Uranium Mining and Aboriginal People

By Vincent Forrester

I follow the culture of my people. We belong to the land. We are the caretakers for the land. Our lifetime on this earth is only a blink in time, so our lifetime is spent protecting and caring for this land for future generations.

A leader of an American Indian tribe has this to say about uranium : "Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the child of the earth. People did not weave the web of life; they are merely strands in it. Whatever they do to the web, they do to themselves".

I want to tell you how I feel about uranium and how the whole nuclear cycle affects our land, our lives, our traditions.

In preparation for this forum I have read widely and consulted widely, but rarely have I seen or heard a word from the people who I believe to be among the worst affected by the nuclear cycle : my people, the Aboriginal owners of Australia.

It is our land which white miners rip apart to extract the poisonous yellowcake, and it is on our land where they dump the polluted tailings.

It is on Aboriginal land that the British, with support from the Australian government of the time, exploded deadly nuclear weapons, with no regard for our people, their land or their future.

And it is on Aboriginal land that the government is examining the possibility of dumping deadly radioactive waste in untried synthetic rock.

I say to you, when you consider your attitudes to Australian involvement in the uranium industry, that you think first about what you are doing to our people.

Our Environmental Concerns

I turn now to some of our grave concerns about the controls on environmental damage resulting from uranium mining. For example :

But what do Aboriginal people of Arnhem Land know of these dangers. Our people in Arnhem Land and throughout Australia are not sufficiently informed about the extent of damages occurring from uranium mining. Nor do we know the extent to which they are being exposed to radiation in the atmosphere. Nor do we know the extent of contamination already present in the food chain.

There is simply no proper information given to Aboriginal people living in the area about the effects of uranium mining on the land. The monitoring scientists have made no attempt to interpret their findings to the effected Aboriginal people.

The Ranger Inquiry said that a certain amount of environmental impact into the area was to be expected. The impact is now being realised. There are scores of scientists monitoring and making recommendations of what is the best way of dealing with the problem of the Ranger tailings.

The Ranger Inquiry recommended that all contaminated waters should be kept on the site. Both Ranger and Nabarlek (now closed) are looking at ways to get rid of the waste waters.

The local Aboriginal community have no involvement in this and must depend on the government or on statutory bodies dependent on royalties from uranium mining.

This dependency, I believe, is a form of ransom. White Australia says to the under-serviced, fledgling outstation movement, "You can have money for Toyotas, for bores, to help you set up", but if mining stops, the money stops too.

We must break this dependency on mining activity for money for essential services. It is morally bankrupt. No Aboriginal community should be put in the position of deciding on development that is tied to the uranium industry.

Until all Aboriginal service needs are met by direct grants from federal treasury, our people have little choice in this matter.

No real substantial study has been done on the radiation levels in Aboriginal people's diets in the uranium regions. We can only guess what amount of radiation they have in their bodies or in the food chain.

Aboriginal people in Arnhem Land and in Aboriginal Australia are concerned about radioactive safeguards. Aboriginal anxiety has been growing ever since the spillage at Nabarlek which was not reported immediately to the community or with factual details.

Without this information, how are we to make a proper decision. It is not correct to say that any Aboriginal community has made a real decision on uranium mining until all the facts are presented to all of our people, and they must be presented in Aboriginal languages in a manner that has meaning to our people.

Tailings Can Bring Ecological Disaster

For each tonne of ore mined only three kilograms of yellowcake [uranium oxide - U3O8] are recovered. So the Ranger mine with an annual production of 3,000 tonnes of yellowcake can only mean that millions of tonnes of radioactive tailings will be produced each year.

Uranium tailings retain 80 per cent of the radioactivity of the excavated ore and this radioactivity will be emitted for thousands of years.

Tailings are considered to be a major source of pollution because they are readily dispersed by wind and rain. The tailings from the proposed Koongarra mine poses a greater threat to the environment, seepage and overflow from the tailings dam would pollute the unique Woolwonga Wildlife sanctuary in the Kakadu National Park.

Rum Jungle was abandoned in 1971. The tailings dam has been breached by monsoonal rains and the Finniss River has been polluted, by toxic elements and radioactive materials. Pollution extends over 100 square kilometres. Aboriginal people there cannot use the land any more.

The taxpayer is now paying $16 million to fix up only half of this problem. The [mining] company will not accept any responsibility for the damage they have done to our people and our land.

In the Northern Territory we have tailings dams in an erratic climate. Contamination of a wide ecosystem is possible. Wind and rain can disperse radioactive and non-radioactive waste into the whole food chain.

A failure of the tailings dam at either the Ranger or the [proposed] Jabiluka mine would bring nothing less than ecological disaster to the land.

Dust particles from the tailings very soon get into the ground water which in turn becomes contaminated. Once this happens it is very hard to clean a river system of its radioactivity.

Radioactive gases from the submerged or wetted-down tailings can travel great distances. People can breathe in this gas up the 80 kilometres downwind from the tailings. It has already been proven that miners working in uranium mines are threatened with lung cancer.

All this affects our people living near uranium mines. It causes the greatest biological damage if it gets into the human food chain.

Anyone living near tailings from uranium mines will be breathing in radioactive dust which emits alpha radiation. This type of radiation poses the greatest threat to human life.

The lifespan of radioactive waste materials from tailings may be 250,000 years. How will this affect the environment and our culture over all those years?

The Water Supply of my People

The vast underground water reserve serves vast arid regions. It is the water supply of many of my people.

The Federal government last year approved uranium mining at Roxby Downs in South Australia despite the ALP policy to "phase out the uranium industry".

A shaft has been sunk through an Aboriginal sacred site and several other sites have been bulldozed to put in roads and a pipeline corridor.

The pipeline corridor will supply 33 million litres of water to the mine every day. It is unknown how this will affect the underground water supply and plants dependent on the current water patterns.

Radioactive Wastes

Synroc is a method for the storing of nuclear waste. It is being developed by a Professor Ringwood [of the Australian National University]. I am concerned whether Synroc is a safe method for waste storage.

I have recently read an article in Australia Habitat entitled "Certainty and Uncertainty in the Disposal of Nuclear Waste", by Dr E.H. Hirsch, who is a physicist experienced in the problem of nuclear waste. He questions the use of Synroc at this stage.

Whatever the result of the Synroc storage method, or any other method of storage, I don't want nuclear waste stored in my people's land. If anything should happen I believe it will bring about disastrous consequences to our underground water supply.

I believe that areas near the Musgrave Ranges are being examined as a possible suitable storage area by the Australian government. They are considering Aboriginal land as a waste land. We do not consider ourselves or our hard fought-for land as a national sacrifice.

This is my land. We need the information and all Aboriginal people should have the right to decide what befalls us and our future generations.

The Navajo's Experience

There is a very real water problem to the Indian people of North America in areas where large tailings dams have resulted from uranium mining.

Navajo Indians living in uranium districts now find that amongst their people there are many birth defects. They find there are many Indian miscarriages. A lot of children are born underweight. Many children have learning difficulties. A number of children are deformed.

The Indian people don't know if these things are happening because of the men who worked in the mines, or from the explosions of nuclear bomb tests, or from eating contaminated food, or drinking contaminated water.

But they do know that these things are happening to people living near tailing piles. It has already been established in America that :

Exposure to radiation in a uranium environment can cause a number of early ageing problems. It can be the cause of liver problems, respiratory diseases and heart diseases. It can cause a person to be very susceptible to infectious diseases and override the body's natural immune system.

Maralinga

We, the Aboriginal people of Central and South Australia have had the frightening experience just as recently as 20 years ago of the dreamtime snake awakening and shaking his tail. This brought destruction to the land and its caretakers.

The survivors of a bomb test in Japan are often shunned by those wishing to marry because of fears that their children could inherit mutations. Will this also become the fear of my people when exercising aboriginal customary laws relating to marriage ?

What will happen to Aboriginal people affected by the nuclear bomb testing at Maralinga?

Or, for that matter, to many thousands of Australian citizens of inland and northern Australia who became targets of the scientists who ordered bombs to be exploded when the winds could only take the nuclear fallout on an inland journey of radiation contamination?

Royal Commission into British Nuclear Weapons Testing

The Pitjantjatjara Council called for a Royal Commission into the circumstances surrounding the nuclear tests in South Australia in the 1950s and '60s. Council representatives went to London to lobby over the issue. Leading the delegation was Yami Lester who lost his sight after the fallout cloud from the first Emu test descended on him and his people. A Royal Commission was set up in July 1984 under the presidency of Justice Jim McLelland. The Commission reported in November 1985.

The Pitjantjatjara and Yaknunytyara people believe that many of the deaths around this time were related to the fallout from the bombs. Clouds of fallout passed over and around them. (The Royal Commission found that an Aboriginal community at Wallatinna had been exposed to a black mist of radioactivity and that this could have caused harm to the people's health. The Commission also found that Aboriginal people had been denied access to their traditional lands and that the plutonium-contaminated areas at Maralinga must be cleaned up. In 1994 the British Government agreed to a limited clean-up whereby the plutonium- contaminated soil would be gathered into existing pits of radioactive rubbish where it would be 'fused' into a solid.)

No one told my people about the tests at the time and only now, after a barrage of leaks and statements, is the Australian government considering holding a full inquiry into the matter. But the full extent of cancers and other illnesses being suffered by my people may never be known.

Our land in the immediate test area may not be useable for 50,000 years. This is the same timespan widely believed by non-Aboriginal people to represent the existence of our culture in this country.

All this was caused by well-meaning scientists at the time who were unable to forecast the consequences of their actions. We have well-meaning scientists today who still cannot accurately predict the consequences of their actions when it comes to uranium.

The health of our people throughout Aboriginal Australia is already so poor that it cannot take any more damage. The continuing 200 years of exploitation of our lands and our existence must stop.

We wish to remind the Australian Labor Party of its election policy commitment to Aboriginal people on uranium mining. This policy states that :

"...The provision of Australian uranium to the world nuclear fuel cycle creates problems relevant to Australian sovereignty, the environment, the economic welfare of our people, and the rights and wellbeing of the Aboriginal people".

We demand that our rights and well-being are recognised. All of our people need to be fully and equally informed of the problems of mining uranium on our lands.

From a paper given to the Australian Labor Party, Northern Territory State Conference in Darwin in 1984. Vincent Forrestor was the chairperson of the Northern Territory National Aboriginal Conference.
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