"Wild Diamonds and Ancient Culture
By Janine Roberts - A sample from her
forthcoming ' Glitter and Greed' book. c96 >
(Note. Other material on the struggle of
indigenous minorities can be found here.)
I was sitting in the fine red dust of the
Australian outback discussing diamond mining with Aborigines when I
learnt that the police had been ordered in by helicopter to arrest
me. Shocked by the news, I did not dream it then, but this was the
start of an adventure that would ensnare me for a decade in an
investigation of the secretive and dangerous diamond Syndicate; lead
me to the White House and the Kennedies, to a sabotaged mine in
Clinton's Arkansas, to diamond shipments to the Nazis and last of all
to child cutters in India and the private diamond townships of
southern Africa that still exclude black wives, to the fraudulent
glitter of 47th Street in Manhatten and to the Dene in the Arctic who
fear the loss of millenia old hunting grounds because common diamonds
are sold as rare emblems of love.
Yet that sunny day in 1979 had seemed
impossible to perturb. I was in Oombulgurri, an Aboriginal settlement
in the remote north of Western Australia, in the rugged desert
mountains of the Kimberleys. The air was still, the only sound the
soft hum of flies and the occasional screech of a parrot. Under the
spreading branches of a fat trunked boab tree using the sandy ground
as my easel I had been explaining the techniques of diamond mining to
two Aboriginal elders who sat before me as comfortably solid as if
they grew from earth.
They were the senior Law Makers, the local
religious equilivalent to archbishops but living in poverty. They
wanted to know what mining diamonds would do to their land and
environment. They questioned me and listened carefully and gravely. A
mining company had set up a diamond exploration camp on their land
and called it "Mumbo Jumbo" in a seemingly insulting reference to
Aboriginal culture. They had heard the rumours of diamond finds
throughout their tribal lands of the Kimberleys. Prospectors in light
aircraft, helicopters and four wheel drives were pouring into their
previously quiet land of dust blown plains, red rocked hills and deep
gorges where I had a few days earlier walked among a crowd of dark
furred and curious flying foxes hanging upside down from branches and
then, at dusk, watched them spiral out like a host of vampires but
only in search of pungent fruit.
The news of my impending arrest had been
brought by the local schoolteacher from a nearby corrugated tin
radio-hut. His message seemed so over the top, so extraordinary, that
I could scarcely believe it. It seemed my crime was to visit these
tribal reserve lands, without a newly required state government
permit that could only be acquired from an office in the state
capital Perth over a thousand miles away. It did not matter that the
community had invited me, nor that a white haired elder had
accompanied myself and a friend, into the Aboriginal reserve nor that
the local police had never arrested anyone for this "crime" before
and had to be ordered into action. Sitting under the boab tree with
the elders it seemed scarcely credible that anyone would see what I
was doing as so dangerous that it justified a raid by helicopter
borne police.
Yet this place had not aways been
peaceful. A cross erected on a hill above the settlement bore
testimony to Aborigines massacred by a police party in 1928 within
the memory of these elders. After a subsequent period in compulsory
exile in white run institutions, the survivors in 1972 had returned
joyously to Oombulgurri, to their ancestral and sacred land. It
however remained state owned although reserved for Aborigines and
they discovered on their return that in their absence the "Mumbo
Jumbo" diamond prospecting camp had been set up by CRA, a company
controlled by RTZ from London in the UK. The Aborigines could not
throw them out, but they determined to be careful about allowing
others in.
The elders sought information from me
because I had researched and written on mining for many years and had
worked with Aboriginal communities elsewhere. I was in the region at
the invitation of the Kimberley Land Council, the representative body
for local Aborigines, which had asked me to provide information on
mining to its member communities as they were being swamped by a
tidal wave of white diamond prospectors and miners. The Oombulgurri
community some 6 months before my visit had evicted Stockdale, a
diamond exploration company controlled by De Beers, a company owned
by Oppenheimers of South Africa, perhaps the richest family in the
southern hemisphere, because the community feared for their own and
their land's future if they allowed the mining of sacred ancestral
grounds.
In an angry response to Stockdale's
exclusion, the premier of Western Australia, Charles Court,
promulgated a new regulation preventing Aboriginal communities from
controlling entry to their reserve lands. This was to ensure that
Aborigines would not be able to block 'progress.' It was under his
new regulation that I and my companion were threatened with arrest.
It soon become clear that we had stumbled into the midst of a quiet
war between De Beers, prospectors, government and the tribes.
We did not wait for the police to arrive,
but hired the community's boat to return to the slaughterhouse town
of Wyndham in the eastern Kimberley. I hoped this would protect my
hosts from being harassed by the police for making us welcome. The
mission boat was not much more than a rowing boat with an outboard
motor, smaller than the crocodiles that lazed and frolicked just up
stream from us. But we made it away, through the tangled mangrove
roots, across the shark infested estuary that covered sediments
believed by some to be very rich in diamonds, safely to Wyndham. The
quayside was quiet when we arrived, the dust blown streets deserted
before the on-coming monsoonal storm. We made our way to the home of
the local district nurse where we were staying. We thought that was
the end of the excitement but after dinner the police came around to
arrest us. We were locked in a cell for a few hours and were later
fined for our 'offence'. The local Aboriginal-run legal service
maintained that our arrest was a violation of the basic civil right
to invite guests to one's own home.
The Australian Aborigines, unlike the
North American Indians, had never been accorded by the white
colonists the respect of treaties. Their lands had been taken from
them as if they were not human. Australian law at that time was based
on the premise that Australia had been, when whites arrived, 'terra
nullius', no one's land. Consequently the original Australians had
lost all land rights, received no income from these lands, no mining
royalties. Instead they had been left destitute and homeless. I had
been invited to the Kimberleys because of my work to raise
international awareness of their plight. I had just spent 3 years in
Europe raising support for Aboriginal organisations and helping their
voice be heard. This had included helping organise a land council
speaking tour of five European nations funded by the World Council of
Churches and others. I was now to attend the first meeting of
Aboriginal Land Councils from both sides of the continent to discuss
how to gain international support for their struggle to regain land
rights.
In Perth, the capital of the state of
Western Australia, before I came up to the Kimberlies I had met
Robert Bropho, a man with an ancient face of strong brow lines who
works passionately to improve the lot of Aboriginal children as an
uncompromising and charasmatic leader of his people. He told me he
decided to work with me because initially I sat silent with him,
striving to communicate without words. He drove me to the Kimberley
meeting from Perth, a long drive over roads that were sometimes no
more than tracks. We slept under the stars, rising at what he called
'piccaniny dawn'- the first light when the parrots began to 'sing'.
We took care in the latter stages of the drive to avoid bogging in
deep 'bull-dust' piles that lay alongside the desert roads . We
talked with the lawmakers at all Aboriginal camps we passed. They
told us they were not against mining as such, for their people had
always mined for tool-stones and clays, but wanted miners to respect
the spirit of the land and Aboriginal ancestral rights.
The impoverishment they had suffered
through loss of land had caused their health to grievously
deteriorate. Instead of living into their 70s, as they did before
whites arrived, they now died at least 10 years earlier. Their life
expectancy was that of the poverty stricken inhabitants of 'third
world' countries. Introduced leprosy was still present in the
Kimberlies in the 1970s. One in four of their elders was blinded by
trachoma. An Aboriginal mother in northern Australia in 1994 was 30
times more likely to die in childbirth than a white woman. Her child
was 3 times more likely to die in the first year of life than the
child of a white Australiani. The discovery of diamonds on tribal
lands should have brought them the income needed to ameliate living
conditions. Instead it further endangered their survival as a people
by depriving them of yet more land and by swamping them with white
settlers.
Before I went to Oombulgurri, I had
visited the Aboriginal cattle station of Noonkanbah across the
Kimberley mountains south west of Oombulgurri. To reach the
settlement on the station I travelled a long dirt road across grassy
plains broken by small rocky hills like to the 'Kopjes' of South
Africa. This similarity is no coincidence. Australia was once joined
to South Africa in the ancient continent of Gonwandaland. These hills
are the worn down stumps of ancient volcanoes in both continents.
Even the fat boab trees surrounding them in Australia have relatives
in Africa. The forces that had split Australia and South Africa
apart, caused volcanic eruptions to bring to the surface the carbon
crystals known as diamonds. One night an Aboriginal elder sung me a
very ancient song about the eruption of volcanoes. The State
Geological Service in South Australia has established that Aboriginal
legends give the correct sequence of eruptions although these events
happened at least 10,000 years ago!
I had learnt that CRA, the British RTZ
controlled Australian mining company, had found several small
diamonds in the Noonkanbah's kopjes and on the surrounding plains. It
had obtained mining tenements over 30 square kilometers of Noonkanbah
despite the protests of the nearly 300 Aborigines who lived in shacks
around the central station buildings. The state government had
offered to build these Aborigines houses, but only if government
overseers were allowed to bring in alcohol. The community did not
agree for it had banned alcohol. The resulting impass meant these
homes were not built. Noonkanbah was a major centre for Aboriginal
culture. The Kimberley Land Council was created by 1,200 Aborigines
gathered here for a song and dance festival some two years before my
visit.
At Noonkanbah, as I would at Oombulgurri,
I sat on the sand with the elders and, using Aboriginal style the
sand as my easel, drew mining plans and showed how diamond-bearing
gravels could be eroded from the remnants of volcanoes . The much
revered elder and spiritual leader Nipper Tabigee became in turn my
guide and teacher. He took me on a jolting drive across a dried
section of river bed between dry season pools, where fresh water
crocodiles sometimes lived, to a rocky hill called Djada. He told me
his people once gathered here for ceremonies and asked me to follow
as he climbed it. The hill was small, not the height of a tree. About
half way up he stopped bythe mouth of a cave.
'Look, Jan', he said, 'can you see the
bones?' I peered into the cave, momentarily blinded by the bright
light outside. But when my eyes adjusted I saw long white bones
inside. 'These are the bones of my people shot down by a police party
when I was this high'. He indicated his thigh. Then, without a sign
of bitterness, he quietly told me how a diamond exploration company
had recently pegged and claimed the entire hill, entering the cave
and taking the very sacred ceremonial objects stored inside. Some of
these had been destroyed by the prospectors, some were taken to
Melbourne and were later retrieved by Noonkanbah. 4
This was not the only burial ground
desecrated on Noonkanbah. Aboriginal elder, 'Friday' Mullamulla,
pointing to the potentially diamond rich plains around their
settlement, had said, 'That is all CRA... they bring bulldozer about
two miles back down that way... They cut all the way around all dead
bodies. All around that place where we have taken the bones of the
old people.' ii The Aboriginal people of Noonkanbah had sent a
petition to the State Parliament written on bark and in Walmajeri,
their language. In translation it read:
'We are sending this letter to you
important people who can speak and who are now sitting down there
talking in the big house. We, Aboriginal people of Noonkanbah
Station, are sending you this letter. We truthfully beg you important
people that you stop these people, namely CRA and AMAX (who were
looking for oil), who are going into our land..
These people have already made the place
no good with their bulldozers. Our sacred places they have made no
good. They mess up our land. They expose our sacred objects. This
breaks our spirit. We lose ourselves as a people. What will we as a
people do if these people continue to make all our land no good?
Today we beg you that you that you truly stop them.' iii
I had many conversations wth elders and
others while at Noonkanbah. Their dilemna was that they had already
agreed that CRA could prospect for a further 3 weeks if it used an
Aboriginal guide to ensure no further trespass upon sacred places.
Once consent was given, the elders did not like to withdraw it. But
they now felt they had not been fully informed as no one had
explained to them the likely size of a mine if diamonds were
discovered. It also irked them that CRA would not conceed that
traditional owners of the land had any right to a royality on its
diamonds. A spokesman for the Noonkanbah community, Dicky Skinner,
said: 'My law says ... if CRA's name is written upon the diamond, CRA
is allowed to go down and get him. If CRA's name is not on it, ... it
is for tribal peoples.' 5. I told them I had learnt CRA had found
diamonds in 15 extinct volcanoes on Noonkanbah station.
On reflection, the elders decided they
could not trust CRA to leave after prospecting if they found
significant numbers of diamonds. It would surely bring in many more
white people. They also noted with alarm that CRA had notified the
government that it was also searching for uranium. It was time for
legal action. Once they had decided to withdraw their consent to
CRA's prospecting, Nipper Tabigee and other elders took me with them
to Derby in an old car with no windscreen. After we arrived,
windblown and dust covered, they told their lawyer to evict CRA and
made the following statement:
'CRA, we have been thinking about you
looking on our land. You say you only look at one part of our station
then go away again after three weeks. But we say, after talking some
more between ourselves, we don't want you because, if you find
something up there, you may come more and more onto our land and we
don't want that. Also you didn't tell us you also looking for uranium
- that stuff dangerous for everyone.' 6
Following this, the Kimberley Land Council
asked me to stay on as its guest to visit other communities. Soon
afterwards two wite lawyers came up from Perth to speak to the elders
at Noonkanbah about their decision to expel CRA . I was asked by the
community to attend the same meeting. The lawyers spoke to the
community on the benefits that mining could bring, including a mining
township populated by Aborigines and many jobs for Aborigines. They
did not mention that to date few Aborigines had been given
responsible jobs in Australian mines , nor that the common experience
of Aborigines living near mines, especially CRA's many mines, is of
dispossession and powerlessness.
The elders then asked me to repeat what I
had previously told them about the effects of diamond mining. I told
them that miners normally scooped out the heart of a diamond rich
extinct volcano by digging a pit at least a kilometre wide and
perhaps 200 metres deep with shafts below this to 800 metres, and
that the surrounding plains could be bull-dozed to find diamonds
washed out by monsoonal rains. The discussion then continued in the
Walmjeri language. Nipper Tabigee translated quietly for me. No one
translated for the lawyers. I was then told the community had decided
to maintain their ban on CRA. The lawyers were told to do nothing
until they heard from the community.
The lawyers asked me to meet with them
privately in a vast woolshed out of sight and hearing of the
Aborigines, where they furiously questioned what right I had to give
these Aborigines any advice. They angrily reminded me that I had no
official standing with any government body. The lawyers said they
knew I was going on to Oombulgurri and made unspecified threats about
what would happen to me when I got there. But for the life of me, I
did not expect they might persuade the federal and state governments
to move against me.
Some months after I left Noonkanbah, the
tribal elders of Noonkanbah once more directly challenged the State
government. They wrote to the government on June 9th, 1980. 'You
assumed we recognize the State Government's ownership of the land.
Instead of this you should have recognized us, the Elders who hold
the law for this country, as the real owners of the land.' iv
Premier Court replied in the West
Australian newspaper:' 'I do not believe that such radical and
unlawful views are really theirs.' He spoke of 'the extremist
agitation began which led the community to make absurd claims
amounting to sovereignty over the crown land they occupy as pastoral
leaseholders.' v Fortunately as the Noonkanbah station was leasehold
and not Aboriginal reserve land, he could not ban them from having
visitors.
Shortly after the Premier made this
statement, advertisements funded by the mining industry appeared on
television showing a black hand building a wall across Western
Australia accompanied by a voiceover claiming that Aboriginal land
rights would rob other (white) Australians of their birthright. The
Australian Mining Industry Council also warned that Aboriginal land
rights could lead to 'a system of unauthorized totalitarian control
by a minority within particular parts of Australia.' 9 The miners
were at the forefront of the campaign contesting Aboriginal rights to
tribal lands because the Aborigines mainly now lived on barren lands
not wanted by graziers but where mineral rich rocks were exposed for
the taking.
But Charles Court and his government could
not see very far into the future. In 1992 a revolutionary High Court
decision in the Mabo case, supported by six out of the seven judges
involved, stated that Aboriginal 'native rights' to crown lands still
existed as the British authorities had presumed to take over
Aboriginal lands without making a formal order of dispossession by
right of conquest. Only the lands given away as freehold by the Crown
could not be regained. Aborigines under this ruling immediately laid
claim to vast tracts of unalienated crown land. In 1993, the new
Premier, Richard Court (the son of the Charles Court) vowed to fight
this landmark High Court ruling by all the means available. The
Australian Mining Industry Council, funded by all the major mining
companies, united with him in opposition. Its members feared having
to pay royalties to the tribes and having to protect sacred places.
The Kimberley Land Council became once more locked in legal battle on
behalf of the impoverished people they represented. The war still
continues as I write in 1996.
c96Janine Roberts
i The Australian, 11 February 1995. ii As
told to Steven hawke, unpublished document. 1978. iii Provided to me
in 1979 by the Kimberley Land Council. iv Document provided by the
Kimberley Land Council in 1979. v West Australian , 8 August
1980
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