Western Desert Puntukurnuparna Aboriginal People --- "Uranium Exploration in the Rudall River National Park: An Aboriginal Perspective" [1987] AboriginalLawB 24; (1987) 1(26) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 7

• Uranium Exploration In The Rudall River National Park: An Aboriginal Perspective
• The Land
• The People
• Return To The Land
• Now

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Uranium Exploration in the Rudall River National Park: An Aboriginal Perspective

by Western Desert Puntukurnuparna Aboriginal People

The Land

Lake Dora, a large salt lake in the north-eastern corner of the Rudall River National Park. is part of a vast paleo-drainage system that stretches eastward into Central and South Australia. Emptying into Lake Dora is the Rudall River, a large, and usually dry, watercourse that drains rugged hills of Proterozoic and sedimentary rocks in the southwestern region of the Park. These drainage systems, dry except during rare cyclonic activity, are in fact the remains of a vast inland swamp, characterised over 200 million years ago by verdant rainforest, tropical downpours and a varied abundance of primordial fauna.

But there is another aspect of these systems' history, at least as far as the delicate balance between flora and fauna is concerned. While nothing could stem the invasion of Aeolian sand and the gradual diminishing of surface water, Aborigines did their best to ensure that food resources remained in the vicinity of these riverine systems. This they did with their firing regimes. Indeed, certain scientists suggest that paleo-drainage systems owe their longevity to just such practices. Periodic and well managed burning provided precisely the ecological gradients that fostered a varied and plentiful food supply. This mutual relationship ceased, as recently as two decades ago, when the last of the Aborigines were brought out of the Rudall River Region.

Although archeological investigation in the Rudall River Region has not occurred as of yet, other inquiries suggest that Aborigines have been living in the Great Sandy and Gibson Deserts for over 10,000 years, and quite possibly for much longer. What is known is that survival in such an environment required very careful attention to seasonal fluctuations and ecological diversity. Small nomadic groups moved in close concert with the ebb and flow of known water sources and the corresponding availability of food. The Rudall River and the chain of lakes stretching southeast from Lake Dora were crucial economic registers in this round of daily and seasonal life. Not surprisingly, the two riverine corridors also figure prominently in the social and cultural geography of Western Desert religious belief. Dreaming Tracks, the paths of mythological ancestors, criss-cross the region, and ceremonial life revolved around periodic gatherings of large numbers of people when conditions warranted.

The People

Our knowledge of the region comes from those people who only just left it, and who, in recent years, are beginning to move back to their traditional country. The Rudall River National Park is considered to be Warnum country, a language group that inhabited a large expanse of the Western Desert. But strict forms of 'land ownership' were not appropriate for the requirements of nomadic travel, scarce water and a variable food supply. Other language groups, particularly the Manjiltjarra, Mangala, Walmajarri and Karadjarra, frequented the region, often travelling in small family units. But when natural conditions allowed, often after summer cyclonic rains, large groups would gather at reliable water sources for sustained periods of time. It was during these intervals of intensive contact that the essence of Western Desert culture flourished. Social ties were renewed, betrothals arranged and ceremonial responsibilities acquitted. And it was in the context of larger gatherings that the spiritual relations between the animate and inanimate worlds could be confirmed and sustained. The Dreaming and associated Law provided a remarkable homogeneity of belief and practice for groups scattered throughout the Western Desert. The Rudall River and associated watercourses provided the physical format for such activities to be seasonally renewed.

Western Desert people were one of the last in Australia to be affected by European encroachment. Periodically, exploration parties ventured into the Great Sandy Desert, but contact with Aboriginal residents of the land was sporadic. In the early 1900s, however, Canning travelled southwest across the desert investigating the viability of a stock route from the Kimberley in the north to the railhead at Wiluna in the southern part of the state. Aborigines were encountered, and misused, in his search for the water sources that would make the droving of cattle possible. Gradually, as the stock route was increasingly used, migrations north and south along it took place. Other Manjiltjarra speakers who lived along the route moved west into the Warnum country of the present-day Park, as the latter were increasingly drawn towards the small mining centres of the Eastern Pilbara in search of rations and other material goods.

Desert dwelling people had been drawn to Jigalong, then a maintenance depot for the Rabbit Proof Fence, as early as 1907. By 1947, when Jigalong became a mission, many Western Desert people, particularly the Warnum. Manjiltjarra, Putitjarra and Karadjarra, were residing in settlements along the fringe of the desert.

Nevertheless, if certain segments of the desert population were drawn to the wages and material benefits of the European periphery, others preferred the traditional life in their natal country. Groups of Aborigines remained in the more isolated and inaccessible areas of the desert. But it was not long before even they were forcibly removed to the European administered missions, stations and towns. By the late 1960s, the Native Welfare Patrols had gathered up all the Aboriginal people still resident on the western side of the Western Desert into government controlled settlements. Some of the last to leave had been camping in the sanctuary of Yandagooge Creek - now the focus of massive uranium exploration.

Return to the Land

In the 1980s, after decades of living in institutional centres on the desert's periphery, those with traditional ties to the Rudall River Region began returning. The community of Punmu, on the edge of Lake Dora, was settled in 1981, and three years later approximately 80 residents of Jigalong relocated to Pangurr, in the southern part of the Park. The reasons for moving back to country are numerous and complex. For some, it represents a means of distancing themselves from the social and physical ills of excessive alcohol use. For others, it is seen as a last opportunity to acquaint the middle-aged and younger generations with the physical environment upon which the Aboriginal worldview is based. For those who returned to Pangurr, it meant saving their traditional land from miners.

Establishing communities in the remote expanses of the Western Desert has not been an easy task. Both Punmu and Pangurr are days away from the centres of distribution they must rely upon to supplement traditional hunting and foraging. Both receive only a marginal medical service. And because the State of Western Australia refuses to recognise Aboriginal rights to traditional land, neither community has the security of tenure upon which the provision of essential services can be guaranteed. But the populations of Punmu and Pangurr continue to grow, and through their own initiative the communities have constructed the essential infrastructure that will ensure their continued survival. Despite the neglect shown them, Western Desert people have made the decision to return to, and remain in, their country.

Now

Within the last 12 months, however, a different type of threat has come to concern both Punmu and Pangurr. Aware that they live in a National Park, and wary of the implications of a tourist regime, the communities nevertheless are protected by the very remoteness and inaccessibility of the region. Visitors are rare, and the Aboriginal people of the Rudall have enjoyed to date the privacy of their preferred way of life. But in late 1985, CRA Exploration, a company long associated with the abuse of the world's indigenous peoples, discovered uranium in the western part of the Rudall River National Park. Ostensibly only involved in exploration activities-in the mountainous catchment basin of the Rudall River, a river which flows to Punmu. Convinced that other uranium deposits are to be found in the region, CRAE has taken out exploration licenses on virtually the entire southern half of the Park, including the land on which sits the Pangurr community. Aborigines fear the mining of this 'poison', and the proximity of Punmu and Pangurr to the experimental mine is cause for great concern.

CRAE's antagonism toward Aboriginal communities is legend. Obliged by law to respect and protect sites of Aboriginal significance, the company shows extreme reluctance to enter into agreements guaranteeing such protection. Its preferred method of operation is to single out inappropriate spokesmen for country, minimally reward them for their services and then claim it has satisfied provisions of the heritage legislation. Western Desert people have consistently resisted these tactics, but they pay the price for their united stand. CRAE threatens to 'reclaim' the water bore upon which the Pangurr community survives. And while it is unclear who is responsible, Pangurr's residents periodically complain of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters buzzing the community.

Taken off their land as recently as 20 years ago, and now having returned under the most arduous of conditions with little government support, the communities now face a concerted onslaught by a multinational company wishing to mine uranium. Over and beyond the dangers that the company's activities pose for the pristine Rudall River ecosystem, they now threaten the social welfare of people who have gone to extraordinary lengths to reassert their cultural integrity and vitality. Continued mining and exploration may once again drive Aboriginal people out of their homeland, and back to the social dislocation of institutionalised life on the desert's periphery. Will the policy of forced assimilation that the government pursued, and eventually abandoned, be realised once again by the activities of mining operations that respect neither the National Park nor its lawful inhabitants?