Nickle Mine, Developer: CRA and Dominion Mining
Cost to Develop: $250 million
Estimated value of nickle exported: $250 p.a. (West Australian
3/6/91)
Jobs, construction phase: 600-800 (Financial Review 16/6/91)
Jobs, mining phase: 260 (Financial Review 16/6/91)
Minerals to be mined: Nickle and cobalt
Asbestos is present in the ore and, as yet, it is uncertain how
Dominion Mining intends to deal with it.
Yakabindie/Jones Creek lies to the north of the mining town of
Leinster and 90 km or so to the south of Wiluna, with the actual Jones
Creek laying alongside the Barr Smith Range, and backing on to the A
class nature reserve, Wanjarri. Initial ethnographic survey of the
proposed mine site was carried out by anthropologists Rory O'Conner
and Quatermaine. The initial survey found only two sites - Tjinkina
and Mail Change Well, was met with anger and despair from an
Aboriginal corporation with ties to the area. Another survey was
commissioned by Dominion Mining Company. The ethnographic survey was
carried out by Moore and Pope from the Centre for Prehistory at the
University of Western Australia. These anthropologists questioned a
larger group of aboriginal people living in the vicinity and distant
towns and recorded further 20 plus sites, old mens initiated sites and
sacred women's sites that run along a songline that is still sung
which connects to communities of Uluru - Ayres Rock, the importance
of which the Aboriginal groups of ties area is said to be second to
Ayres Rock.
The Moore and Pope report was given to respective government
departments - ATSIC (Aboriginal Torres Strait Island Commission) and
Federal Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mr. Tickner, and for the ACMC
(Aboriginal Cultural Materials Committee) to decide upon it's validity
and to make its decision to the State Minister for Aboriginal Affairs.
However, even before this decision could occur, under pressure from the
opposition and mining lobby, in particular Mr. Ellery from the Chamber
for Mines, the Minister declared the second report void and stated
adequate protection for the two initial sites was sufficient for the
mine site to now be operational.
Quotes:
"Jones Creek (Yakabindie) is not just another creek, it is Dreamtime,
sacred ground." Senior lawman at Wiluna meeting 10/8/91
"These people want mining don't realize what's been through
there...that Dreamtime right across, right around where they want to
mine." Woman elder, Wiluna meeting 10/8/91
"It's main place, law place." Traditional custodian, Wiluna meeting
10/8/91
"A granite outcrop and nearby Jones Creek where part of the Dreamtime
legend of the dragonfly and the serpent." Margot Hodge (58) whose
family has leased the Yakabindie station for 70 years (West Australian
8/9/91)
"Jones Creek, a watercourse within the proposed mine site, was of
extreme importance to Aborigines and to a legend relating to sacred
sites in the area." UWA Centre for Prehistory report, West Australian
27/7/91
Personal account by Timothy McCabe:
In Ancestorial times, when the first lights pierced the earth, there
lived upon it ancestorial beings who moved over the land, creating
features of waterholes, breakaways, hills and valleys and rivers as
they went. Jones Creek/Yakabindie is one such place where the path of
the ancestorial beings of the serpent desperately fleeing the pursuit
of a meat-eating dragonfly ______ left their initials in the land.
The creek and sites that lay in its path tell the story of the
songline of its creation and its areas of significance to both women
and men, those initiated and uninitiated into the law. The time is
now 1990 and the state government has given the all clear to Dominion,
a mining company supported by the mineral giant CRA. Two sites are
found by controversial anthropologist Rory O'Conner and archeologist
Quatermaine, but this causes alarm in the wider aboriginal community
and another report is commissioned by Dominion, Moore and Pope, who
find another 20 plus sites.
In desparation the Ngalia aboriginal group, having now found that the
government was to ignore the second and most valuable report sent out
an SOS to outlying tribal groups to the west towards the sea and east
to the central desert communities and south to the Nyungah heartland.
The call was accepted by a Nyungah elder, Robert Bropho, whom I had
come to know for the past 8 years, who, strong in his vision of
aboriginal solidarity, took his community and myself across country to
the humpies on the first night in Kalgoorlie, set amongst the mining
tailing dumps and a community of ragged rough living quarters of some
100 people. We then proceeded north through the patchwork of mine
sites and arrived late at night in the Jones Creek area.
The initial meeting took place within Yakabindie/Jones Creek itself
with very few of the traditional elders having materialized, having
been fed false faxes proclaiming the meeting was not to occur and
trouble would happen if it did. The meeting occured with some 40 to
50 people and the elders were shown over various sites, the women over
their sites and the men theirs. We finally left that afternoon after
having had it stressed to us that it was by Ngalia's invitation that
we were invited, not as the West Australian was to print that the Swan
Valley fringe dwellers had invited themselves.
The second meeting that had been decided upon was to be organized for
Wiluna. We had to raise our own funds and call the various unions to
seek their support. Various press releases were sent off with the
vain hope that journalists would print what we sent. I was again
taken on as bus driver and part-time messenger, phone caller, money
raiser, etc. Finally we left for Wiluna and the meeting occured,
with another meeting attended by fundamentalist Christians and mining
representatives a short distance away. The elders who called the
meeting were not to be bothered though, the fundamentalist Christians
had sought to take them away from their law before, so it was nothing
new that their meetings were to be upset by fundamental Christians
being openly manipulated by mining company executives, as was the case
this time, with business men from Kalgoorlie attending and gold-
diamond-watch-banded whitemen trying to create an Aboriginal mining
company so that the Aboriginess could feel their own sense of pride.
As was the case with an argument I developed with a well-dressed man
called Smith, who I accused of working for Dominion - could have been
close to the truth.
The results are still unclear. Ultimately it will now have to go
before the Supreme Court who will decide if natural justice has been
administered or denied. Yet it appears to me to be such a strange
thing that it is now to be left to the very code of justice that has
stripped Aboriginal people of their cultural rights for the past 169
years in this state, but now it may be the only way to protect this
precious songline from the bulldozers and dump pits and tragic
imminent destruction to occur.
If nothing else has been achieved so far, it is, I believe, the
awareness and education that the white masses have received. The
Aboriginal voice is more clearly understood, land must come before
reconcilliation and protection of sacred places must occur if that
journey towards an overall Aboriginal reconcilliation can take place.
As with my own personal lessons I've learned, I sense that the
Aboriginal struggle of solidarity is growing against bad
anthropologists, fundamental Christians, and state government
representatives manipulated by mining companies. But I also sense the
power that exists, for we who sometimes feel hopelessly powerless in
such circumstances, to be a part of that tribal voice is strengthening
the oppressed of those around us.
The Ngalia and Mundaljara elders accepted without reservation my
presense in all this. In men's meetings I was included, even though
completely uninitiated. I was even taken to various sites that had
never before been allowed to be seen by eyes of the uninitiated. But
the elders' despair at what will be destroyed is paramount; it can
never be replaced.
I noted that this acceptance had occured once before with a tribal
group I had met one year prior in the state of Sarawak - had the Penan
not received us with open arms; with warm acceptance and unbelievable
trust that saw them share with us their knowledge and what little food
and shelter they had?
It comes as no coincidence, then, that our restlessness for justice
becomes paramount. Their fight has become ours. Their pain has
become our sorrow and together we share the struggle.
Tim McCabe