Since when have Australian governments taken advice from aboriginal people? In 1977 the Australian Government decided to allow mining and export of uranium deposits at ‘Jabiluka.’ They certainly did not listen to the Mirrar people of Jabiluka. Nor did they listen to one of the traditional owners Yvonne Margarula who was arrested for trespass on her own land at Jabiluka.
Long before this in the early 1950s Rum Jungle in the Northern Territory, Australia’s first large uranium mine supplied the UK and US atomic weapons programs and left a huge pollution problem. No public access is allowed.
Thanks to Justin O’Brien for his paper Canberra yellow-cake: the politics of uranium and how aboriginal land rights failed the Mirrar people. Justin O’Brien writes in the intro to his paper:
Jabiluka in particular has taken on iconic status for the Aboriginal land rights movement, the uranium industry, the environment movement and anti-nuclear lobby. At the heart of this battle, in the kernel of the conflict lies the failure of Aboriginal land rights legislation to deliver meaningful rights to the recognised traditional owners of the Ranger and Jabiluka project areas, the Mirrar people.
People were arrested on the streets of Brisbane many times for opposing uranium mining and export. Several people spent some time in jail in both Brisbane and Townsville jails on charges related to their opposition to uranium mining and export.
Australia’s major banks had shares in Uranium mining and export.
The democratic rights (the street marches) campaign in Brisbane bitterly opposed uranium mining in Qld and NT. Our struggle conducted the longest campaign of mass defiance in Australian history (with the exception of Aboriginal resistance struggles). It was a sorry defeat for activists to see how Australian uranium ended up in German, French, Japanese and Ukrainian reactors often with disastrous results despite assurances from the Fraser and Hawke governments that mining and export was safe. The damage to the environment at Ranger Uranium Mine is well documented. Now these governments are trying to dump the waste on aboriginal land despite strong opposition.
Now we stand on the brink of nuclear war powered (in part) by enriched uranium from Australian mines.- Ian Curr, Ed., 1 Jan 2024.
Gallery of images from the anti-uranium movement
