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Australian Aboriginals’ legal challenge to planned nuclear waste dump

Aboriginal group challenges planned nuclear dump in court, Sydney Morning Herald LINDSAY MURDOCH DARWIN, June 4, 2010 ABORIGINAL traditional owners have initiated a Federal Court legal challenge to plans by the federal government to build Australia’s first national radioactive waste dump near Tennant Creek, in the Northern Territory.Mark Lane Jangala, a senior elder of the Ngapa clan, says he and many other senior elders were not consulted about the nomination of their land…..

‘I want to look after my country and dreaming, look after the sacred sites I am responsible for and to make sure my children are raised properly in the country,” Mr Jangala said yesterday.

The traditional owners have instructed a legal team that includes the lawyers George Newhouse and Julian Burnside, QC, and lawyers from Maurice Blackburn to begin proceedings challenging the government and the Northern Land Council, which nominated the site on behalf of one Ngapa clan group.

The offer of the land in return for one clan receiving $12 million in cash and other benefits has bitterly divided Aboriginal family groups in the Tennant Creek region.

The government and the land council have refused to make public an anthropological report the land council says shows that one clan owns the nominated 1.2 square kilometre site 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek.

Aboriginal group challenges planned nuclear dump in court

June 5, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, Legal