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Australian Aboriginal people oppose expansion of nuclear industry

Traditional owners in the Flinders Ranges say nuclear waste dump threatens cultural heritage ABC NORTH AND WEST MICHAEL DULANEY Traditional owners in the Flinders Ranges say a Federal Government nuclear waste dump could destroy significant cultural heritage and countless sacred sites around a permanent spring. The lush vegetation and birdlife along Hookina Creek, 30 kilometres north of Hawker in South Australia, stands out even among the imposing space and scale of the central Flinders Ranges. Its permanent waters are fed by aquifers that bubble up to feed ‘an oasis’ of reeds and large eucalypts bursting from the dry heat and dust of the pastoral landscape.

It is an area integral to the lives of the Adnyamathanha people for generations and whose presence has left a rich cultural and archaeological record along the creek.

These waters are also just a few kilometres from Wallerberdina, a cattle station near Barndioota partly-owned by former Liberal senator Grant Chapman.

It is also one of six sites nominated to host Australia’s first nuclear waste dump.The Adnyamathanha people, who manage the Yappala Indigenous Protected Area which shares a boundary with Barndioota, said they were “shocked” by the prospect of storing Australia’s low and intermediate level nuclear waste so close to a significant cultural site.

Traditional owner Regina McKenzie said the facility would jeopardise their links to a place important for the present — a place where her children have learnt to swim and the family comes to camp — as well as the past, as seen in the tools, paintings and storylines that mark the area.

“The emotional stress we’re feeling is off the charts,” Ms McKenzie said. “We’re still the custodians here; we’ve always looked at it that way.”

The Adnyamathanha people are also worried about the risk from large floods known to hit the area, and elder Enice Marsh pointed out damage around the creek caused by the last flood a decade ago.

Ms Marsh said she feared the loss of her people’s heritage in the region if rising flood waters mixed with radioactive waste. “If we’re going to have that poison stuff here, even if it’s a low-level situation, it’s just absolute madness to put something like this near somewhere that’s so special,” she said.

“It’s everything; it’s a type of importance that you would never be able to describe. “The connection to this land for Adnyamathanha people is their culture, their customs; it’s their identity.”…….

With a final decision from the Government due by the end of the year, Ms McKenzie said the Adnyamathanha people would continue to oppose the expansion of the nuclear industry into their traditional lands.

“We’re feeling as though we’re being forced to do something we don’t want to do,” she said. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-24/traditional-owners-flinders-ranges-fears-on-nuclear-waste-dump/7195030

February 26, 2016 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA, indigenous issues