BY JIM GREEN
ADELAIDE — Mrs Eileen Brown and Mrs Eileen Wingfield were announced as winners of the prestigious Goldman Prize for the Environment on April 15 for their role in fighting the federal government's plan for a national radioactive waste dump near Woomera in South Australia.
The Goldman Award is considered the "green Nobel prize" and is given annually to environmental activists from six geographic areas. Mrs Brown and Mrs Wingfield won the award in the Islands and Island Nations category, and will share US$125,000 (A$207,000) in prize-money.
Mrs Brown, a Yankunytjatjara/Antikarinya elder from Coober Pedy, and Mrs Wingfield, a Kokatha elder now living in Port Augusta, are members of the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta — a council of senior Aboriginal women based in Coober Pedy. The Kungka Tjuta have for the past five years been running a campaign — Irati Wanti (The Poison, Leave It) — against the nuclear dump.
"Our job is to care for the country; doesn't matter who it is, Aboriginal, Non-Aboriginal", a statement from the Kungka Tjuta said. "We are strong old ladies. We will keep fighting."
The Kungka Tjuta are survivors of the 1950s atomic tests at Maralinga and Emu Field. "All the old people died and people had sores everywhere, stomach trouble and everything", said Mrs Wingfield in the April 15 Adelaide Advertiser. "A lot of people got sick and a lot of people died and this poison, they're still mucking about with it."
The Advertiser argued in an April 15 editorial: "Half a century on, these two women have lived with the lethal impact and the Berlin Wall of denial that followed Maralinga. Their misgivings [about the dump] are the misgivings of the overwhelming majority of their fellow South Australians. If only this award would be accompanied by federal government acceptance that their dump decision is unfair and unwarranted."
On January 26, Mrs Brown was awarded an Order of Australia for "preservation, revival and teaching of traditional Anangu culture and as an advocate for Indigenous communities in central Australia".
The Senate passed a resolution on March 5 which "points out to the prime minister the hypocrisy of the government in giving an award for services to the community to Mrs Brown but taking no notice of her objection, and that of the Yankunytjatjara/Antikarinya community, to its decision to construct a national [nuclear waste] repository on this land".
On or before May 9, federal environment minister David Kemp will rubber-stamp the environmental impact statement (EIS) supporting a dump near Woomera (a draft of his decision has been leaked). Kemp has rejected science minister Peter McGauran's preferred site next to a missile testing range on the Woomera Prohibited Area, so McGauran will be left to choose between two sites east of Woomera, one on land owned by mining giant WMC, the other on pastoral land owned by the Pobke family.
Once the government has rubber-stamped the EIS supporting a dump near Woomera, it intends to use compulsory land acquisition powers to seize control of the site, annulling native title rights in the process.
An April 14 letter from the environment department's indigenous advisory committee to Kemp notes: "The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, senior Aboriginal women of north SA, fundamentally oppose this nuclear waste dump which they see as the imposition of poison ground onto their traditional lands. The Kokatha people, as registered native title claimants, oppose the nuclear waste dump and the intended acquisition and annulment of their native title rights and interests.
"Throughout the EIS process ... the Native Title claimants and other community members feel that there has not been adequate consultation. Traditional owners have also not been able to find out about the intended legal approach of the Commonwealth Government in carrying out key aspects of the proposed project."
The government's approach to consultation was spelt out in a document leaked last year. "Tactics to reach Indigenous audiences will be informed by extensive consultations currently being undertaken ... with Indigenous groups", says the department of education, science and training's "Communication Strategy". In other words, sham consultation is being used as an opportunity to fine-tune the government's pro-dump propaganda.
Late last year the federal government tried to buy-off Aboriginal opposition to the dump with a crude divide-and-rule tactic. Three native title claimant groups — the Kokatha, Kuyani and Barngala — were offered $90,000 to surrender their native title rights, but only on the condition that all three groups agreed. Two of the groups — the Kokatha and Barngala — refused, so the government's ploy failed.
For more information on the Kungka Tjutas and their battle against the planned dump, visit: <http://www.iratiwanti.org>.
From Green Left Weekly, May 7, 2003.
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