LEARNING IN activism

Nuclear free independence

Independence and the peace movement

Karen Flick has said: 

Tranby was a place where ideas could grow and develop.

It allowed people to say whatever they wanted to say, supported a whole lot of people who would not have access to any other forum.  

And opened us up to meeting a whole range of people not just from other countries, but other struggles. That was the Maoris for me, it was the mob from Vanuatu, Philippines, Kanaky, the South Pacific, Asia and of course Africa. 

Aboriginal people had been opposing colonialism from the time the invasion began, although their demands had not often been acknowledged by settler Australians. The injustice of colonialism was better recognised by some white Australians in the peace movements from the 1950s. Alf Clint, for example, had been very active in the campaign for world peace and disarmament and at the same time he had worked to support Aboriginal and TSI communities to be self-sufficient through co-operatives. 

Under Alf and later Kevin Cook and Bob Bellear, Tranby offered space for many campaigns: meetings were held, aims were debated and plans were made. People, black and white, could meet up there. Tranby enabled them to work together and encouraged students to get involved as a way to learn. The campaigns around Tranby all aimed to create a more just and peaceful world, and to do this, many of them challenged colonialism.

Many strategies

Different parts of the peace movement had chosen different strategies. Some people focussed on the testing of nuclear weapons which had happened on Aboriginal land when the British tested bombs in Central Australia in the 1950s and 60s. Weapons were still being tested in the 1970s in the Pacific with the French detonating bombs above and under colonised French Polynesia at Muroroa Atoll.

Other parts of the Peace movement focussed on the surveillance bases which were scattered around the world, like that at Pine Gap at Alice Springs, which could direct weapon strikes and would themselves be targets in any nuclear war. Still other Peace activists focussed on the mining of the components of nuclear weapons, like uranium. Australia has the largest Uranium deposits in the world – and they are all on Aboriginal land. Each of these issues involved workers but the one around mining uranium was of particular importance to trade unions, whose workers were endangered by mining and by transporting uranium as well as being threatened by nuclear war in general. 

Many activists in all these parts of the Peace movement were by the 1980s recognising that warfare could only be ended if colonialism was recognised as an urgent source of conflict and a focal issue for the Peace movement. Uranium mines, weapons tests and surveillance bases had each been happening on land belonging to Indigenous, colonised peoples or powerless minority groups. Tranby in the 1980s brought all these campaigns together.

Tranby: No Nukes + No Colonialism

British bomb tests on Pitjantjatjara land

As an independent and Indigenous-led adult education body, Tranby was close to another independent education provider, the Institute for Aboriginal Development (IAD) in Alice Springs, headed by Yami Lester. Yami had been leading the campaign for a Royal Commission into British Nuclear Testing on Indigenous land in the 1950s and 60s and particularly the health damage done to his own community at Wallatina and others by the testing. A former teacher at Tranby, Heather Goodall, was a researcher for the Pitjantjara Council case before this Royal Commission and worked closely with Yami.

No uranium mining on Aboriginal land

The first uranium had been mined at Rum Jungle (NT) from 1952, and there was a deposit in South Australia, north of Woomera at Olympic Dam, Roxby Downs, which BHP hoped to mine. By 1977, however, Federal Government wanted to mine the largest Australian deposits first – those around the Arnhem Land Plateau, at Narbalek, Jabiluka, Ranger and Koongara, on land recognised by the Federal Aboriginal Land Rights Act in 1976 as Aboriginal Land. 

This meant that the Traditional Owners of the land had to agree to its use – and the owners of these NT lands, the Mirrar people, did NOT agree. Many lived at Oenpelli, on the edge of Kakadu National Park, and they were worried that their land – and the powerful spiritual beings they knew to be deep within it – would be disturbed and damaged by huge mines. Despite their sustained rejection, the conservative Federal Government pushed through an amendment to the Land Rights Act to allow mining to start without Traditional Owner approval if it were ‘in the national interest’.

At the Easter 1978 meeting of the Federal Council of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, many Aboriginal people from Kakadu, including John Gwadbu, travelled to Canberra to tell others about their fears. Also at this meeting were a group of senior Aboriginal leaders from the South Coast of New South Wales, Percy Mumbler, Jacko Campbell and Gubbu Ted Thomas with their close friend Terry Fox (then a Catholic priest). They were deeply disturbed by what John Gwadbu had told them about Aboriginal people’s fears about uranium mining. Kevin Cook, then studying at Tranby, was kin and ally to these Aboriginal community leaders, all of whom would be closely associated with Tranby in the coming years. By August 1978, there had been widespread public alarm about the Federal Government intervention to push through uranium mining and the Hiroshima Day commemorative rallies in many cities reflected this concern. Percy Mumbler with Terry Fox marched in the Wollongong commemoration, under signs which reflected the fears that leakage of the dangerous uranium would injure miners, transport workers and Aboriginal communities, alongside the anxieties of Traditional owners about spiritual damage.

Through TUCAR, Tranby had strong connections to the unions most affected by Uranium mining on Aboriginal Land. The Australian Railways Union was the first to strike, in 1976, when a railyard worker was stood down for refusing to handle uranium. The ARU was soon followed by other unions in strike action. The movement against uranium mining (MAUM) took a strong interest both in the issues of workers’ safety and in the central issue of Aboriginal control over their lands. After the Federal Government pushed through its amending legislation, the mine at Narbalek operated for 12 months in 1979 and then in 1980, against the wishes of senior Mirarr Traditional Owners like Toby Gangale and despite the opposition of many people in MAUM and the peace movements, the Ranger uranium mine went into production. Tranby activists Kevin Cook and Bob Bellear, along with other TUCAR unionists, were prominent in protests against Pancontinental, one of the companies initially operating the Ranger mine.

Then in 1983, BHP was given permission to mine uranium at Roxby Downs on the Kokatha people’s land. This land was north of Woomera and NOT under any Aboriginal Land Rights laws. The Federation of Land Councils had by this time been established, bringing together the Kimberley Land Council (WA), the Northern and Central Land Councils in NT and the Cape York Land Council in Queensland with the NSW Land Council and activists like the South Coast Elders, Gabbu Ted Thomas, Percy Mumbulla and Jacko Campbell, along with Kevin Cook, Barbara Flick and William Bates, who were members of on the Interim Land Council. The Federation of Land Councils backed the Kokatha Aboriginal owners of Roxby Downs to protest the mine. They were joined by a large group of protesters who blockaded the mine for many months.

No US Bases, No War

Alice Springs was the centre of the campaign against the US surveillance base at nearby Pine Gap. The Joint Defence Facility there had begun operations in 1970 following a treaty between the US and Australian governments.

On Remembrance Day, November 11, 1983, around 800 women set up camp at the gates of the Pine Gap facility. This action was coordinated by Women for Survival, a national umbrella organisation for a number of feminist peace groups around Australia. The two-week vigil was a demonstration of support for the women of the peace camps at Greenham Common in the United Kingdom and Comiso in Italy. The peace camp also aimed to bring public attention to the presence of a United States base in Australia, and to highlight the nation’s vulnerability as a nuclear target.

Women for Survival saw the Pine Gap facility as a symbol of global violence. The protest was organised around collective action and consensus, using non-violent protest in the form of dance, song, theatre, balloon releases, workshops and speeches. During an event at the vigil, 111 women trespassed onto the base and were arrested. Each gave their name as Karen Silkwood, a prominent American anti-nuclear activist.

By 1986, another camp around the Base was being planned by the Alice Springs Peace Group, with a series of meetings building towards an action called ‘Pine Gap: Closed by the People’. Some of the activists planning the action included people who had been closely involved with Tranby, like Brian Doolan and Barbara Flick, both then living in Alice Springs. This became a year-long blockade, from 19 October 1987 to 19 October 1988.

In a carefully researched paper, the Peace Group argued that the only way for the residents of Central Australia to become safe from attack was to close the base completely.

→ Read Pine Gap: Closed by the People by the Alice Springs Peace Group Bases Campaign 1987

Their paper directly addressed the issues of colonialism and independence:

• A campaign to confront US bases in Australia must work in solidarity and support of groups opposing all foreign bases in the Pacific.

• It is impossible to address the possibility of Australia withdrawing from alignment with one of the major aggressors in the arms race without addressing questions involving Australia’s relationship with other Pacific groups seeking independence and self-determination. This must obviously begin with the Indigenous Aboriginal population of Australia.

• The traditional Aboriginal owners of the land occupied by Pine Gap must be consulted and informed at every step of the way.

Karen Flick, student counsellor at Tranby (sister of Barbara Flick and niece of Elder Isabel Flick, who had long been involved with Tranby as teacher and mentor), went to Alice Springs for some of the Close Pine Gap meetings and met Alphonse Dianou, a Kanak activist from French-colonised New Caledonia. She remembered him as ‘just the loveliest person’:

I actually went to the airport to say goodbye to him. He talked about how they have their rallies and how they go in the centre of town to have their rallies, and he talked about his wife and that there are all these young, enthusiastic people, so I'd love to go and meet them, because he was such a lovely person. … It was just unbelievable what happened.

Decolonisation in the Pacific

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Tranby had had a long involvement with Pacific colonised peoples. Alf Clint had been a close friend of fellow Anglican priest Walter Lini, leader of the Vanuatu Independence movement. Kevin Cook and Bob Bellear continued and expanded this set of relationships. Hilda Lini came to Tranby in 1976 and 1980 to speak about the importance of Independence in the Pacific. Soon after, in 1982, she set up the Pacific Women's Bureau in Noumea in New Caledonia (Kanaky) for the South Pacific Commission.

Karen Flick attended a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific conference in Fiji in 1986, where she met Kanak activists like Susanna Ounei who was trying to oust the French colonisers from New Caledonia as well as to stop French nuclear testing in French Polynesia – which had been underground since the huge above-ground Centaure blast over Muroroa in 1974 had irradiated many people across the region.

In 1983, the fourth NFIP conference was held in Port Villa, in the newly independent country of Vanuatu. Kevin Cook from Tranby and Shorty O’Neill from Palm Island were the Australian Indigenous delegates. Both were activists in the Federation of Land Councils, formally set up in 1980 but in fact operating from 1975, when key activists from each State’s land rights campaigns had developed close contact. Their focus was on the damage done to Indigenous people in Central Australia by British nuclear testing and on the dispossession of First Peoples by colonialism in Australia and the Pacific. Beverly Symons, an Australian peace activist, wrote insightfully about the tension at the 1983 Conference. The ‘Nuclear Free Pacific’ movement had been set up in 1975 in Fiji, by a mixture of student, Christian, Pacific Indigenous, peace and anti-nuclear groups. From that first meeting, decolonisation had been important but it was not till 1983 that the name of the movement was changed to ‘Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific’. The Indigenous delegates from many Pacific countries and from Australia met together in Port Villa and decided that while they wanted to continue to work with peace and disarmament movements, they wanted to make sure that decolonisation was seen as essential for real demilitarisation. After much debate, the Conference endorsed the People’s Charter for a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific, which included this clause: 

‘We, the people of the Pacific have been victimised too long by foreign powers. The Western imperialistic and colonial powers invaded our defenceless region, they took over our lands and subjugated our people to their whims. This form of alien colonial, political and military domination unfortunately persists as an evil cancer in some of our native territories such as Tahiti-Polynesia, Kanaky, Australia and Aotearoa. Our environment continues to be despoiled by foreign powers developing nuclear weapons for a strategy of warfare that has no winners, no liberators and imperils the survival of all humankind.’
- Clause 2, Preamble, People’s Charter for a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific

Events in the region

Treaty of Rarotonga 1986: Nuclear weapons-free zone

The long campaigns to achieve a Nuclear-Free South Pacific were successful in ending nuclear weapons testing. The UN Treaty of Rarotonga (South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone) was declared in 1986 to end any nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.

Yet the victory was frustrating. Despite the Rarotonga Treaty, France continued to conduct underground tests which just demonstrated the fundamental problem. The 1985 Rarotonga treaty did not end colonialism. The continuing presence of colonial control poisoned the hopes of many people around the region.

The Fiji Coups 1987

The two military coups in Fiji in 1987 were a severe test to all the activists at Tranby. These coups deposed a Labour Party government, led by Indigenous Fijians, which had been based on trade union organisation. While the coup leader, General Sitiveni Rabuka, claimed to be restoring power to Indigenous Fijians over their own country, these coups in fact brought power only to elite Fijians from chiefly families, rather than working-class Fijians. At the same time, the coups disenfranchised many Indigenous Fijians who were ‘commoners’ as well as Fijians of Indian descent, whose families had been brought to Fiji against their will as indentured labourers. The Fiji military regime enshrined a new constitution based on race rather than citizenship. This coup posed difficult questions for Indigenous people in Australia as well as in Kanaky and across the Pacific. Many colonised Indigenous people supported the goal of restoring Fijian control over their own country but were uneasy that race and communalism were the means to achieve land rights. Kevin Cook expressed this discomfort when he said, in his book, Making Change Happen: 

It was difficult wasn’t it? You had the issue about Indigenous people and their rights but at the same time you had the trade unions and the Labour Party issue and the question about democratic organisation for all Fijians, Indigenous, Indian or anyone else…. There were Indigenous Fijians who were members of the trade unions, the Labour Party and other organisations, like the churches, who were all locked out of the decision-making.

The coup had, in fact, restored elite chiefly rule in Fiji, as well as imposing a limited version of ‘custom’, reshaped by conservative Christianity, which disadvantaged the rights of women and a range of minorities. At the same time, the coup leaders embraced capitalist development and tied the Fijian economy to global corporate structures and to colonising powers like France, making it difficult to criticise these colonisers.

Stronger regional networks

The coups severely limited political activity inside Fiji, but strengthened regional activity, as Fijian activists looked to other Pacific and Australian activists to build up stronger networks between the many states and peoples of Australasia and the Pacific. (Nicole George, 2012, ANU Press) The strengthening of regional networks can be seen in the presence of Kanak Independence movement speakers, including Alfonse Dianou from Ouvea Island, in the Alice Springs meetings of the Close Pine Gap campaign after the coup, during later 1987. Dianou was able to speak there about the importance of self-determination so that New Caledonia was no longer under French colonial rule and could refuse to have any weapons testing there. Similarly, the Fijian women’s movements, including the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre and the Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, were prominent in the (Australian) International Women’s Development Agency-sponsored South Pacific group who put the Pacific Platform for Action strongly in Beijing in September 1995.

One of the connections across the region that people involved with Tranby were making were with the Philippines. Activists from the Philippines who were campaigning for social and economic justice had visited Tranby, meeting up with Kevin Cook in the 1980s. One of the means for people to make these Philippines connections were the trips organised by Peace Brigade International, an organisation set up in 1981 by non-violence activists. Workers in the Movement Against Uranium Mining were on one trip, while Kevin Tory, from TUCAR, travelled on another Peace Brigade trip in January 1989.

→ Read Kevin Tory’s report to TUCAR (TUCAR Newsletter April 1989, pp3-4)

Karen Flick travelled to the Philippines on another occasion to meet with people from Indigenous and regional movements and has remembered her visit to the north:

It was a regional meeting because the Maoris were there, PNG was there, Burma representatives, and others. It was an indigenous meeting. So this was the connection that I got through Tranby actually – it was through the churches (the World Council of Churches) had advised Cookie that there was this regional meeting and Cookie asked me to go.

Karen recalled an NFIP conference in Sydney, stressing what was for her the importance of the movement’s challenge to colonialism:

There was a big mob of people, so it felt like the room was full, with lots of people from different countries. It was all about a Nuclear-free and Independent Pacific but the theme that was coming through there was that you can't just talk about nuclear-free if you're without justice. The independence theme was always pushing through.

Independence: Kanaky & West Papua

It was at Beijing that the Kanak leader Susanna Oumei put the strongest challenge to the announcement of renewed French weapons testing in French Polynesia at Muroroa. (George, ch 4, pp 107-137) Indigenous Australians taking part in Beijing, including those associated with Tranby like Barbara Flick, were acutely aware of the continuing French testing in the Pacific and of the demands by Kanaks and others for independence and control over their land. Barbara, like her sister Karen, had met Alphonse Dianou, the Kanak leader, in Alice Springs during the Close Pine Gap campaign (1986-7).

In 1988, a terrible conflict erupted on Ouvea, Susanna Oumei and Alphonse Dianou’s home island. In an attempt to defend themselves against armed groups opposing independence, a group of Kanak Independence Movement activists tried to seize arms from a French police station. In the resulting melee, the Kanaks took 27 gendarmes hostage and retreated to a complex of caves. French military stormed the caves using flame throwers and heavy artillery, leaving 21 dead, including 19 Kanak activists, one of whom was Dianou. Some were believed to have been summarily executed.

→ Read article: Max Uechtritz, 2018, Asia Pacific Report, 7 May 2018

The realities of French power were brought home to Barbara Flick when she travelled to New Caledonia soon after. She has recalled:

I had met Alphonse Dianou from Gossanah Village on Ouvea in 1988. He had come to Alice Springs for the Pine Gap actions. After he returned home, he and 18 other men from his village were murdered by the gendarmes.

I went to Kanaky shortly after his death. I had been talking about the murders and the struggle for independence on Australian radio. When I applied for a visa there was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. They finally sent the application to Paris for a decision. When I went to pick up the visa finally, Judy Chester went with me. I got a lecture on "you should not criticise the French government etc etc".

I flew to Noumea and arrived about 10pm at night. I was taken out of the line in Immigration and put in a small room where my suitcase was emptied. ‘Ahah! Propaganda!’ they yelled. It was just some posters. They finally let me go. On the other side of the wall, I was met by Kanak activists who put me into their car and took off for the city. I remember the car weaving in and out of streets and finally stopped at a hotel. I checked in and they took me upstairs. The room was searched before they let me enter and told me not to answer the door to anyone until they came for me the next morning.

During the few days I stayed in Noumea, I spoke often on Kanak Radio, calling for a full investigation into the Ouvea deaths.

When I decided to go to Ouvea, the activists wanted me to travel under a different name. I said ‘No, if anything happened to me, I wanted the family to know it was me’. I remember flying into Ouvea and out the window I could see soldiers or gendarmes lined up on the tarmac with machine guns. I was surprised when I realised they were waiting for me!

They followed me into the airport where I was met by a man from Gossanah. I visited the caves where Alphonse and the others were killed. I visited the mass grave. I stayed in the village for about a week and told the story of how we had hosted Alphonse in Alice Springs.

Tranby continued to be strongly supportive of the Independence struggles against the French in Kanaky and their other colonies as well as in Portuguese colonies like Timor L’Este. Once the Portuguese empire collapsed, Timor L’Este had come under the control of Indonesia, which had itself been colonised by the Dutch until 1949. Indonesia had, however, taken on many characteristics of European colonisers’ rule when it took control over the culturally-different areas of Timor L’Este and the former Dutch colony of West Papua. Timor L’Este had been under Portuguese control for centuries, its people frequently had both Melanesian and Portuguese ancestors, and practised Catholicism, so overall their cultures were very different from those of Indonesia, where the majority population was Malay and practised Islam. The West Papuans were different again, drawing on strong Melanesian cultural roots. The Dutch had imprisoned many Indonesian Independence activists in West Papua from the 1920s, at prison camps like Boven Digul, leading many Indonesians to consider themselves closely affiliated to its people. The West Papuans, however, had rejected the Indonesian take over from the Dutch and regarded themselves to have been colonised all over again.

Solidarity with West Papua was a strong theme at Tranby. The Co-op hosted The Black Brothers, a band which was outspoken in its campaigning West Papuan Independence. Having been forced into exile in 1980, the band played in many locations in Vanuatu and in Papua New Guinea, where it was the most popular band of the 1980s. When they came to Australia, Tranby invited them to stay in the college and speak to students about their campaign.

Jabiluka

By the mid 1990s, the Ranger mine was nearing the end of its production and the Federal Government was seeking to open another mine on Mirarr land, at Jabiluka. Toby Gangale’s daughter, Yvonne Maragules, opposed this mine as did other Traditional Owners.

Jacqui Katona was Yvonne’s daughter and Toby Gangale’s granddaughter. While at University of Queensland Press in Brisbane in 1985, Jacqui was involved in the Black Deaths in Custody campaign, and met Helen Boyle, Karen Flick and others who worked at Tranby. Jacqui came to Sydney to work with the Aboriginal Arts Board, and later became a Student adviser at Tranby in 1987, organised a major art auction fundraiser for the 1988 Bicentennial events and worked on the Building Bridges concert in 1988 and the album in 1989. Returning home to her family in Jabiru, she supported her mother and other Traditional Owners as they tried to stop the Jabiluka mine going ahead.

And the Mirarr won!

The following account of the hard but successful Jabiluka campaign is drawn from the Calender the Mirarr have created to mark the 20th anniversary of their victory.

On World Environment Day, June 5th 1997, Mirarr carried a giant “Stop Jabiluka Mine” banner up the escarpment on the mineral lease. This iconic public message hung in full view of the highway for many months. Tens of thousands of tourists learned the word Jabiluka and the Mirarr made their intention to stop an unwanted mine on their country absolutely clear.

In July 1997 over 60 students from across Australia travelled from the Students of Sustainability conference in Townsville to Kakadu to participate in a Week of Action on Mirarr country. The Mirarr took the students to the Jabiluka lease and Ranger uranium mine and held a public meeting in Jabiru. This event sowed the seeds of the Jabiluka Action Groups (JAGs).

Then, on 23 March 1998, Traditional Owners of parts of Kakadu as well as the Jabiluka and Ranger uranium deposits, invited thousands of protesters to Kakadu to begin a blockade of the Jabiluka site so that work could not begin on any new mine. (The Mirarr led the whole campaign through their Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, but they were joined by the Australian Conservation Foundation, the NT Environment Centre, the Friends of the Earth and the Wilderness Society.)

At the launch of the blockade, Jacqui Katona said:

The Mirarr see the blockade as the next logical step in stopping this obscene and noxious proposal. They do not welcome the conflict that beckons, but they do not recoil from it. The Mirarr stand strong together to protect their country.

Environment, peace, trade union and civil society groups from around Australia joined with dedicated Jabiluka Action Groups (JAGs) to support the Mirarr and protect Kakadu. As a result of these combined efforts, Jabiluka became a household name and a national focus.

The Jabiluka blockade ran for eight months and attracted more than 5000 people, over 500 of whom were arrested for peaceful civil disobedience. Blockaders showed their opposition to the unwanted mine in diverse and powerful ways. Over 150 actions were undertaken including huge walk-ons resulting in mass arrests, poignant candlelit vigils, covert trespass actions within the mine compound, musical extravaganzas including a dawn concert from Coloured Stone, Regurgitator and Midnight Oil, theatre pieces at the lease gates and rowdy rallies along the road.

There was a corporate campaign too which was a vital part of stopping the Jabiluka mine by building shareholder opposition to the damage the mine would do to Mirarr land. This corporate campaign led, eventually, to the sale of the company to Rio Tinto purchased North Ltd in August 2000. The change of ownership signalled a new approach by the parent company and paved the way for negotiations regarding the future of Jabiluka. The fate of Jabiluka is now firmly in the hands of the Mirarr Traditional Owners.

Mirarr and their supporters took the Jabiluka story to many countries. In 1998 Mirarr Senior Traditional Owner Yvonne Margarula, Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation staff Jacqui Katona and Christine Christophersen and Dave Sweeney (Australian Conservation Foundation) undertook a speaking tour which took them to places in Europe and the United States where they received strong support.

Construction at Jabiluka did start in 1998 with a 1.2km tunnel to the ore body, the extraction of 50,000 tonnes of mineralised rock and the construction of an interim water management pond. But in January 1999 the company suspended operations. In 2001, Rio Tinto agreed not to proceed without Mirarr consent. The Mirarr held firm and refused to agree to the mine going ahead.

So on August 12th 2003, backfill of the Jabiluka tunnel started. The return of such large volumes of uranium-bearing rock was unprecedented and widely welcomed. Major rehabilitation works ended in late 2015 and weed, fire and water management remain an ongoing responsibility for ERA.

“They kept on pushing us Mirarr, they wanted to dig Jabiluka. But there is a djang (sacred place) there. If they disturb it they will make it wrong. They’ve already made wrong. So they closed it back down.”
- Yvonne Margarula, September 19, 2010

The calendar the Mirarr made for 2018, the 20th anniversary of the start of their campaign, is available on the Gundjeihmi Corporation website