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Witness History

The indigenous fight to stop nuclear waste disposal

Witness History

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture, History

4.51.6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 July 2019

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1995 a group of senior, indigenous Australian women started a campaign to halt the construction of a nuclear waste facility in a remote part of South Australia. Karina Lester, a granddaughter of one of the women and a translator for the campaign, spoke to Rachael Gillman about their unlikely victory against the Australian government.

Photo: Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta, the group of senior aboriginal women who led the campaign (Umoona Aged Care)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

0:06.8

searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

0:11.8

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0:14.0

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0:16.0

Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.

0:19.0

Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less

0:24.9

searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds.

0:30.9

Hello you're listening to the BBC World Service and now witness history with me

0:38.0

Rachel Gilman. Today we're going back to 1995 and the start of a long campaign to halt the construction of the first nuclear waste facility in a remote part of South Australia.

0:49.0

The campaign was called Poison, Leave it, and was led by a group of senior indigenous women, elders of the Aboriginal community where the site would be built.

0:59.0

Karina Lester's grandmother, Eileen Cumberwood Brown, was among the leaders of the indigenous women.

1:05.0

They are the ones that have this amazing knowledge about our roles at all different stages and these women have lived all those different stages and

1:14.8

you know at the time of the whole Eradirundi campaign which translates to

1:21.6

poison, leave it, they had gone through all those stages, you know,

1:27.0

living with the land and working with the land and they had a duty of care for protecting the next generation.

1:35.0

The land they were trying to protect was traditional indigenous land, a dusty arid area around

1:40.5

the Opel mining town of Cooper Piedy in the north of the state.

1:44.0

In the 1950s and 60s it had been the site of nuclear tests by the British government

1:50.0

which had had a devastating impact on the local community.

1:53.6

One of my grandmothers talk about soon after that first test that her parents were quite

2:00.6

elderly and became really sick and within days she was digging a grave site to bury them.

...

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