Long walk at halfway point

BY SEAN HEALY

The “long walk” for Aboriginal justice, from Lake Eyre in South Australia to Sydney, has reached its halfway point. Starting from Lake Eyre on June 10, the walkers, who include Aboriginal elders and their supporters, young and old, have spoken with thousands of people along the way and are timing their arrival in Sydney to coincide with the Olympic Games and the indigenous protests planned for its opening day.

In an email posting which describes the land and its first people with wonderment, and what has happened to them with horror, one of the walkers, Honey Nelson, writes: “Inspired and led by Aboriginal knowledge, dedication to old and proper ways, to restoration of once-beautiful and bountiful Land, we carry smouldering sticks from the sacred Fire for Peace, lit at the shores of Lake Eyre and fanned at nightly campsites.

“Arabunna elder Kevin Buzzacott and others from adjacent Adnyamathanha (north Flinders Ranges) land walked and rode out ahead across the saltbush dunes, carrying the Aboriginal flag, with a stream of 30 walkers.”

Nelson writes of, “Bulldust-prickle-saltbush-clay-pan country, stripped by cattle, hopelessly unprofitable; locked gates protecting the mines deep within their boundaries, providing income from lease money and machinery contracts. Hostile leaseholders have refused us permission to cross hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of open country, have threatened to shoot us, called the willing police, confronted Kevin Buzzacott with the most outrageous of racist insults.

“It is only when you set foot across the `free range' of Australia that you knock into the barricades surrounding our gracious outback.”

By the time the walk arrives in Sydney, she says, “we should be a river of people! The firestick brings ... the message to sit down in peace, and to talk together, and to stop this state of siege and warfare upon people and country ...

“When you take up the privilege of walking properly upon the Land, and meeting eye to eye with the first people of the Land, then you can recognise the extremity of this relentless exploitation, spoilage, repression and the ruthless dispossession of gentle people.”

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