Muckaty people say no to nuclear waste dump

Five traditional Aboriginal owners from Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory brought the anti-uranium message to Sydney last week, to build support for the fight to stop a planned nuclear waste dump on their country.

The Muckaty traditional owners have never agreed to plans for a nuclear waste dump in their country and are prepared to take the campaign to the United Nations, citing that lack of consultation breaches the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Only one Ngapa clan ever agreed to the waste dump, while elders from five clans – Ngapa, Milwayi, Ngarrka, Yapayapa and Wirntiku – have consistently rejected it.

They dispute the Northern Land Council’s claim that one Ngapa clan has the exclusive rights to make a decision about land that crosses the dreaming of all five clans.

Muckaty traditional owner Dianne Stokes told a gathering of Sydney activists that she would keep fighting the waste dump until the day she died, or until it was stopped.

“We don’t want that dump to come to our land and give us a scare like a scarecrow. We want to stay in our land and be there forever,” Dianne told a public meeting at the Fire Brigades Union last Tuesday.

“There wasn’t any consultation with us; that’s why we’re making a big fuss about it,” she said.

“We don’t want anyone to do this to us. It’s not the middle of nowhere, it’s not nothing, it’s our country.”

Muckaty elder Doris Kelly said the dump would desecrate ground that was used for traditional things.

“The government is still humbugging in giving us our land back,” she said.

“We don’t want this dump; we use this ground for sacred things.”

The traditional owners were speaking at a screening of a new film by Eleanor Gilbert, Muckaty Voices, which is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcuNpT84Ovo

Greens’ senator Scott Ludlum said it was time to stop having a conversation about which remote community should host radioactive waste.

“We still have ministers who believe this is terra nullius,” Mr Ludlum said.

The Rudd Government announced in February that it would impose a national radioactive waste dump at Muckaty, 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek.

Labor is breaking a promise it made in the 2007 election campaign to reverse Howard Government legislation on the waste dump.

Anti-nuclear campaigner from the Australian Conservation Foundation David Sweeney said there was a need to build a strong and broad based community movement to make this waste dump untenable.

His comments that the election focus on boat people was missing the point, received raucous applause.

“The boats we should be stopping are the ones filled with yellow cake and nuclear waste,” Mr Sweeney said.

A group of Sydney anti-uranium waste dump activists, the creatively named Yellow Brick Road Collective, are departing this week on a 3376 kilometre tour from Lucas Heights to Muckaty – stopping at towns along the potential nuclear waste transport route.

State Secretary of the Fire Brigade Employees Union Jim Casey said transporting nuclear waste 3736 kilometres across the country meant that emergency response workers would be put at increased risk, as they would be first on the scene to clean up any accidents.

“We need saner alternatives,” he said.