Click to return to the Aboriginal Australia Room.
The companies could take it without paying the Aborgines for it. British
company RTZ now controls a one thousand square mile, (2,590 sq. Km) mining
lease over lands that were once the largest Aboriginal Reserve in Eastern
Australia - lands where Aboriginal people still live and were hunting and
gathering. RTZ took possession of this in the 1950s from Aboriginal tribess
that still spoke their own languages , still had all their culture
intact.P>
The Aboriginal people in the 1990s still hunt and gather on lands adjacent
to the mine, they still struggle to keep their culture, to survive. They
are bitterly fighting plans of RTZ's to further expand mining
.Albert Chavathun, a Wik elder whose land has been claimed by RTZ but not
immediately mine said: "They never asked us for this land. This is our
forefather's land... we cannot give away our land. It is not well for this
country to be destroyed and given away... we are trying to save this
country for our children to help them stand firm and strong. No we do not
want the money, we do not want jobs, we do not want companies to take our
land. All our children look very healthy here. They don't just live on
store tucker - we have our own food out in the bush. If our country is
destroyed there will be no hunting places left. We don't want any mining.I
speak on behalf of all my people's land."
Mabel Pamulkan, another Wik elder whose land has been taken by RTZ, said
"From generation to generation it will be our land. God has given it to
us. We thank those that stand behind us for our land."
Elder and Justice of the Peace, Joyce Hall, stated under oath in court in
1980 and in tears that when the mining company came into her land, it had
bulldozed an Aboriginal cemetary burning the Aboriginal corpses with the
trees it cleared. The company did not contest her evidence. No compensation
has been paid, no apology given.
In January 1996 the Australian Federal Court ruled that the Wik people
retained no native title rights - that all their rights to their tribal
lands had been extinguished when the Crown, the Australian Authorities
awarded mining or pastoral leases to white people over it.
Mick Dodson, the social justice Commissioner with the Federal Government's
Human Rights Commission, said the decision proved that there was still no
justice for Aboriginal people in Australia. "It is not going to bring land
justice back to the Wik people. The people who invaded it and colonised it
always use their law to justify the theft of Aboriginal land. Nothing's
changed."
RTZ, through their local company Comalco welcomed the legal decision saying
it had "resolved the fundamental issues of law involved in the claim (of
the Aboriginal people for compensation and rights).
END.
To Return to the Aboriginal Australia Room
It is a misfortune of many Aboriginal communities living along the northern
coast of Australia that their hunting and gathering grounds are underlain
by hundreds of square miles of bauxite rich clays, the source for
aluminium. Aluminium is one of the most commen elements in the earth's
crust. Companies thus mine it only where land is the cheapest and where
ships can take it out bulk. Aboriginal land was the cheapest.
Click to return to the Library Entrance.