Friday, 2 November, 2007

by Letter to editor
Nunatsiaq News

Keith Morrison is right to point out that there is an Aboriginal people in Australia - the Martu - that is considering allowing uranium mining on its traditional land ("Aussie aboriginal group supports uranium mining," letter, Oct. 19.)

But why would they do that, given that they had previously taken a strong position against uranium mining because "We don't want uranium from our country to hurt other peoples [or] the destruction of our homelands and country?" The answer may shock Canadians who haven't been to Australia and experienced the racism and discrimination that characterizes government-Aboriginal relations there.

The Martu were driven to the negotiating table by poverty. They are among the last Aboriginal people to come into contact with white people. Most Martu stopped living a traditional life only in the 1950s and 1960s, when the government rounded them up and relocated them to allow missile testing in the area. Today they are among the poorest of the poor.

As The Western Australian newspaper wrote recently, the Martu "want mining giant Rio Tinto's Kintyre uranium deposit on their traditional land to be developed to provide them with essential services that the state government has failed to deliver."

Some Martu have come to the conclusion that if they did a deal with Rio Tinto for uranium mining, then the royalties would allow them to pay for the schools, health clinics, public housing, and other services that white Australians receive as a matter of course.

As Clinton Wolf, the Martu leader closest to Rio Tinto, said recently, "We've got communities out there that have second or third-rate infrastructure, funerals every second week. We've got other issues like poor health, drug and alcohol abuse - the government seemed reluctant to assist..."

For information about an Australian Aboriginal people who have constantly opposed uranium mining on their land, see the website of the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation at mirarr.net.

Meanwhile, up in the Northern Territory, the federal government thought it had talked a remote Aboriginal people into using their traditional lands as a dump for waste from a research reactor in Sydney. Aboriginal women in South Australia have stopped the proposal, so the government went looking for a place, as the federal science minister charmingly put it, "some distance from any form of civilization."

The Ngapa people were offered a one-time payment of $11 million and $1 million to be spent on education in return for allowing their land to serve as Australia's first nuclear waste dump. One elder was quoted in the national newspapers as agreeing with the proposal, because the $12 million would "create a future for our children with education, jobs and funds for our outstation and transport." In other words, some Ngapa were desperate enough to trade their land for basic services that non-Aboriginal Australians take for granted - as a right of citizenship.

The offer has bitterly divided the Aboriginal people of the region. "There's been a lot of trouble... people arguing and calling others dickheads and things like that for giving away the land and destroying our culture," elder Dianne Stokes said.

Many of those who had previously agreed have now backed out, claiming that they had been rushed and pressured into agreeing to something that had not been properly explained to them.

Ms. Stokes was among a group of elders taken to the reactor as part of the sales pitch. "After four days in Sydney I fell for it... I said I supported the dump," she said. "They showed us videos about how safe it would be."

Ms Stokes said that after returning to the territory she became opposed to it when she "began to think, well, if it is so safe, why don't they put it in Sydney?"

Jack Hicks
Iqaluit