reprinted with permission from
Poison Fire, Sacred Earth,
TESTIMONIES, LECTURES, CONCLUSIONS,
THE WORLD URANIUM HEARING, SALZBURG 1992
pages 170-172
"Aboriginal Australians have lived in
Australia over 40,000 years. It has been a long
argued view of European anthropologists and
prehistorians that modern humanity migrated South
to Australia. This fails to explain, however, why
older forms of modern human beings have not been
found outside the continent. The legends and
religious beliefs of modern Aboriginal Australia
have no stories of migration. There is no evidence
of migration memories anywhere in our country. This
is a religious position taken by Aboriginal
Australians, and science has failed to refute it."
. . .
. . . In the
1950's and 60's, the British government tested
nuclear bombs at Maralinga, Monte Bello Island
and Emu Field. The fallout extended over a wide
area including Queensland. At that time my
father was working on the railroad in central
Queensland, where there is now a high rate of
leukemia in children.
. . . Most Aboriginal
people still have not had success in land
claims. Multinational mining companies are stifling many
claims. Uranium and other minerals were found
where Aboriginal communities were mostly located.
In the late 1960's, I learned about the
dangers of uranium mining in Mary Kathleen, a
desert town in Queensland, from my father. He
was the only source of information my family had. We
had no access to newspapers, radio or
television. He was very involved with the trades
and labor movement while working with the
railways. There was much opposition by railway
unions against the transport and export of Mary
Kathleen uranium, and in 1977, the Australian
Council of Trade Unions called for a ban on the
export of uranium. And like 1976, my father
became aware of the secret rail shipment of
uranium from Mary Kathleen on the Mount Isa
railroad. Uranium demonstrators delayed the
shipment for some time and publicity resulted on
the dangers of uranium mining. In 1980, there was
a theft of two tons of yellow cake from Mary
Kathleen. It was transported out of the mine in six
drums and later found in Sydney almost 5,000
kilometers away.
In the mid-1980's, my father died of
stomach cancer, although he lived a very healthy
lifestyle. As a midwife for the past 20 years,
working in the area of public health nationally
and internationally, I have witnessed an increase
in sterility, cancers, miscarriages, deformities and
other problems. It appears to be a general problem
globally. The present situation of Aboriginal
Australia is alarming. Many remote communities
lack clean running water, adequate housing and
proper sanitation. We represent one percent of the
national population but we count for up to 70
percent of prison inmates. Infant mortality is three
times higher than in the general population, and
the life expectancy is 20 to 25 years less.
The unemployment rate is three to five
times greater than the general population. We still
have diseases like leprosy and tracoma that some
Third World countries have eradicated. Alcoholism
is on epidemic levels which causes
family breakdowns and the loss of their cultural
identity. . . .
. . . And in closing,
not is all doom and gloom. I encourage my
indigenous sisters and brothers globally to
continue our struggle. We have survived and we
will survive, as we were all B.C. -- before Cook,
Columbus and Christ.
Gracelyn Smallwood
Gracelyn Smallwood, Australia. Master of Science
(in Health), registered nurse, midwife, member of
the Aboriginal Islander Tripartite Forum,
co-founder of the Indi-Genous Forum.
Thank you, Brothers and Sisters. I'd
like to thank The World Uranium Hearing for giving
me the privilege of being able to present today. I
have ten minutes to give you 200 years of
colonization of Indigenous Australia. So, I
commence by giving a quote from an Aboriginal woman
in my country, Jackie Huggins:
"Aboriginal Australians have lived in
Australia over 40,000 years. It has been a long
argued view of European anthropologists and
prehistorians that modern humanity migrated South
to Australia. This fails to explain, however, why
older forms of modern human beings have not been
found outside the continent. The legends and
religious beliefs of modern Aboriginal Australia
have no stories of migration. There is no evidence
of migration memories anywhere in our country. This
is a religious position taken by Aboriginal
Australians, and science has failed to refute it."
Before 1788, Aboriginal Australians
enjoyed a nomadic lifestyle where men, women
and children lived in harmony with each other
and the environment. Mother Earth was regarded
as sacred which everyone respected and did not
exploit. The healthy lifestyle changed dramatically
when the invaders arrived from England headed by
Captain Cook. The land was claimed by them through
a law that still exists today called "terra
nullius", meaning "no man's land". The British
government wanted to establish the penal colony
because of the overcrowding in their own country. It
was estimated that about one million
Australian Aborigines inhabited the country with
500 different tribes in 1788. Today, in 1992, 200
years later, there are 300,000 left. Many were
killed with guns, poisoned water holes and food,
and many died from diseases introduced by the
invaders. A document from the late 1700's
states: "Some convicts were allowed to have the weekends
free from the confines of their masters'
properties on the condition that they brought back
with them aboriginal scalps. These scalps were, in
fact, pairs of ears."
The remainder of the Aborigines were
placed on reserves and missions where white
management had total control over their
Aboriginal lifestyle. The hunted and gathered
foods were replaced with high carbohydrate
rations. Language and ceremonies were forbidden,
as it was seen as paganistic to the invaders'
superior, Christian values. The colonists brought
with them their social order and notion of
property, their birth rights and Christianity. With
their invisible luggage they brought their racial
prejudice. Aboriginal men were drastically losing
their role in society by being used to slave labour. The
women were used as domestics and sexual
partners for the white invaders. Raping and
killings continued as a sport. And I quote: "One
gorges at the Sunday afternoon manhunts of
sexual mutilation, of burying live Aboriginal
babies up to their necks in sand and kicking their
heads off after tying with a rape the severed neck
of the husband around the raped spouse."
Half cast children were being born and
many were sent away to welfare homes or to
other reserves far away and many did not
return home. The most systemic destruction
occurred in 1909 when about 5,300 Aboriginal
children were sent to Cootamundra Girls Training
School and Kinchelle Boys Home in Kempsey,
New South Wales, where they were given
training as domestics and farm hands. There was
an estimation that one in every six Aboriginal
children were taken away from their families in
that century, compared to the figure of one white
out of 300 to the white community.
In the 1800's, scientists around the world --
in particular Britain and Germany -- encouraged the
killing of Aboriginals for scientific research. Money
was actually paid for skeletons. Thousands of
graves were robbed, the British and
Australian scientists ran one of the biggest
graverobbing networks. Studies by an academic
researcher in Oxford indicated that the graves of
between 5,000 and 10,000 Aboriginals were
desecrated, their bodies dismembered to support
science. Recently discovered documents in
Brisbane confirm that Aboriginals were killed for
displays in museums. Presently, Dr. Robin Cox,
head of the archeological branch of the Natural
History Museum in London, has requested on
television that more Aboriginal bodies be sent to
his museum. Aboriginal Australians have called
for his dismissal.
Legislation came in three stages for
Aboriginals who were regarded not even as human
beings. First, there was a series of official
inquiries from 1845 to 1861 to investigate
conflicts between settlers and Aboriginals. Out of
this came the conclusion that it was best for both
black and white, that Aboriginal people be
separated from Europeans and live on small
reserves, where it was assumed that they would
eventually die out. The second stage was a
protection act that all Aboriginal people would be
under the control of the government rather than
the settlers. Often, in isolated areas the person in
charge was usually the local policeman. The third
stage was in the late 19th century, an enactment
of specific discriminative legislation. Between
1901 and 1911 all the states, including the
Northern Territory with the exception of
Tasmania, passed acts providing for Aboriginal
welfare. This legislation was summed up by a
researcher as "a system that confines the native
within a legal system that has more in common
with the born idiot than any other class of British
subjects".
Queensland, where I was born, has many
Aboriginal reserves. One which is called Palm
Island is notoriously known for brutal treatment of
Aboriginal people. Punishment for minor offences
was shaving childrens' heads bald and making
them parade in front of the community. And then
the children were locked up in dormitories. The
childrens' hair was their pride.
My father, a member of the Birrigubba
tribe, was taken away as a child and raised on
Palm Island. My grandfather was one of six brave
men from Palm Island who went on a
hunger-strike in 1957 for better conditions for
Aboriginal people. All six men were taken in
chains, with their families separated from each
other and relocated to other reserves. In the
1950's and 60's, the British government tested
nuclear bombs at Maralinga, Monte Bello Island
and Emu Field. The fallout extended over a wide
area including Queensland. At that time my
father was working on the railroad in central
Queensland, where there is now a high rate of
leukemia in children.
In 1967, a referendum was held where 90
percent of white Australians voted that Aborigines
become citizens in their own land. However,
Queensland was the only state not to abolish all
laws discriminating against Aboriginals. Many of
the South African apartheid laws were
actually modelled on the Queensland
Aborigines Act.
In 1971, an Aborigine artist, Harold
Thomas, designed the Aboriginal flag in the
colours red, black and yellow. Black for the
people, the red for the earth and the yellow for
the sun, the giver of life. In the early 1970's, the
Aboriginal bureaucracy was structured under the
federal Labor government. Money was allocated
for housing, health, schooling and various
projects. This was a form of compensation to try
to overcome the poverty among Aborigines. Most
of the funding went to white public servants in the
administration, and little reached the
grassroot-levels. Many of the white public servants
became experts in being Aboriginal. At this time
the Girynga people of the Northern Territory were
given some landrights. Since then there has been
much legislation and government inquiries into
landrights and heritage acts. Most Aboriginal
people still have not had success in land
claims. Multinational mining companies are stifling many
claims. Uranium and other minerals were found
where Aboriginal communities were mostly
located.
In the late 1960's, I learned about the
dangers of uranium mining in Mary Kathleen, a
desert town in Queensland, from my father. He
was the only source of information my family had. We
had no access to newspapers, radio or
television. He was very involved with the trades
and labor movement while working with the
railways. There was much opposition by railway
unions against the transport and export of Mary
Kathleen uranium, and in 1977, the Australian
Council of Trade Unions called for a ban on the
export of uranium. And like 1976, my father
became aware of the secret rail shipment of
uranium from Mary Kathleen on the Mount Isa
railroad. Uranium demonstrators delayed the
shipment for some time and publicity resulted on
the dangers of uranium mining. In 1980, there was
a theft of two tons of yellow cake from Mary
Kathleen. It was transported out of the mine in six
drums and later found in Sydney almost 5,000
kilometers away.
In the mid-1980's, my father died of
stomach cancer, although he lived a very healthy
lifestyle. As a midwife for the past 20 years,
working in the area of public health nationally
and internationally, I have witnessed an increase
in sterility, cancers, miscarriages, deformities and
other problems. It appears to be a general problem
globally. The present situation of Aboriginal
Australia is alarming. Many remote communities
lack clean running water, adequate housing and
proper sanitation. We represent one percent of the
national population but we count for up to 70
percent of prison inmates. Infant mortality is three
times higher than in the general population, and
the life expectancy is 20 to 25 years less.
The unemployment rate is three to five
times greater than the general population. We still
have diseases like leprosy and tracoma that some
Third World countries have eradicated. Alcoholism
is on epidemic levels which causes
family breakdowns and the loss of their cultural
identity. To further this insulting situation towards
Aboriginal society, we now have a black and a
white bureaucracy.
The federal government gave the power to
Aboriginal people to elect representatives, to
advise the government on Aboriginal affairs. This
advisory body called ATSIC, the Aboriginal and
Torres Straight Islanders Commission, is
continuing to disempower Aboriginal people as far
too much money is spent in the administrative
arm and very little reaches the grassroots-level.
An Indian Elder said in Canada three
weeks ago, and I quote: "We must educate the
indigenous people as well as the white people
about the dangers of the ugly nuclear industry. Some
are beginning to give the O.K. to mine on Aboriginal
land in order to deal with the poverty. They
must be told to leave uranium in the
ground." End of quote. Michael Mansell, an
Australian Aboriginal activist, summed up the
prospects of Aboriginal people in my country
when he stated: "The most crucial prerequisite to
empowering Aboriginal people is their desire and
capacity to put an end to their disadvantaged
situation and take control of their own lives. There
is no other way." The World Uranium Hearing will
hopefully unite us all to achieve this and to take
back our messages to our leaders and our people
to leave uranium in the ground. And in closing,
not is all doom and gloom. I encourage my
indigenous sisters and brothers globally to
continue our struggle. We have survived and we
will survive, as we were all B.C. -- before Cook,
Columbus and Christ.
Thank you.
Father John (Moderator)
Thank you, Gracelyn. She is telling us that the struggle still continues.
Could I get people from Maralinga please on the stage? John, could you continue, please?