biodiversity forms the core of much of the efforts of the environment movement, we realised that ‘wilderness’ as a concept doesn’t exist in Australia. Understanding that much of the landscape in Australia is culturally formed, created by millennia of Aboriginal burning and other land management, means re-thinking our image of ‘healthy’ land. Of course many individuals and communities stayed out of the native title process and it was often these groups that we aligned with. Grassroots struggles are where FoE could usually be found. For instance, the occupation against the Alcoa smelter in Portland in western Victoria in the early 1980s, all the way through to the Djab Wurrung camp opposing the destruction of significant cultural trees in the name of a freeway upgrade in 2020. Working with Gungalidda people in the Gulf Country we opposed the Century zinc mine in the 1990s, with Kerrup Jmara,a clan of the Gunditjmara activists in western Victoria, we campaigned against? logging in the Cobboboonee forest in the late ‘90s, and we blockaded the Honeymoon uranium mine in the early 1980s. There are three particular highlights that stand out in our long association with First Nations groups: The Jabiluka campaign. With plans for a new uranium mine at Jabiluka in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory in the mid 1990s, FoE joined with other environment groups and the newly formed Jabiluka Action Groups to oppose this plan. What was different in this case is that First Nation leadership drove all aspects of the campaign. In March 1998, at the invitation of senior owner Yvonne Margarula, a blockade base camp was established near the site of the mine. By the time the campaign was done, more than 5,000 people had joined actions and blockades, all under the influence and leadership of Yvonne and other Mirrar traditional owners.
The ISG conferences. In 1997 and 1998, FoE hosted two groundbreaking Indigenous solidarity gatherings in Melbourne. These were intended to be grassroots, First Nation led spaces where indigenous and non indigenous activists could sit down and learn from each other and build shared solidarity. Both ISG events involved remarkable presentations from First Nations people from around the country, and deep alliances were
We seek to build lasting relationships with First Nations groups, and this means we need to develop a two way relationship. As environmental groups we often go to indigenous people when they want something (like an endorsement of a campaign). A true two way relationship means supporting each other’s issues with time and resources.
forged. Key issues like Treaty, Paying the Rent, and campaigns like the struggle by the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta (a group of senior women from northern South Australia, who successfully resisted plans to force a radioactive waste facility on their land) gained profile in broader circles. The Yorta Yorta win. FoE has had a longterm relationship with the Yorta Yorta nation, and after the first ISG gathering in 1997, we deepened this connection, and formalised in it an agreement.Yorta Yorta traditional lands focus on the Barmah and Millewa Forests along the Murray (Dungala) river. When FoE joined an occupation led by Yorta Yorta of the Dharnya cultural centre to oppose its closure, elders requested that we work with them to help regain traditional lands. The Barmah Millewa campaign was born and a decade later, in 2010, the Barmah National Park was proclaimed. The Yorta Yorta Traditional Owner Land Management Board was formed as part of an agreement signed between the Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation and the State of Victoria to nurture Barmah National Park back to health through a Joint Management Plan. This is the first Joint Management agreement in the state. Of course we have got things wrong.
We are still primarily an organisation dominated by white, middle class people. FoE has sought to encourage First Nations people to feel comfortable to become involved in our campaigns. For a period of time in the 1990s2000s, we had a steering group composed of First Nation elders who provided advice and direction to our day to day campaigning and how and where we should be working. We have long ‘Paid the Rent’. At present this is done by allocating an amount of money which can then
be accessed by grassroots First Nation activists (for instance a group may need to access travel funds to attend a conference or protest).
We seek to build lasting relationships with First Nations groups, and this means we need to develop a two way relationship. As environmental groups we often go to indigenous people when they want something (like an endorsement of a campaign). A true two way relationship means supporting each other’s issues with time and resources.
We have failed to properly consult on specific campaigns, like the anti fracking campaign in Victoria. While FoE co-ordinated a state wide campaign that won the first ever permanent ban on the process of fracking in Australia, at the local level we did not always work closely with First Nations groups. And for many years the forests movement in general, including FoE, failed to consult deeply about First Nations aspirations for their country. But we have tried, and continue to try, to be good allies. In the 1990s we sided with First Nation aspirations in north Queensland at the height of the ‘Sanctuary movement’ where some environmental groups were opposing first Nations access to country.
And now, with an end to native forest logging in Victoria scheduled for January 1 2024, we have an historic opportunity to demonstrate that the environment movement meant it when it said ‘we recognise sovereignty’. First Nations will start to assert their interests through managing Country across Victoria. What they decide to do may be difficult for environment groups to accept or support. How we respond in coming months will show how deep our statements of solidarity really are.
Cam Walker is a campaign’s co-ordinator for Friends of the Earth Melbourne.
My Grandmother’s birth in 1869-1972 was cause for a letter from the queen congratulating my Aka on her 100th birthday. Her story was one of thriving as a sovereign being within her element in spite of the forces of colonialism to survive against. Many in her era had one passage of rite and that was to freely practice their sovereignty in their life expectancy within their cultural ecological wellbeing.
I had the honour of reading the letter to her whilst she had this look of disgust and disdain in her dismissive stare, partly due to her dislike for me and partly because of the trauma the signature of the letter caused her. Fortunately, she wouldn’t understand English dribble, by choice. I remember that very definitive moment of her dismissal of the crown as one of pure justice; how the gesture and its entire glory meant absolutely nothing to our matriarch. She was born practically free in 1869 and 103 years later still graced as a free independent leader of our family. Our freedom didn’t come from any decolonising agenda; it was her dignified aura of unmatched sovereignty streamed into our heart throughout the history of our family and many, many families today. In fact all of us carry an innate sovereign status of our foremothers and fathers into all our interactions before our wellness was colonised and replaced with health supplements.
It is from this place of a sovereignty unceded, that we can see clearly through the lies and limitations of these supposed charitable colonial gestures offered to us in this time, such as ‘equity’ of health as opposed to parity of our wellbeing. Our innate sovereign right of parity in our wellbeing is there for our taking, but is interrupted by the myth of health equity, which is a dead end road, benchmarked on assimilating a punitive past, and trapping us into a perpetual poor health cycle. Yet in a time of appalling and persisting racialised health disparities the state has offered up health equity as the solution to our supposed woes, in a most incredulous self-congratulatory style. This is a saddening moment of self actualisation where our choice of sovereignty and my grandmother’s thriving years of 103, ironically acknowledged by the head of the colony, is now being enslaved to a disparity of poor health boasted by the State representing the same crown.
Equity places us at a further remove from our own sovereign disposition, like its predecessors of
self determination and self management, which are all forward steps going backward into a neo-colonial imperialist state. Equity acts to transpose our sovereignty by reducing us to the lowest common denominator to regulate our measure of existence, absolutely skewed toward our extermination. We thrived for 40,000 years as the oldest living culture on the planet, and to be reduced to a life expectancy benchmark via 250 yrs of colonisation, standardised by fallible racist thresholds is by definition sheer insanity. With Terra Nullius dead the balance of power does change unlike what we are being led to believe.
Any system that discounts us into extinction with perfect score tags on our body bags, replacing our life worth with a monetary value on our sickness cannot be of benefit to us. And it hasn’t been, according to the continued reporting against the closing the gap targets, whether they are refreshed or reframed. This is the mediocrity of Indigenous affairs policy, but is also reflective of the business as usual approach of expatriates whose presence is predicated on our passing.
Equity offers more for expatriates than it does for us. It provides a nonthreatening form of redemption that absolves them of the sins of settler colonialism, validating the status quo.
It is we who carry the scars, who weep at grave sites while they continue to reap the benefits.
Measuring us to the nth degree of our suffering leaves us further adrift, bringing us no closer to wellness, of the lives we once lived. Being defined via equity is a framework of forgetting, a loss of our identity, a life lived on our terms. Equity ultimately restricts us to repressive arguments of equality of racial indifferences rather than of redress, of their obligations to right the wrongs of the past and take responsibility for the excess premature death rates caused by colonisation.
This racist notion where we have had to demonstrate to the world that we have sovereignty in order to legitimise their wrong is now out of fashion. Sovereignty unlike equity is never granted and we must never ask for it. It’s our inherent birth right and will continue to grow through our assertion of it. To do otherwise, to cede ourselves as only ever underprivileged subjects is to remain tied to the chains of colonialism.
The more we decline those letters of congratulation or invitations to validate the expatriate’s existence, the more visible and tangible the consolidation of our own becomes.
Equity is after all just sugar coated crumbs set up by expatriates for expatriates to regulate their guilt by drip feeding us.
Our sovereignty is ceded when we are conscripted into settling for less. Our sovereignty exists outside of, in spite of the narrow parameters of the colonial imagining, because it just is.
Sovereignty is the stance, strategy and solution. It means the difference between Kolea Lug kiss ass and Lagau Kuike kick ass.
Reprinted with permission from IndigenousX.
Professor Phillip Mills is a Kulkalgal man who has worked many years in decolonising normative disparities of our public health system and achieve parity in our wellbeing in the Torres Strait. Professor Mills holds an Adjunct Professor role at James Cook University and is a PhD candidate at Queensland University of Technology.
Putting together the stories of Strong Blak Resistance to Extractivism has provided an all too rare opportunity to tell just a few of the myriad and inspiring stories of what Aboriginal people face surviving the colony, whilst defending Country from destruction. That stories like this exist through the skills of Blak Journalists, are their own argument that Aboriginal Journalism in so-called Australia must be resourced properly, to enable a deep investigative journalism capacity to hold the abusers of our Land and people to account. Blak Journalism can, far better than settler-journalism, amplify and weave together powerful voices of this Land, of frontline defenders of country and warriors of resistance to the extractivist colony, inspired by sixty millenia of care, community and custodianship of all beings across Land and Sea Country. Reportage of warriors still standing strong against the coloniser’s brutal plunder of 250 years, and in living their sovereign solutions, adapting new ways and new allies to heal the damage caused by a terminally broken system of the invaders.
Right now, the fully anticipated institutional violence against Blakfullas unleashed by the Referendum on the Aboriginal Voice to Parliament has laid bare the already urgent need for a genuinely sovereign, Blak-run and accountable, investigative indigenous and environmental journalism capacity, free from the interference of the colony.
Colonial journalism has long been a wilful accessory to extractivist violence against indigenous peoples. In fact, this was the very reason for its creation since the days of Henry Dangar’s newspapers. This referendum again has demonstrated the Australian media is actively complicit in the perpetration of violence, skirting their ethical obligations by harmful reporting on Aboriginal peoples, and encouraging racist harassment and state violence by disproportionate focus on manufactured crises. At the same time, it is largely silencing voices of genuine grassroots members of Aboriginal communities, who simply want to defend Country from destruction.
For too long, Aboriginal journalism has been relegated to being a diversity metrics box-tick that is used by mainstream media organisations to further colonise funding streams meant for our stories. Even so-called Aboriginal media is run largely by corporate whitefellas determined to only let us tell lightweight stories so as not to offend advertisers and government funding. Yet these stories that challenge the colonial sensibilities of the editorial gatekeepers get kicked down the road, or handed to non-Aboriginal journalists with no lived experience of the issues they are reporting on. These stories only air partially when there is an agenda to paint Aboriginal people as victims to be rescued by white saviours – or a resources company wants to kick people off the land.
Look at the abuse heaped by white media that certain mob get when they pose a simple question about The Voice: “Does the Voice provide any utility for Aboriginal people to protect country from extractivism?” No wonder we have to assume that journalists of the colony are hostile to protecting country.
As the Referendum, by design, diverts everyone’s attention away from lived Aboriginal experience, an extractivist’s orgy of plunder morphs into a new phase powering the alleged decarbonisation of Green Capitalism, despite increasing fossil fuel extraction approvals of gas fracking and coal projects. The Labor Government’s approvals of “transition” mineral projects for green energy storage and transport, threaten to destroy vast swathes of Aboriginal Land and waters on an unprecedented scale. The new plunder of Country that is habitat for critically endangered plants and animals, causes further risk of Aboriginal dispossession and cultural genocide through the destruction of our sacred sites. There is an urgent need for this to be examined, yet there is silence from media. With a new “National Security” aspect to safeguarding the colony’s access to minerals as the Western civilisation’s self-induced collapse marches on, this new mining free-forall brings with it always-told impacts of mining violence (economic, psychosocial, police, judicial and sexual violence)
against Aboriginal communities. The frontier wars that have never ended. Instead of the native police, we now have the Indigenous Advisory Boards and the regional Land Councils, staffed with “no-Law” mob who have consistently let down Elders and Traditional Owners, kids claimed by no mob with no respect for country. Land Council bureaucrats who have all the power vested in them by the colony to sign over Aboriginal Land to extractivists, completely bypassing Free, Full & Prior Informed Consent (FPIC) requirements, to the detriment of Traditional Owners. Where do we see the coverage of these emerging threats?
Blak custodians of country face incredible threats – a vast machine of manufactured consent; public affairs for plunderers masquerading as journalism, yet silencing real reporting on the threats to the health of the continent we all share. Blak people are traumatised and targeted with impunity by brutal police forces of violent abusive colonisers working for resource companies, for murderous harassment and provocation to justify punitive responses. We survive in an economy made from artificial scarcity, and false solutions put forward by greenwashed capital exist to plunder our ancient Land in a thousand new innovations. All these realities are being challenged from the best place – the grassroots of the people with their toes in the soil. And these stories of resistance need to be told, but are getting ignored.
Vast amounts of copy are being written about Aboriginal people, by people speaking over Aboriginal people and country. So why aren’t the stories of mining, fossil fuel, logging, water theft and pastoral destruction being told from a Blak perspective, and why can’t this be left up to settlers?
Colonial media always focuses on the story from tit’s dead coloniser heart, the agenda that sees Aboriginality in terms of expenditure & liability, rather than noursihing connection and custodianship of country – modes of care that benefit all people and beings in this land, in finding a way to survive the Climate Change caused by the British disease of Capitalism. This is partly why there is scant resource provided for investigative journalism on environmental abuse by the majority of mainstream outlets, and those who do insist on
in-depth reporting have our stories spiked on the regular. Investigations that focus on the corruption, violence, divideand-rule tactics, continued dispossession of country and overriding of FPIC obligations, are routinely de-resourced despite the massive public interest.
White journalism hasn’t just failed Blak Australia – it is actively participant in its ongoing dispossession. It is only Blak relentlessness in struggle that ensures blak struggles are reported at all – and it is only when it reaches a court that the colony decides its newsworthiness. And by then, the damage has been done.
Australian colonial journalism is also guilty of its own extractivism on Aboriginal communities: the plunder of stories and culture for clickthrough revenue, giving nothing back to community but trauma and loss, and a feeling of helicopter journalism. Where is the sustainability and commitment to ongoing reporting, to maintaining relationships of trust with Elders and communities? Blak journalism can do it better, because we are accountable to our mob.
So, how does Blak journalism, on our own terms, benefit environmental defenders in the Colony? Fundamentally, as Blak journalists, we predicate the voice of the witness and the survivor over that of the perpetrator and the powerful. As custodians, Blakfullas have an innate sense of when country is being hurt, we are the first to notice when environmental abuses occur, or when extractivists come onto country to scope the next plunder. This lived experience informs an Indigi-Nous journo-sense, so we know what to look for to credibly bring this to the attention of the world. We know what gets wilfully ignored so we work around it. Our proofs are by the evidence on the ground and what our own eyes see, as well as the rigorous tests of verification that Blak journalists hold to a higher standard than white media. This eyes-on capacity has long been utilised by the environmental movement in Australia to gather first response field data, but together with the need to improve data collection for greenies, it would be incumbent upon environmental defenders to support – pay the rent – both grassroots journalism training and the ability to pay for investigative capacity for Blak journalism.
Illegal clearfelling on a water catchment, Kangarilla, Peramangk country - Nick Chesterfield-Blak journalism is not limited to holding abusers to account – there are healing stories that miss out on the benefit of a verifying lens of in-depth journalism. There is so much proactive work being done by defenders of country in undoing the destruction of the colony. From the resurgence of the Aboriginal Ranger movement managing and re-possessing Country alienated by extractivism, to utilisation of fire, and social healing modalities that use anti-carceral solutions to combat the over-representation of mob entanglement with the punitive judicial system. - there are so many more stories that would benefit from a Blak lens to educate all in the colony.
The recent performative soul-searching by ABC management about their use of racism at the ABC against Blak journalists has shown that coloniser newsrooms are incapable of change. White media exists to ensure the access to power and act like courtiers, instead of holding power to account. The toxic culture of racism, misogyny and sexual assault of Parliament is mirrored in the Press Gallery, and that is the school that creates newsroom culture in Australia. It is an elitist den of privilege and court intrigue, far removed from grassroots reporting, and miles away from sources and events on the ground. When was the last time a Press Gallery journo rocked up to a Blak woman’s disappearance, challenged a Police media spokesperson on their lies, or cross-examined an extractivist in the dust?
There is a large pool of talent to pull together for a Blak Sovereign Media Capacity. The work of Blak Journalists has been groundbreaking in mainstream journalism and has smashed significant barriers imposed from above. Even as Blak journalists are now represented in all commercial media organisation in ever increasing publicly-facing roles, its rarely in a position of decision-making over stories.
Try pitching a story about the mechanisms of destruction of Aboriginal Land by the mining industry to a white media organisation. If Twiggy hasn’t already junketed the editor, there is the terror of the phone call from the coloniser board. Most Blak journalists have many examples of “both-sidesing for balance” edits deliberately done to give a perpetrator more power, where evidence of witnesses and victims of institutional abuse are invalidated and left to feel completely unsafe to tell their stories. Often, Blak journalists will not be allowed to report on stories of Blak communities because they are seen as having skin in the game – as a threat to coloniser notions of “objectivity”. That the journalism is somehow compromised because it will be judged as activist. The test of objectivity should be simple: Is it verifiable? Does the story provide context, and does the story provide a right of response? Yes, then it objectively meets the test of objectivity, not a colonial version of it. Do we have to give equal weight to the excuses & DARVO tactics of the abuse perpetrator? Absolutely not, and to say we do is a betrayal of the most sacred duties of Journalism: Giving Voice to the Voiceless, and Speaking Truth to Power.
We do need mechanisms without interference, coloniality, punitivity and unreformable racism from white editors and administrators, and to create our own news agency. Racism in colonial media is unfixable – so let’s build something new. We need to go back to an old school guerilla radio but utilising modern methods of multimedia reporting. Blak journos particularly have to deal with both outright hostility and microaggression, dismissal, sabotage and gatekeeping, and this needs to end.
Things are beginning slowly to change in mainstream journalism with respect to employing Blak journos. More and more cadetships and paid internships are being offered, but the violence of the colony exhausts Blak journos. A big shout out goes to the work of mob in certain sections of the ABC, with their tenacity has created a relatively autonomous sovereign space, with Blak editors finally calling the shots on what stories can be resourced and told. But there is still the ever present threat of the shiny axe of the colony hanging over them. I would love to talk about NITV, but I am not allowed to even do that, because of that axe hanging over me too.
So how do we show that we can do better? Whilst we can support the infiltrators into colonial spaces, we must create and collectivise our own platform by pooling our skills and resources (and leads). Simply, we go back to the source, barefoot journalism wearing the soles of our feet, by arming our community members with witness journalism skills to collect the information we need in a standardised methodology. We go to every blockade, we ask the settler-ally greenies and journalists of good faith to Step Up and pay the rent to help us mentor mob to defend their country through accountability, to help us find the gear we need and get us to the places we need to be. We have countless examples of blak journalists being relentless, we just need the support to make it happen more.
The work of Darumbal & South Sea Islander Journalist
Amy McGuire and her groundbreaking investigations into the Disappearances of Aboriginal Women in the Colony, with relentless examinations of the circumstances around
false imprisonment and over-incarceration of Aboriginal women & men, has showcased the inescapable connection between extractivism & the violent colonial misogyny of white men in hi-viz, blue serge or khaki (miners, police and military) preying on Blak women. As a long standing tactic of dispossession, disappearances are the first step in demoralising a community to accede to land theft.
McGuire’s exhaustive attendance at coronial inquests into Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women, and her rapport with victim’s families in getting the hard-to-ask source material, has ensured that there is now significant interest in these cases, and her reportage has challenged the narrative that Blak women are somehow responsible for their own harm. This back-to-the source journalism is being mirrored in so-called Canada, where First Nations journalism is literally uncovering the Disappeared women in landfills of the colony.
Journalist Allan Clarke’s body of work exploring the entanglement of Blak youth with settler violence and the juvenile justice system in regional New South Wales is another strong example of the spotlight and awareness that happens when Blak journos who walk the tracks, get the story out. Clarke’s work was traumatic to read, and for him to tell, but it contributed to a conversation that has helped fuel the Blak Lives Matter movement in the Colony.
We need our own space so that when there are stories so traumatic that they cost the mental health of the people who tell it, we have peers that can hear our rage and pain, and not dismiss us, but have a shared understanding of experience (and healing).
Having our own sovereign media capacity also ensures that our community is able to support each other. Reporting these stories are hard in the current paradigm. The tempered expectations of survivors and families of the Disappeared, the tears of Elders seeing their country ripped up, put a
huge cultural & spiritual load on Blak journalists. Having the resources to effectively tell those stories in the widest means possible enables a sharing of this load, so it doesn’t all rest on the shoulders of individuals – and others can step in before we get exhausted so we don’t collapse in a heap. Blak journalism takes care of our own. When reporting on issues affecting mob, we also have an increased ethical duty, that of harm minimisation. What colonial violence, both physical and emotional, is going to unleashed on those who speak out? (A reminder, ANY harassment of contributors to this issue, I am coming for you and calling you out personally). What trauma is being exacerbated by focusing on the loss of country, culture and mob, without asking questions that examine what justice and healing looks like? What could be the potential ramifications of publication? Could it result in increased criminalisation of Elders or warriors for country? Is there a way that decolonised solutions can be implemented? These are questions we ask anyway: the question is why doesn’t white media ask these?
Fundamentally, an ability to commission all stories, reportage where and when it needs to happen, underpinned by total editorial independence, support and pay fair labour wages to journalists, and to have the legal backup to defend the stories against extractivist lawfare.
Transformation is needed. We need to get away from the centralised top-down newsroom model of colonial journalism, and back to a virtualised model that empowers grassroots fact-gathering and verification, allows better collaboration on stories, and serves First Nations communities across remote and vast areas. Models utilised in other first nations struggles, like West Papua – called “distributed collaborative journalism”
can greatly assist with the heavy legwork of investigations, and be able to crowdsource leads and verification, through localised fixing, fact-checking and follow-up.
A network of Blak journalists is currently discussing the need to arm witness journalists in communities with similar tested tools and methodologies to report incidents when they occur, and to document justice, human rights and environmental abuses before they spiral out of control, using existing and emerging tools (such as Project FiveARM Secure Crisis Journalism Reportage) tools.
We developed a toolkit of investigative methodologies and journalism security called iSAFEMoJo (eyeWitness Safe Mobile Journalism), to ensure that accurate information – using the human rights journalism standard “who did what to whom, when, where and how?” interrogation – could be rapidly collected from dynamic incidents in repressive environments, or where access was limited. We developed these tools so that witness journalists could credibly contribute verifiable evidence in places where traditional journalists cannot or will not access. This model is easily applicable to reportage of Protecting Country and Aboriginal Justice, and especially useful in real time monitoring of police and sexual violence against mob, accountability of environmental abuse and amplifying resistance.
Imagine a story that is all too common in the history of this brutal colony. A Blak woman, who has been an advocate and activist for her people, goes to a public meeting. Communities are divided by mining money, itinerant white men and white utes in hi-viz are loitering at the edges. Some community members know this woman has been receiving unwelcome text messages, yet who do they tell? A big fight spills over, people disperse. This Blak woman walks off by herself. It is the last time she is seen.
The history of this scenario is all too familiar to all mob in the colony, with the shameful and brutal history of Missing & Murdered indigenous Women. It only comes to light when
a body is found, often years later. Police don’t bother to investigate when she disappears, or refuse to investigate when her body is found, often because they know exactly who the perpetrators are, including their own. Witnesses are long gone, or disappeared themselves.
But what if there was a way for witness journalism to collect the source information when the concern is still fresh? Maybe somebody with an app saw these mining workers watching from shadows, and realised they could have had something to do with another sister not coming home that night. Perhaps witness reports with questions of “who did what to whom, when, where and how?” could have given enough timely information to force immediate investigation or alert journalists to start asking about this missing woman – while she is still alive.
Having a strong Blak media capacity will enable indigenous reportage to be shared with more urgency to the international community, to put pressure on the colony from the outside. The question is, who wants to join and take those next steps to deliver hard, fast, dogged but caring, speak-for-country storytelling to hold the abusive coloniser extractivists to account in front of the world, and show this world there are better ways of living according to our ancient care for Country?
Nick Chesterfield is the Guest Editor of Chain Reaction’s Strong Blak Resistance issue, and is a man of Kaurna, and other dispossessed Nunga, Kulin & Celtic Nations heritage, nations all impacted by extractivism of the British colonial System. He is a journalist with several decades of experience of walking alongside & reportage of First Nations led, grassroots resistance movements against extractivism and resisting militarism & genocide in West Papua & First Nations across so-called Australia, and Melanesia.
If you would like to get involved in supporting nascent efforts to help create a Sovereign Blak Media Capacity, please contact the author on manukoreri<@>proton.me
We sat down with Auntie Rissah Vox to talk about the Elder Care Collective. Elder Care is a network of allies supporting elders, from food drops and cooking, to help around the house, to transport, to just “being there”. The intention is to help elders stay at home, in their communities, offering them the support they need.
So what had happened is the Elder Care Collective actually started in Naarm, which came out of the SOS [Students of Sustainability] group from I think, 2018, and it was a group that formed so they could do Elder Care for elders. And it all started because I was home not well, and a young activist that I’d met up at Newcastle SOS came to stay with me. And she ended up with me for close to three years. And she was a perfect example of an elder carer in how she went about what she did with me in the family. And we realised that this needs to happen across the country.
During the COVID lockdown, the Naarm collective were able to deliver fruit and vegetable boxes and provide care to elders who were living isolated during the COVID lockdowns. And that was very important. They were even able to support an Auntie going into care.
Later on, I met this young fella called Floss and he said he’d started, with a couple of other people, this group called GRANT – Grassroots Action Network Tasmania. They took up the same model, pretty much, as we’d started in Naarm. Every Tuesday, they go around the community in nipaluna Hobart, and they do food drops of vegetables they grow in the garden and dumpstered food. They support the community that way. And the GRANT collective have catered for three sorry businesses for now for us, and been welcomed in by our community. And we love them. When families in nipaluna are going through sorry business, GRANT will turn up and be respectful and just stand at the door with a smile.
With the Naarm collective, we thought that when people were doing their mutual obligation for the government [for Centrelink payments], we thought they could actually do it through us – we would have been a service provider. Unfortunately, one of our dear Naarm collective members, Madi, passed away three months after the death of my grandson. So we lost a key person, and the collective went into mourning. So, the mutual obligation process never happened. And I think it’s best just to keep it grassroots and don’t involve the government because it’s just too tough. So much paperwork.
But yeah, in the future it’s very important that we need to have elder care collectives nationwide. You need to step up, and it’s all about your heart. It’s all about what’s in your heart. It’s all about who’s gonna watch your back when you’re on the front line.
Auntie Rissah has been a peacekeeper for the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on and off the parliamentary triangle for 16 years.
Get involved:
contact Grassroots Action Network - grassroots.tas@gmail.com, or via Instagram @grassroots.action.network.tas.
Reflections on rooting change-making into our daily lives, as a means of living the future now.Auntie Rissah, with an apple the Elder Care Collective grew in her garden.
Alana Marsh
I might be understood as a Meriam woman who has only ever lived on mainland Australia. Sometimes oblivious of the generosity, wisdom and strength of Aboriginal Australia, sometimes so humbled and in awe I’ve ridden waves of emotion – hot salty tears, deep rumbling belly laughs and silent adoration and incredulous reverence. Sometimes all these waves have washed over me within a five minute window.
I grew up on Bundjalung Country; Manifold Road, Bentley, a part of the world now famous (at least locally) for resisting fracking. When not reading, at school, or doing jobs, I was rambling through the hills. One of my favourite places was a haven of grass trees. It provided a sanctuary in which to just be and observe the movement of ants, snakes, clouds and how the wind danced with Country. I personally gained much joy taking my two sons on a grass tree resin collecting run, as they have been raised thousands of kilometres from family. We have lived south, down the songlines now running the Pacific Highway and the Hume Highway for almost 20 years. Nestled in the embrace of the Kulin Nation and I am grateful. Yet keening for warmer, humid climes.
Following a couple of strokes in the part of the brain that maintains the systems of the body, I’ve been showing up more intentionally in the world. As I approach the eleven year anniversary of those intensely transformational events I deepen my relationship with dingoes. We practice Wayapa, a species-centred modality that connects us back to country (land, sky water), as the enabling platform for individual and collective mind, body & spirit wellbeing. As a Wayapa practitioner we remind people of the surrender to innate knowing, being and doing that nature is informed, nourished and evaluates by - our species tends to overcomplicate, over think and I wonder if you are over it too? The play, surrender to rest, the attraction to sunlight and water is beautifully articulated in the ways of Knowing, Being and Doing of our more than human kin.
Dingoes have co-created Australian ecosystems as deftly and lovingly as firestick farmers. Embedded as a dynamic nodal point with Aboriginal people and aligned to feathered friends in the sky, they are a sublime, intelligent and nuanced part of the puzzle in which to understand ourselves more fully, as belonging to this continent. Dingoes are one side of an ancient triangle of biorhythmic self-organisation, -regulation and -perpetuation in an evocative relational dance that extends and returns far beyond the three; the entangled web of life all of us are nested in. Sometimes oblivious, sometimes humbled yet always in relationship. Hot salty tears and deep rumbling belly laughs sometimes occupy the space between you and I, and our kin.
I knew very little about dingoes until a few years ago. They have been and continue to be a victim of colonisation. Most of us live regionally or in cities with little chance to connect. Dingoes have evolved to be wary of humans. We bait, poison and kill them with great success and they provide a perfect parallel story to the relationship many Australians have with Aboriginal people. From my perspective, these relational threads are often polarising, uncomfortable and stumbled over or disregarded. Thank fuck for the growing appetite!!
My love affair with dingoes started with Pumba in March 2019. Layers have been added, with the obligatory pause Covid provided. You may connect with them in ways that are meaningful to you, but one morsel I will share is the amazing yet unsurprising use of the whisker! A tool of vibrational attunement of such high integrity. Maybe this is why they detect a human heartbeat from 30 metres – yes a silent human can be detected by our heartbeat from 30 metres. Quite
handy if you are at risk of being hunted down and killed yet also a technology of intense beauty that speaks to the dynamic nodal point status I have bestowed upon them. I understand why tucking your nose into your tail to sleep is our equivalent of noise cancelling headphones.
As a human I know I’ve dumbed down my receptors of vibration. Modernity offers unprecedented and often hard stimulation with all the noise, the information, the dichotomies. Imagine our continent silent except for soft footfall, bird call, gurgling water and rich immersive ceremony filled with song, dance, body percussion, clap sticks, mama lima (yidaki) on Larrakia Country and so on.
This is largely how our continent understood and received humans prior to colonisation. Energy was organised, recalled and replenished through songlines. Some static, some moving. If you knew the songs you could take your place as a dynamic nodal point, nested within and held by Country. Where to bury the fish bones because the plants told you where the calcium was needed in the soil. How to move safely from one place to another by more static geographic features.
Songlines criss-crossed and held our land, sky and waters in self -perpetuating vibrational, reciprocal cycles of energy. Humans singing up health of Country; land, sky and water and Country loving us up in a life affirming weave. This dance of love enabled Aboriginal people to survive and thrive through two ice ages and polar caps melting and refreezing.
Having just returned from Aotearoa, I’m delighted to learn that the Matariki time is heralded by the Seven Sisters constellation appearing in the night sky. I enjoyed their nation’s second public holiday for the Maori New Year this visit. It is exciting to see their embrace by recognising we all benefit from leaning into First Nations ways of Knowing, Being and Doing. The public holiday falls well into the cosmic event, as it needs to be written into 2D schedules.
This is the potential, challenge and opportunity we have today. To spiritualise material:
materialise spirit. Weave between hard edges and the less tangible.
Wrap bird man wings around fish woman bodies and mutually co-evolve.
‘In ‘straya we are called to vote in a referendum. While my personal views happily remain my own (from a sometimes over-sharer thanks are not needed- I know why this is necessary). I know the sun will still rise the day after, the birds will still warble to seduce the dawn and the dingoes whiskers will be attuned to that day and the days, weeks and months that follow. From our perspective we experience a dawn –but the Sun is constant.
With deepest respect and gratitudes to warriors in my lineage and your lineage, I’m choosing to direct my finite energy, love and life resources to things that light me up. Opposing the perspectives of those that differ from me is not one of those things. Not while there are humans and more than human kin to discover, love and explore. As part of the beloved, living community or entangled web of life I invite you to become intimate with what lights you up as well. Let’s rest and pause with each other as we vibrationally attune to living systems. Whiskers tingling!!
Yawoh beloveds
Alana Marsh is a Meriam woman, she is a conscious link in the chain of humanity as a Regenerate and Wayapa Wuurrk practitioner and trainer. She is also a part of the First Nations Steering Group for Regenerative Songlines.
Credits: I send a vibration of love and gratitude to all the parts of my existing Beloved Living Community. I’m excited to meet those who may sprinkle future magic on me and we are waiting for you! Ak āśad ā ka, a mutual Regenerate for your support to have me arrive at this point of coherence.
Lyn, Kevin and all the magical beings at the Dingo Sanctuary in Toolern Vale; Kapu Esso or big, big thanks. You can read more here, please support their weave into modernity dingofoundation.org
The year of 2019 was big for me, not only did I meet Pumba and visit Aotearoa for the first time, I became a Regenerate. Swoon with us, as we transform the way humans inhabit the Earth. www.regenerat.es/about
Big love Wayapa family. We are all part of it already, maybe just don’t realise wayapa.com
Mob: Guguu Yalanji and Koko Lamalama
I speak of my nana Georgina’s Buru (country) through art. Much of Guguu Yalanji is madja (rainforest) in the julay (daintree) and jalun (sea).
Through digital art, I speak of the devastating impact of racism on my mind, body and soul. ‘The body never forgets’ is a piece that captures my battle with anxiety, the result of racially violent workplaces and a life in the colony. The colony is brutal and there are triggers all around me. This piece represents my DNA. My trauma now mixing with the intergenerational trauma passed down. Granny Jinny was stolen from Lamalama country to be a slave as a child. Her son’s pop Silas stolen to Yarrabah. Nanna Georgina stolen from Guguu Yalanji country as a child to Yarrabah. Their life, and that of my aunts and uncles under the oppressive and racially violent ‘protection’ regime.
My DNA also carries staunch black women, who resisted, fought, protested, agitated. Warrior women is part of my DNA that I pass down to my descendants to ensure they live a sovereign life.
Through digital art I speak of re-framing what it is to live sovereign in the colony. My ‘Freedom’ piece reflects a move from actively trying to change the colony to be less brutal on blak bodies, to convince them to decolonize their racist structures and institutions. To appeal to them to see our humanity. Because they will not, and do not want to change.
Freedom is me stopping engaging with racial structures that so violently harm me. To instead live my life, free. Free from hope. Because hope serves the oppressor, to keep people in a state of hopelessness, and hopefulness that never occurs.
Free to be me. Angry, fully of rage for all that I have endured, that my family has endured, and my brothers and sisters endure. Free to speak my mind, without fear of repercussions, from those white tears, white whispers that she’s one of those ‘difficult’ black women.
Free to choose who I work with, how I work with them, and most importantly, how they work with me. Free to surround myself with black people who lift me up, who bring me joy. Freedom is my nana’s bubu, Yalanji country, the maja (rainforest). Lush, vibrant, organisms, materials, plants, animals, insects, ants, birds, ground, rivers, sea and sky existing in harmony. Yalanji people living in harmony, in symbiosis, respectfully with our creations.
While I do not live and work on my nana’s country, it lives in me, guiding me, talking to me, giving me strength to live a life of freedom.
My other art form is recycling and upcycling materials. Human consumption is having devastating and lethal impacts on country. Plastics, clothing, food and more waste is choking our planet.
“Australia, best before colonisation” is made out of recycled coffee cup lids and bread tags shaped as Australia.
“Spill the tea” uses recycled teapots. I add phrases to the teapots to speak of black humour, identity, politics, activism, solidarity, sovereignty, black love and more.
Over cups of tea I listened to Nan talk about being stolen as a little girl from Yalanji country, from her family to Yarrabah. Over cups of tea I listened to the activism of mum, Aunty Nannette and Aunty Marie. Their fight for services, Niku Jowan, Aboriginal Legal Aid in Gimuy (Cairns), Aboriginal Women›s Group and alongside Aunty Rose who created Mookai Rosie supporting pregnant mums from the Cape who came to have their babies in Cairns.
Over cups of tea I listened to mum and Aunty Paula talk about their lives growing up in Yarrabah and Cairns. I was angry at all they endured. I was inspired by their determination. I was resolved to continue their legacy.
Over cups of tea I sit with my sisters as we help each other heal through the trauma of the colony, daily racism and discrimination. We hold space for each other in our rage against those titles thrown at us ‹angry black women, shouty› for we dare to speak out. We gossip. We laugh so loud the neighbours complain (brrrrrtttt).
Over cups of tea my children learn the brutality of what I and those around me endure in
the colony, the brutality of our family and community histories. Over cups of tea, we keep those stories alive, we never forget.
Over cups of tea I feel black love, laughter, sovereignty and connections, and the tea is ALWAYS proppa strong!!!
Art is healing for me as a way to celebrate my blackness and sovereignty, to honour those who came before me, to empower those who will came after. Art is protest, political, provoking and disruptive. It tells the true story of colonisation, the pain and trauma, the survival and resistance.
My art speaks of protecting country as country lives in us, it is a part of us. While colonisation removed Nanna and Pop from country, country remained in them. Passed down through mum and to me. I pass country on to my children. It lives in our DNA. It lives in our memory. It lives in our acts of sovereignty. An invisible thread that has journeyed, forced and purposeful, across many nations, connecting and intertwining with other mob.
Cover piece, “Rise”, represents Global warming, rising emissions, rising temperatures, rising greed, rising sea levels, violent storms, flooding, fires and drought. Our animals critically endangered.
Moon - rising each night, since time immemorial. Untouched by humans. The moon we see tonight is the same moon our ancestors saw and slept under. It reminds us where we come from and where we are going.
Kookaburra is special to me, they are ancestors visiting, warning, comforting, celebrating. They speak to me when they laugh, but also when they are silently watching me.
The Ulysses butterfly - rare to catch a glimpse. You can spend your whole life looking for one and never see one. And so they more are precious than any material possessions. Woman is me, mum, nanna, aunties, sisters. Our adorned skirt, our story lines, our roots, our connections. Intricate and complex. We rise as warriors to protect our lands, sea and sky.
Our September 1994 edition responded to the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People. scan for full size
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