Plans to build a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory are still unresolved, with four communities still on the Commonwealth's shortlist. 

A decision is expected to be made next year but locals say they've had little consultation about what the future could hold.

"What they're trying to tell us is that their plan to have uranium sites on these lands is quite safe, nobody is going to be affected. Well, I would rather not wait to see if anybody is affected", says traditional owner Kath Martin.

Join Living Black's Kris Flanders as he visits some of the proposed dump sites and hears why locals are becoming increasingly concerned.

TRANSCRIPT: 

VOICEOVER: This land is special to Kath Martin. 

She's grown up here at Mt Everard - 40 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs - with the knowledge of bush medicine and her ancestor’s dreaming stories. 

KATH MARTIN: As my old grandfather told me that you must keep the land good, he told me where I could get food on this land, where I could go and where I couldn't go and you've got to keep it like that for your children and their children and that is what we must strive to do all the time is to preserve the land for the next generation. 

VOICEOVER: But for the past four years, the Arrente people have lived in fear of a changing landscape...

Mt Everard - which they call Alteera in local language - is being considered as a nuclear dump site.

KATH MARTIN: what they're trying to tell us is that their plan to have uranium sites on these lands is quite safe, nobody is going to be affected, well I would rather not wait to see if anybody is affected, that's why I'll fight this to the end. 

VOICEOVER: And she's not the only.

Living Black spoke to locals at all of the Territory's four proposed nuclear sites; including Harts Range, Muckaty Station and Fishers Ridge. Most are against the plan.

Their main concerns are: damage to the environment, their spirituality, culture, bush medicine and the potential health effects. They say they've received little information from authorities about the dump sites.


MITCH (TRADITIONAL OWNER HARTS RANGE): This stuff is so dangerous and so poisonous that it's not allowed to be next to a metropolitan city area, so if it's that dangerous for white people living down south, indigenous people living down south why is it so safe when it gets further away from them? Is it because those voters have more rights than us voters in the Territory? 

VOICEOVER: But the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation - the primary agency responsible for Australia's radioactive material - says the site would only contain low level nuclear waste.

DR. RON CAMERON 
Low level waste is the sort of waste that we generate from a laboratory, so sometimes its gloves and bits of paper and clothing which is a little bit contaminated. Other times its bits of equipment or laboratory waste and we either compact it right down or fill it up with concrete, depending on the type of waste. But it's low level because the activity is low, we're standing right next to some drums now and it's perfectly safe to do so. 

VOICEOVER: Tennant Creek is a six hour drive north of Alice Springs. 

A further 120 kilo-metres away is Muckaty Station.

It too has been earmarked as a possible dump site.

Resident Dianne Stokes and her family are angry that they don't know more about it.

DIANNE STOKES (TRADITIONAL OWNER MUCKATY STATION): Well the fact is what we're worried about is the stuff we were told that it's not good to have on our land and the things we're worried about is our country, our beautiful land, our mother nature. We are very sad about what's going to come back to our country. 

I'm very disappointed, they didn't come to us in the proper way; they didn't come to consult all the traditional owners of the land to find out. 

VOICEOVER: Muckaty Station is the only site under consideration that doesn't sit on Defence Force land.

It means if this site is chosen, the community would receive a compensation package, tipped to be worth millions.

NATALIE WASLEY: What I think is unfortunate about this is that it's been offered in the form of roads, housing and education, which is the basic rights of anyone around the country should be getting for their community without this toxic trade off of a radioactive dump. 

VOICEOVER: But before any decision is made, which is expected next year, the federal government has to consider a number of things...

Environmental assessments, community consultation, and honouring its election promise to get rid of the Commonwealth Radioactive Waste Management Act.

In its current form, the act doesn't give the territory government a say on where the waste site will inevitably be built.

But the federal government wants to introduce new legislation that would give the territory the chance to negotiate, albeit with the Commonwealth having the final say.

MARTIN FERGUSON (FEDERAL RESOURCES MINISTER): It will be repealed, that is an election commitment. But that doesn't take away our responsibility as a Government on behalf of the Australian community to select a site to actually store our low and medium level waste. Once we pursue that site selection process then I can guarantee that any Indigenous community that could be affected by such a recommendation that there will be full and proper consultation. 

VOICEOVER: Anti-nuclear campaigners say even low level waste isn't safe.

NATALIE WASLEY: I think the government need to be upfront and honest about this waste dump.

This is both a low level and a long term intermediate level waste dump so this is the most highly radioactive materials that are being produced in Australia that would be transported to whatever site is announced. 

VOICEOVER: Until that announcement is made, all the traditional owners can do, is wait.

They're not about to back down.

KATH MARTIN: My message to the Government would be no more waste dumps, that means no more uranium mines. 

MITCH: Our land isn't for us to give away, it isn't for us to sell, it isn't for us to rape and pillage. Our land is there for substance, to give us our culture, to give us our law, to maintain our waterholes, our stories and our links to the land. 

DIANNE STOKES: I'm not a trouble maker in this country, I'm fighting against the waste dump and I need the waste dump to not be put in the Muckaty region. 

VOICEOVER: Just like the elders that came before them, these traditional owners want to pass on their culture and their country to future generations.