Northern Territory traditional owners with local activists at the Living Kaurna Cultural Centre, Warriparinga

FROM THE HEART, FOR THE HEARTLAND


Mt Everard traditional owner Audrey McCormack

In mid-June, the Northern Territory Traditional Owners Speaking Tour, "From the heart, for the heartland", kicked off in Adelaide. Hosted by Friends of the Earth Adelaide, the main event of the speakers 3-day stay was a speaking event attended by a 100 people, and co-hosted by the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre at UniSA.


Muckaty traditional owner Dianne Stokes

The speakers, Audrey McCormack from Mt. Everard, Mitch from Harts Range, Dianne Stokes from Muckaty, Donna Jackson (Larrakia Nations) and Natalie Wasley from the Arid Lands Environment Centre in Alice Springs, described their campaign to protect traditional country from Federal plans to impose a nuclear waste dump on the NT.


Donna Jackson, Larrakia Nations and Top End Aboriginal Conservation Alliance

The speaking delegation met with members and representatives from the local Kaurna community, non-government organisations, politicians and federal candidates, before continuing their journey to Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney.


Mitch, Harts Range



Recordings of the speeches are available for radio or private use, contact Friends of the Earth Adelaide for more details. All photos by Kathy Whitta.

More information at http://www.no-waste.org/

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Owners warn of tremors at nuclear waste dump site
Andra Jackson, The Age, June 20, 2007

TREMORS have twice been felt in a proposed Northern Territory site for a nuclear waste dump site, according to Aboriginal owners.

"The last one registered 2.5 on the Richter scale," traditional owner and Warramunga-Warlmanpa woman Dianne Stokes from the Muckaty Land Trust told a meeting of non-government organisations in Melbourne on Monday night.

Two weeks ago, the other members of the trust — with the backing of the Northern Land Council — secretly negotiated a deal under which the Federal Government would pay $12 million to use the 2241-square-kilometre Muckaty Station as Australia's first national nuclear waste dump.

Ms Stokes, an elected spokeswoman for the Warramunga and Warlmanpa tribes, said the deal was made by just one of the 16 family groupings represented on the trust.

The Northern Land Council failed to listen to the other families, she said.

Ms Stokes, a mother of six, was one of four traditional owners of four proposed nuclear waste sites in the Northern Territory who spoke at a public meeting at Melbourne's Trade Hall Council on Monday night.

"I came here with all my spirits from my ancestors to keep my country alive," she said.

Ms Stokes, who lives just half an hour's drive from the site of a proposed nuclear waste dump at Muckaty, said it would kill the area environmentally and culturally.

The surrounding country was a source of bush tucker and a place of burials in both the ground and trees, which were home to ancestral spirits, she said.

Priscilla Williams, a member of the Hart Range community, the site of another proposed dump, said the community closest to Muckaty Station had a primary school that got its water from a river which ran around the proposed site.

While the Federal Government had insisted there had never been an accident with a nuclear waste dump anywhere, "we're worried about what will happen if our water gets poisoned because we get it from under the ground", Ms Williams said.

The delegation briefed the Wilderness Society and called on state premiers to oppose a national nuclear waste dump.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/owners-give-nuclear-waste-dump-warning/2007/06/19/1182019116363.html