Indigenous Engagement : Three Case Studies

Abstract

In this chapter we examine the relationship between environmental leaders and Indigenous Australians. The World Heritage Convention protects sites of universal natural and cultural values, sometimes in combination. In 2015, it was amended to incorporate references to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). International conventions are always in danger of becoming the handmaidens of their signatory states. When evidence emerges that they have succumbed, it fuels criticism of cosmopolitanism. At the same time, environmental leaders sometimes clash with Indigenous people over efforts to conserve the natural values of traditional lands for the ‘global good’. We ask how international instruments with cosmopolitan ambitions have influenced the discourse and practice of Australian environmentalists attempting to find common ground with Indigenous groups. Drawing on interviews with 25 members of our sample who mentioned Indigenous issues in their interviews, we find the World Heritage Convention and UNDRIP have encouraged a pragmatic cosmopolitan practice among environmentalists, despite continuing intercultural differences in some quarters.

Profile: Dr Anne Poelina

Madjulla Incorporated

I’m a Nyikina Warrwa Traditional Custodian from Mardoowarra, on the Lower Fitzroy River in the West Kimberley region of Western Australia . My home is Broome , on the state’s northern coast, and although I’m not a Traditional Owner of Broome , my family has lived there for several generations. Until a few years ago, my life was very private. It wasn’t until I realised what was going to be destroyed at Walmadan that I thought I had to show leadership.

Walmadan is the Aboriginal name for James Price Point , which was threatened because the state government and many multinational companies wanted to build a $46 billion LNG processing plant there. It was going to be the biggest LNG precinct in the world. Walmadan is a special place for my family and me, and many other families, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal. We visit it and know its beauty, its cultural value and its environmental value. Because I have a health background, I started to think about how the LNG plant would impact not just on the environment but also on the people and our quality of life. I was not going to sit idly by and let this happen. I decided to take a stand for the environmental and cultural values of Walmadan .

We began by trying to think of ways to mobilise people to stand up for the environment and this beautiful place called Walmadan . Aboriginal and Asian families here refer to themselves as the Old Families of Broome . They say they built Broome , love Broome and call Broome home. But there are also non-Aboriginal residents who love Broome and the Kimberley and Walmadan . So we decided to call the movement Families of Broome . That way, we were able to attract Indigenous, Asian and non-Indigenous families, cut across political boundaries, and bring many small interest groups together. We wanted to create a space where families could be informed about the impacts and the strategies of the state government and the corporations so that they would start to feel they had a right to protect Walmadan. Before this, I think the people of Broome had been overcome by a sense of learned helplessness. Once we started having regular meetings, we began to understand that the corporations and government wanted us to feel that way—to feel as if the LNG development was a fait accompli and it would be impossible for us to mobilise individual and collective support to stop it.

One of the things I say to people is that we had to have the war to understand that we really need peace—we had to have the James Price Point scenario to learn that conflict has huge collateral damage for people, relationships and networks in the community. The major learning for me is to try and mobilise a more regional way of working together with all the different stakeholder groups so that we all get access to the information we need to see the true cost of these sorts of developments to our existing livelihoods.

As a Traditional Custodian from the Fitzroy River , I’m sometimes an alternative voice from my own people, because I’m trying to protect that environment from shale oil and gas exploration. I’m not dissenting for the sake of it. I’m dissenting because I’m also a scientist who is informed about the project, and the evidence tells me that I should be worried about its impacts on water, the rest of the environment, and our regional livelihoods. I believe a lot of Aboriginal people don’t have the opportunity to get the information, so they are not making decisions on the basis of free, prior and informed consent.

No one will truly know the collateral damage that mining brings to Aboriginal families, because nobody’s measuring that cost. It’s pitted father against son, brother against brother, sister against mother, sister again sister, mother against daughter. Some of these relationships may never be healed. Aboriginal people like me who do stand up and present a different view are exposed not only to threats but to real violence. In the case of Walmadan, there were many Aboriginal people who were strong proponents. By mobilising so many non-Indigenous people from all over the country, and indeed across the world, to stand up for Walmadan, I was seen to be threatening their opportunity to become very wealthy very quickly.

Leadership

As Aboriginal people we are taught very early in our upbringing that the birds, the trees and the river have a right to exist. So I don’t consider being an environmental leader as separate from the duty of care and obligation I have as an Indigenous person, because those complementary values have been instilled in me.

As a scientist, I want to see the evidence. I want to know and fully understand what the impacts are going to be. So, for me, a leader is someone who gathers information and creates opportunities for other people to learn. But you can’t be a leader if nobody’s following you. You can’t be a one-man band, because nobody knows everything, so you have to be open to collective wisdom. Values are also important to me. A leader has integrity and is honest, transparent and accountable but doesn’t have an ego.

My motto has been ‘Whatever it takes’, and so I’ve been prepared to do things that a lot of other people possibly would not have wanted to do. For example, I felt the state government was using planning law and planning reform to usurp the rights of local government, and the only way I could gain an understanding of that was to become a local councillor myself. So, obviously, there were constituents out there who valued what I did, otherwise I would not have been elected. In local government, I saw that many laws and planning reforms were being designed to enshrine the rights of the corporation over ordinary people. Local government created by-laws that started to mute the voices of the people, until many of the families in Broome thought the only way they could really have a voice was to put signs on their houses saying things like: ‘We love Broome ’ or ‘Don’t trash James Price Point ’ or ‘No LNG hub’ or ‘Woodside Genocide’. So then the local government created a by-law to make such actions illegal. As a leader, I try to unpack some of the myths about how mining actually brings in more wealth to the region and gives us all a better life.

A lot of poor leadership involves bullying and intimidation. I don’t stereotype men and women. I’ve seen women who are bullies and very autocratic and dictatorial, and I’ve seen men who are inclusive and open to collective wisdom. The people guiding me and encouraging me to do the things I do have been senior elders—men and women—who have been very political in their own time and are extremely wise. I’ve had very strong women guiding me and mentoring me in my leadership role, while Indigenous male elders seem to have shifted from caring for nature and the environment to being gas people. You could probably describe them as turncoats. Thirty or forty years ago they may have been standing up at Noonkanbah trying to defend the environment, but today they’re prepared to sell country. They seem to have moved away from cultural to economic values.

Media

I travel quite a bit to conferences and use film to showcase the stories and the meaning of the Kimberley . I was invited to go to UNESCO and was able to show them a film of what was happening in Australia. I find film a very powerful medium for telling stories. It allows me to take the place and the people directly to an audience, and the audience directly to that sense of place. My intimate knowledge of the environment as an Indigenous person gives my passion some grounding. I bring a different level of cultural capital to the conversation. I know that place, I’ve been there all my life, I have a relationship with the senior man that was given the law from that place, and that gives me a level of cultural credibility. I can articulate concerns in a very passionate and authentic way, and I think media pick up on that. When they ring me, I can talk to them very precisely. I’m able to articulate a point of view as an Indigenous woman but also as a scientist, and as a resident of Broome .

Environmental Movement Organisations

I’m interested in the way different environmentalists do their work. The Kimberley has attracted some very interesting people and as a result I have been able to learn about many environmental groups. When the Sea Shepherd came to Broome I was able to jump on that boat and travel round with Bob Brown . I’ve also spent time with a group called Save the Kimberley . At the end of the day it was an opportunity to see what they had in common rather than how they were different. I hadn’t joined anything before but I made a conscious decision to join Lock the Gate because I believe it’s a social movement that’s moving across many different political party lines and the common denominators are land, food security, the protection of the environment and, particularly, the protection of our water. I share those values with many of the other members, and that motivated me to join. I don’t really talk about climate change . I think everybody’s aware. Most people that I know when I go into the spaces are realising that we can’t keep doing what we’re doing.

As a member of Lock the Gate I had an opportunity to go to a meeting in Canberra. I was quite disappointed but also very interested in what I witnessed. I thought politicians only treated Aboriginal people poorly, but having watched how they treated their own constituents, I have formed the view that it doesn’t matter if governments are Labor or Liberal ; they are beholden to corporations at the cost of ordinary, everyday Australians.

The Next Generation

Part of having faith in humanity is that you believe there is a next generation of strong young Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders challenging the system. Lots of young people I know are building their capacity in a whole range of disciplines, doing law, arts, and other wonderful things. So I have real faith that we are growing new leaders who will build a world that is inclusive and wonderful and good, otherwise I would not be doing this. I have real faith that there are young leaders emerging who will have the skills and passion to continue building reliable prosperity and diverse and interesting economies so that the Kimberley will always be a special place for many, many people to learn, earn and share.