I first met Treena Lenthall when she came to my house with Jim Dowling in the early 2000s. Treena was helping those charged with breaking into United States spy base at Pine Gap in Central Australia. She was supporting Jim Dowling, Donna Mulhearn, Adele Goldie, and Bryan Law with the preparation of a defence to Cold War charges under the Defence Special Undertakings Act (1952). As Kathy Kelly says Treena was “fresh, intelligent, friendly and energized“. My condolences to her partner, David, her son Omar and her friends and comrades. – Ian Curr, 4 April 2024.
Treena Lenthall passed away last week after her two year battle with cancer. She was an amazing women, mother and activist, partner to me in life and my committed activist filmmaking, closest and dearest friend to the many who knew and loved her.
Treena went to Balmoral High school, graduated in Social Work at Queensland Uni in 1994 and then completed her BA majoring in Peace and Conflict Studies (I bet that’s no longer on offer in today’s economic ‘rationalist’ world of Universities…).
Treena’s heart lay in Peace and Social Justice activism. After graduating,Treena lived in a shared house at West End, Brisbane. She was part of a Collective who worked to support marginalised people grappling with mental health and physical disabilities. The girlfriends she made then remain her best mates to this day and were at her wedding last week, surrounding her with love in her final hours.
Treena was inspired and warmed to former journalist-turned activist Dorothy Day in the United States who had converted from being a radical Leftie in the days of the Depression to putting her newly embraced Christianity to practical use as Christ had done, to help the Poor in the Bowery (lower Manhattan) and around the globe.
Treena flew out of Brisbane in 1996 and travelled to the United States by herself (aged just 23, winging it across America on Greyhound buses from LA to Washington DC and New York City). She stayed at various Catholic Worker houses in the US where she engaged in helping them in their daily routines of feeding the Poor, finding clothes and housing them. As she did for a brief stint at the Mullum Neighbourhood Centre before the cancer kicked in.
Treena really liked the Old Testament prophesy:
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. (Isaiah 2:4).
Catholic Worker activists in America with their sister activist group Plowshares, Treena in tow, engage in anti war actions (including protests at the Manhattan Project site in Nevada which developed the world’s first atom bomb). Standing up to American Power on their home soil really requires courage because their actions in threatening the State often carried stiff sentences of many years in gaol.
On return to Australia, Treena quickly jumped back into activist actions here. She was at the Jabiluka blockade of 1998. Treena and fellow activist Ciaron O’Reilly disabled a forklift used by the mining company to load yellowcake (uranium powder) for shipping to France, the US, China where it was used to make nuclear bombs and nuclear power. Against the wishes of the Mirrar people, the traditional owners of Kakadu, where the mine was plonked in the middle of a World Heritage National Park. (Only in Australia would you get such stark contradictions).
Treena and Ciaron waited until the police arrived to arrest them. Part of their credo as Plowshare activists is to stand their ground, take responsibility for their destructive actions on ‘property'(never people) and talk Truth to Power, rather than running away to escape.
Treena used my documentary Jabiluka to defend herself in a Northern Territory court. That’s how we first ‘met’. But not in person. Alas, the magistrate was not impressed by Treena’s stated convictions why she did it, nor by the convincing power of my documentary shown in open court. She was ordered to pay the mining company $2,000 to repair their forklift. Or go to gaol for two months. There was no way principled Treena was going to pay the mining company. So she went to gaol…and all that goes with it.
The NT gaols were pretty rough in the 90’s, overpopulated, many inmates, indigenous women. Treena won their respect and acted as their scribe, writing letters home to their loved ones and reading their letters back to them because most of the Aboriginal women were illiterate, even though some of them spoke four or five dialects of their own language.
When East Timor won its independence in 1999, Treena jumped one of the first UN flights from Darwin to Dili. She had campaigned for human rights for the East Timorese when living in Ireland and England and felt passionate about our nearest neighbour, so repressed by Indonesia.
Treena and I met in 2005 at the first protests against the US-Aust Defence Forces Talisman Sabre bi-annual military exercises (euphemistically called ‘War Games’ – but we both knew there is nothing playful or childishly innocent about enacting war on another country).
As highly respected American activist Kathy Kelly (who has smuggled medicine and clothes into Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen for starving kids) said of Treena, “I remember being wide-eyed with admiration when I first met Treena. She was so fresh, intelligent, friendly and energized.”
I think that sums up Treena to a T. Fresh, intelligent, sharp wit…friendly and energized. I was immediately besotted by her when I first met her at ‘the barricades’ in Rockhampton and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. Which has been my privilege and good fortune. Not nearly long enough however. She was 51 when she died.
We had been engaged for three years intending to marry. But Treena’s battle with cancer intervened. She put ALL of her strength and might into fighting that. Going with, but far beyond what western medicine modalities could offer – chemo, surgery, radio therapy. (See 12min video of our wedding: https://youtu.be/h-Cr5QTWJhI )
She told me in the last months of her life that if it was just her, she would accept her Fate. “I’ve had an incredible life, many experiences far beyond what most have. And wonderful people and friends I’ve met. I’m only going through all this for Omar’s sake. I don’t want to ‘abandon’ our son.” You didn’t abandon him my darling. He knows who his Mamma is and how valiantly you fought to stay around here for him, even when the pain was crippling.
There’s a celebration of Treena’s life this Thursday (April 4th) at our home where she tendered the gardens and brought up so commandingly our 14 year old son Omar who she has every reason to be so proud of. Omar and I were by her bedside at Lismore Base when she passed.
Treena died last week. Homage to her Thurs 11am NSW TIME.
from David. Bradbury.
Topic: David Bradbury memorial for Treena
Time: Apr 4, 2024 11am Sydney time
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David Bradbury
3 April 2024
I did not know Treena, but what an amazing life! Thank you Treena for your efforts to make this a better world.