The injustices against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia are piling up. Until 1967, Indigenous people were not even counted as official citizens of Australia. Only a few decades ago, indigenous children were torn from their families and placed in orphanages and foster families in order to “assimilate” them.
But times have changed. Although indigenous people are still disadvantaged in many areas today, the Australian indigenous peoples are becoming more and more successful. They are to be given an “indigenous vote” in parliament by referendum, giving them a say on issues that affect them. Other wrongs should also be made good, at least in part.
An example went around the world in 2020 when the British-Australian mining company Rio Tinto destroyed the caves of the Juukan Gorge in Western Australia – a 46,000-year-old Aboriginal cultural site. An investigation ultimately forced the company to compensate the indigenous people and rebuild the caves.
Islanders showed fighting spirit
Especially in the past few weeks, indigenous peoples have been able to celebrate successes. The inhabitants of the Tiwi Islands, which lie north of Darwin in the Timor Sea, put a stop to the powerful Santos commodity group. He wanted to drill for gas not far from the islands in the sea.
The approval was already there. But the company hadn’t counted on the fighting spirit of the islanders. They went to court – and the Australian Federal Court agreed in September: Santos must put its gas project on hold. The court concluded that the company had ignored the indigenous people in the permitting process.
Islander Dennis Tipakalippa, who filed the lawsuit in June, then said the ruling had made him the happiest man alive: “The most important thing for us is to protect our marine space.” He hopes Santos, like all other mining companies, will will remember in the future how “powerful” indigenous peoples can be. “We will fight for our land and our seas and for our future generations, no matter how hard or for how long.”
According to the lawyer Alina Leikin, who specializes in environmental law, the verdict “sets a new standard”. It shows that companies will have to have more thorough consultations with indigenous owners before they can get drilling permits.
Life “physically and culturally endangered”
Shortly thereafter, the UN Human Rights Committee came to another important conclusion: Australia violates the rights of the indigenous people of the Torres Strait Islands by not adequately protecting the people there from the negative effects of climate change.
The committee thus upheld a complaint from eight aboriginal people and their children living on four small, low-lying islands in the region between mainland Australia and Papua New Guinea. The Australian government was accused of failing to modernize seawalls on the islands or reduce greenhouse gas emissions sufficiently.
For years, people on the Torres Strait Islands have seen rising sea levels, extreme weather events and coastal erosion threatening their homes and way of life. As early as 2008, a case study described the impact on nesting turtles, birdlife and seagrass in the region. It said of the indigenous people: “They feel their lives are threatened, both physically and culturally.”
The situation is now even more dramatic: on one of the islands, Masig Island, the freshwater well has become salty due to the ingress of seawater, and the corals in front of the island have died. The UN committee is now demanding that the Australian government compensate the islanders.
A number of prominent name changes are currently setting a symbolic sign. Australia wants to give back its indigenous name to the world’s largest sand island. Fraser Island, 300 kilometers north of Brisbane and a symbol of Australia, is said to have originally been named K’gari. Deriving from a traditional creation story, the word comes from the local indigenous language and is pronounced ‘Gurri’ meaning ‘paradise’.
A national park in the state of New South Wales was also recently renamed. The former Ben Boyd National Park is now called Beowa National Park at the request of the local Aboriginal people. This case also involved removing the name of a notorious slave trader.
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Source: Tagesspiegel
I work as a news website author and mostly cover the opinion section. I have been writing since I was a teenager, and have always enjoyed telling stories. I studied journalism at university and loved every minute of it. After graduating, I decided to move to London and take up a position with a Global Happenings. It has been an incredible experience, learning about all sorts of different cultures and meeting some amazing people. My goal is to continue learning and growing in my career so that I can provide readers with the best possible content.
