Watson, Irene --- "Walking the Land for our Ancient Rights: Interview with Kevin Buzzacott" [2000] IndigLawB 49; (2000) 5(1) Indigenous Law Bulletin 19

• Walking The Land For Our Ancient Rights: Interview With Kevin Buzzacott

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Walking the Land for our Ancient Rights:
Interview with Kevin Buzzacott

Kevin Buzzacott is an Arabunna Elder and the Keeper of Lake Eyre in South Australia. He has spoken for several years against the establishment of the uranium mine at Roxby Downs in northern South Australia and its recent expansion by Western Mining Corporation (‘WMC’). The South Australian Government has given WMC permission to pump up to 42 million litres of water per day from the artesian basin. The mines toxic waste run off also threatens the underground artesian basin.

Kevin Buzzacott re-established his home camp on the shores of Lake Eyre in March 1999, where he gave an open invitation for all peoples to join his camp and to help protect Lake Eyre. At the same time he issued a Trespasser Notice to Quit on WMC. To date there has been no response. He has also initiated a number of civil proceedings against WMC^[1] to prevent damage to the mound springs of Lake Eyre through the large amounts of water being pumped from the artesian basin. He has claimed that the damage the mine is doing to his country is a crime of genocide, because the mine is destroying the Arabunna people’s connection to the land. This environmental destruction results in cultural and spiritual losses, which cause serious mental harm to the Arabunna people.^[2] In a further matter he has alleged that the Commonwealth Government’s failure to protect and commit Lake Eyre to the World Heritage listing was also a crime of genocide.^[3]

In December 1999, Buzzacott applied to meet with the Governor of SA to discuss his concerns over WMC. The Governor’s failure to meet with him resulted in Kevin Buzzacott establishing a peace fire and camp outside Government House. He named the site ‘Genocide Corner’. The peace fire burned for 21 days until the Adelaide City Council extinguished it and a large police force arrested and charged Kevin Buzzacott for loitering.

Further peace talks are planned for the year 2000, and ‘Walking the land for our ancient rights’ departed the shores of Lake Eyre on 10 June. This is a walk for peace, and a journey to inform the wider international community of the indigenous struggle to protect the land. A group of one hundred people joined Kevin Buzzacott in launching the walk. The Kupa Pita Kungkas^[4] sang and danced for the country, while others spoke on the importance of the indigenous struggle and the need to carry the message to the world. Kevin Buzzacott and 50 other walkers began their journey carrying with them the sacred peace fire to join with other Aboriginal nations and the international community for peace talks at the Sydney Olympics.

Irene Watson interviewed Kevin Buzzacott one month after the walk began, on route to the Sydney Olympics, at his camp in Broken Hill.

Irene Watson: Why did you decide to walk from Lake Eyre to the Sydney Olympics?

Kevin Buzzacott: It is a way of putting our message out. The idea come up with the Games, that in the year 2000 the world would be looking at Sydney, and we could get in there and carry our message to the world. The other idea was to walk through the land to meet all our other families on the road and wake them up and get their messages from them and take that to Sydney, and hopefully encourage them to come on the walk also.

The most important thing is to walk that old country, walk the old footsteps of the old people. We are walking along these really old tracks. We are encouraging everyone to join us to walk the old land again. The message is to get out there and walk in the footsteps of the old ancestors and feel the power of that old country and old spirit.

IW: In terms of rights, what rights have been broken that make you want to do this walk?

KB: The real thing is freedom: we should be free, we should be living free, like how the old people did. Our creators, our ancestors didn’t make us, didn’t make this country to be fenced off. Or our mob imprisoned and with all this legislation and policies and all these destructions that’s going on that’s making us miserable. We are free people in ancient time and ancient law we should be able to walk this country, free. There shouldn’t be any fences any barriers between us. This walk will bring that out, that we are the law for this country and that we are the real owners of this country. So we have to test their law, so that we can survive, we can live, we can breathe again and hopefully be free again.

IW: What have been your experiences so far on this walk?

KB: When we first started off, I thought: it’s a long way and am I going to make it - but I knew I would get help from the old people and the old spirits. Walking over that old country, it’s like a healing - a big medicine in itself. You forget about what day it is and what’s the time and all that sort of stuff, the phones ringing and the television. It’s a different world and people need to feel that experience again.

I have had a couple of run-ins with a couple of the pastoralists. Gates were closed and they said we couldn’t pass here and we didn’t have the authority and that we were trespassing and all that stuff. We even got threatened - supposed to walk naked with boomerangs, spears and that sort of stuff - and told if we did we might get mistook for a feral animal and they might shoot us. Pretty bad people, some of these pastoral managers. One other station manager chased us and tried to run us off the land. They called the police - we were flooded by the police. We didn’t know that we were close to Honeymoon uranium mining. We had actually camped at the turn-off to Honeymoon. At the time we didn’t know this, because they got no signs around. It’s sort of sneaky business. The cops come out and soon run us off there. We left anyhow - we didn’t want to have a confrontation with the cops.

So we moved onto Cockburn and stumbled into a meeting. Again, we didn’t know this meeting was on, this was the Southern Cross development proposals for Honeymoon Uranium, mining mob. They had more cops and security than the actual number of locals and town people, and us. We didn’t know about the meeting. The cops thought we knew. These meetings are a real con job sort of meeting - they are sick and it is bad luck that it happened in a one-horse town like that. But that’s what these people do. That’s how they treat people.

And from there we crossed the border into Broken Hill. I have got a soft spot for this place - I have an older brother who is buried here, and as well a family, of my brother’s kids. I have other connections from other old ancestors who travelled from the old dreaming time. They married and have kids here also. So they my people as well.

Other than that its been pretty good. Finding camping spots has been a little bit hard to find away from the road and the trucks and that. And also we have a bit of water problem, people haven’t opened up too much in giving us water. Broken Hill has been a little bit generous, people have been coming out here and bringing us food and water. The local police have been out here talking and they have been very good.

IW: In terms of protection of your rights as an Arabunna elder and your obligation to take care of your country, are these rights protected?

KB: There ain’t any rights there, or when I say there ain’t any I haven’t seen any. Although a couple of the judges seem to be thinking about us now. We have really been running around and spreading the word about what’s our job and how we are the real authority and the real government for this country and these people who got no jurisdiction they come in there and carry on like they are. They are protected by the police force.

I got a camp back at Lake Eyre which is in high risk to be destroyed, if their legislation allows it. But this judge seems a little bit thinking about it. So this is what it is all about contesting it - making sure there has to be this breakthrough in this court or in this law business where who’s got the right and what the policies are. The native title doesn’t seem to - they watered it down pretty well from Mabo - it doesn’t seem to have the kick. I don’t think anybody has won any native title case yet, unless of course you do a deal with the mining company to which seem to be a big thing. Once you do a deal with a mining company you’ll get your organisation’s funding, Toyota, and all that sort of stuff. But then you got the messy country - they will kill and destroy your sacred sites. And that’s what I am really on about, for them to get out of Lake Eyre. I am saying these people came the wrong way - they are the colonising colonial powers that doesn’t fit here. It is not in our dreamtime and they have no mandate or no jurisdiction to carry on like they do. The pastoralists, themselves, they are trying to protect their waterholes for their sheep and their bores for their cattle and their cowboys, and their fences and their dog fences they are killing off dingoes and killing off all the native animals. These pastoralists they have got no right.

IW: What vision or hopes do you have for the walk?

KB: The walk will educate people about what’s really going on. We want to go through the proper channels, the heritage mob, and say we want to document that walk from Lake Eyre to Sydney, so that people can walk it all the time. People can walk it during school holidays and pick out sections of it and go out and camp on it. It is beautiful, from Flinder Ranges across here, the wildlife animals out here, see kangaroos, emus just out there. And the saddest part is the old people, you won’t see any old people there but you can feel it and that’s really good. And some of the kids out there - we are picking up the kids from the different countries. An old woman with her grand kids joined us from the Flinders Ranges come through and others joined us and some have turned back for other reasons. But, oh, its good - some of the people haven’t walked the country for so long its just good. And they need to do it – it’s part of their healing and the thing that we talk about.

I just wish that I was resourced more to get this walk out more you know. And I wish there was a lot more people on this walk, sharing what we are feeling and all that experiences is so good. Once we get to Sydney from here and now on in we hope to pick up a lot of people to come on in and walk with us, whenever they can, you know weekends, whatever and join it and walk the full way. Once we get to Sydney, we really want to put it out loud and clear, that this is for peace and these people have got to stop the destruction that’s happening all around the country. All the pressures that’s on us, and so we can be free again to walk this land so we can really lead the world if that’s the way.

We are talking about world peace. We can lead the world with the knowledge that a lot of us have got and the power of our country. I keep saying that if we move and start walking the old country, the old spirits, will follow us. They not going to follow other people - they are not going to follow the wrong doers. And that’s a big part - talking about wrong doers - because our people have crossed the line, they’re on the other side, sell outs, selling themselves out, selling their families out, and selling everybody out. They need to wake up and come back to reality. It’s truth time and that other mob sitting on the fence they need to come out for the future, for the kids and that. They need to really get out there on the land, and forget about all that material worship stuff, and dollar dreaming, dreaming about dollar all the time, and go out there and feel a bit of the old spirit.

We are calling the world, international powers, UN forces whatever they called, to move and sit down with us, and really amend the wrongs or re-write the history or what I call it. This walk is big: it’s never been done properly before that I know of. But where I’m coming from I can’t express myself properly talking like this way. But I’m trying my best with this English word. But ah, its like adding on another chapter to the old dreamtime, where we’ve got the interference by the other mob and then where we going to from here, which is the future? It’s like adding on a new chapter, of the old dreamtime - we are using that old foundation.

It is up to us to show them what it is all about and teach them and save ourselves and save our sacred places. All these uranium mining and waste dumping stuff that’s happening and all these other mining, now they are coming out. Big threat and seems to be more danger. Just as much as what uranium is there threatening, with that I forgot what they call it ...magna...magnesium that going to be happening all around the place. They are going to be going to the heart of really sacred country, so if people like me don’t stand up, well places like that are going to be destroyed and they are going to be destroyed right before people’s eyes, like most of these other places have been.

We all in debt, we got our bills to pay, and that is to look after the country and we got to rest the old people, our old ancestors. Like I said: the creators didn’t make this country and make us to be imprisoned and they didn’t make sacred sites to be destroyed - and it’s up to us to look after it.

IW: What’s the significance of the peace fire?

KB: The peace fire we talk about is one part of it. We make the fire to warm our hearts and warm our souls and ease our pain, our misery and that, and also to warm the old country to let the old country know that we are still here, we survived whatever it is, this invasion, and we trying our best and our hardest to take care of it the way we are supposed to. And also gives us knowledge and motivates us to keep on going. Keep on going till we can get there, till we get this breakthrough. And also to open up the hearts and minds in our enemies, so hopefully they can go forward and sit around the fire and really learn what we on about to. The other thing is: our fires were joined by a lot ashes and a lot of fires and a lot of wood and a lot of people from other countries - we are going to be joining our fire with local people wherever we go. Down at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy we are going to be joining this fire with that as well as going to Sydney where a fire will already be burning and we will join this fire with that fire, and we will begin talks and gatherings. We will probably be crying and growling a bit as well but hopefully at the end of the day it will work if people give it a chance.

It is a big thing healing the country - let the old smoke do some smoking ceremonies, go to the massacre places and start healing the old spirits there. The old un-rested souls - the old country and sites which are being destroyed - we can go there and apologise and say sorry and start off the healing process there as well. And that’s our right - this is our law that’s our born birthright to do that. We got our own law, we got our own way of doing things and we need to do it peacefully and freely. We should be able to move free, we free people and that’s our ancient right. All these other rights and policies and laws doesn’t matter you can’t penetrate the old ancient rights and old ancient spirits. Them old people are with us - they not going to be with the other people.

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^[1] The Arabunna People and Kevin Buzzacott v Hugh Morgan Supreme Court SA No 356, 1999, see the following site for further reference to Arabunna litigation, http://www.aboriginalgenocide.com.au/.

^[2] UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1946, Article 11(b).

^[3] Buzzacott v Hill Minister for the Environment and others FCA 639 (199), Buzzacott v Hill Minister for the Environment and others, HCA transcripts C19/1999, (4 August 2000).

^[4] Senior Aboriginal women, based in Coober Pedy, South Australia.