Maralinga Tjarutja | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Location of the Maralinga Tjarutja Council | |||||||||||||
| Country | Australia | ||||||||||||
| State | South Australia | ||||||||||||
| Region | Eyre Western[1] | ||||||||||||
| Established | 2006 | ||||||||||||
| Council seat | Ceduna (outside Council area) | ||||||||||||
| Government | |||||||||||||
| • State electorate | |||||||||||||
| • Federal division | |||||||||||||
| Area | |||||||||||||
• Total | 102,863.6 km2 (39,715.9 sq mi) | ||||||||||||
| Population | |||||||||||||
| • Total | 96 (LGA2021)[3] | ||||||||||||
| • Density | 0.001/km2 (0.0026/sq mi) | ||||||||||||
| Website | Maralinga Tjarutja | ||||||||||||
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TheMaralinga Tjarutja, orMaralinga Tjarutja Council, is the corporation representing the traditionalAnangu owners of the remote western areas ofSouth Australia known as the Maralinga Tjarutja lands. The council was established by theMaralinga Tjarutja Land Rights Act 1984. The area is one of the four regions of South Australia classified as anAboriginal Council (AC), and its official consideration as alocal government area differs between federal and state sources.
TheAboriginal Australian people whose historic rights over the area have been officially recognised belong to the southern branch of thePitjantjatjara people. The land includes a large area of land contaminated byBritish nuclear testing in the 1950s, for which the inhabitants were eventually compensated in 1991.
There is a community centre atOak Valley, 840 km (520 mi) NW ofCeduna, and close historical and kinship links with theYalata 350 km (220 mi) south, and thePila Nguru centre ofTjuntjuntjara 370 km (230 mi) to their west.[4]
The Maralinga Tjarutja people belong to a generalWestern Desert ecological zone sharing cultural affinities with thePitjantjatjara,Yankunytjatjara andNgaanyatjarra to their north and thePila Nguru of the spinifex plains to their west. They speak dialects ofPitjantjatjara andYankunytjatjara.[5]
The termmaralinga is not of local origin. It is a term chosen from the Garig or Garik dialect of the now-extinctNorthern TerritoryIlgar language, signifying "field of thunder/thunder", and was selected to designate the area whereatomic bomb testing was to be undertaken by the then Chief Scientist of theDepartment of Supply,W. A. S. Butement.[6] The land was covered inspinifex grasses[7] and good red soil (parna wiru) furnishing fine camping.[8]
Waterholes (kapi) have a prominent function in their mythology: they are inhabited by spirit children and thought of as birth places, and control of them demarcate the various tribal groups.[9] According toRonald Berndt, one particular water snake,Wanampi, tutelage spirit over native doctors, whose fertility function appears to parallel in some respects that of theRainbow serpent ofArnhem Land myth, was regarded as the creator of thesekapi, and figured prominently in male initiation ceremonies.[10]
Ooldea orYuldi/Yutulynga/Yooldool (the place of abundant water) sits on a permanent undergroundaquifer .[5] The area is thought to have been originally part ofWirangu land, lying on its northern border,[11] though it fell within the boundaries of aKokatha emu totem group. It served several Aboriginal peoples, furnishing them with aceremonial site, trade node and meeting place for other groups, from the northeast who would travel several hundred miles to visit kin. Among the peoples who congregated there were tribes from the Kokatha andNgalea northern groups and Wirangu of south-east andMirning south-west.[12] By the timeDaisy Bates (1919–1935) took up residence there it was thought that earlier groups had disappeared, replaced by an influx ofspinifex people from the north. By her time, theTrans-Australian Railway route had just been completed, coinciding with a drought that drew theWestern desert peoples to the depot at Ooldea.[12][13]
Beginning in the 1890s, there was a gradual encroachment by pastoralists up to the southern periphery of theNullarbor Plain, but the lack of adequate water to sustain stock maintained the region relatively intact from intense exploitation.[13] In 1933 the United Aborigines Missions established itself there, drawing substantial numbers of desert folk to the site for food and clothing, and four years later, the government established a 2,000-square-mile (5,200 km2) reserve.[13] In 1941, the anthropologistsRonald andCatherine Berndt spent several months in the Aboriginal camp at the water soak and mission, and in the following three-year period (1942–1945) wrote one of the first scientific ethnographies of an Australian tribal group, based on his interviews in a community of some 700 desert people.[14] Traditional life still continued since Ooldea lay on the fringe of the desert, and incoming Aboriginal people could return to their old hunting style.
When theAustralian Government decided in the early 1950s to set aside theEmu Field andMaralinga in the area forBritish nuclear testing, the community at Ooldea was forcibly removed from the land and resettled further south atYalata, in 1952. Road blocks and soldiers barred any return.[7]
Yalata, bordering on theNullarbor Plain offered a totally differentecological environment; in place of thespinifex plains to the north, the Maralinga Tjaruta people found an arid stone plain, with poor thin soil and a powdery limestone that kicked up a grey dust when disturbed. Their word for "grey", namelytjilpi also signified the greying elders of a tribe, and the Aboriginal residents of Yalata called the new areaparna tjilpi, the "grey earth/ground", suggesting that their forced relocation to Yalata went concomitantly with ageing towards death.[15]
Between 1956 and 1957, seven atomic bombs were exploded on Maralinga land. In further minor trials from 1957 to 1962,plutonium was dispersed widely over much of the area.[16] Compensation in 1993 ofA$13.5 million was determined after three elders flew to London and presented samples of the contaminated soil in London in October 1991.[17]
In 1962, the long-servingPremier of South Australia,Sir Thomas Playford, made a promise that their traditional lands would be restored to the people displaced at Yalata sometime in the future.[18] Under the administration of his successorFrank Walsh, short two-week long bush trips were permitted, enabling them to re-connect with their traditional lifestyles.[15] As negotiations got underway in the 1980s, the Indigenous peoples started setting upoutstations near their original lands. With the passage of theMaralinga Tjarutja Land Rights Act 1984 under PremierJohn Bannon's government, the Maralinga Tjarutja securedfreehold title in 1984, and the right to developmental funds from the State and Federal governments. They completed a move back into the area, to a new community calledOak Valley in March 1985.[19]
Under an agreement between the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia in 1995, efforts were made to clean up the Maralinga site, being completed in 1995. Tonnes of soil and debris contaminated withplutonium anduranium were buried in two trenches about 16 metres (52 ft) deep.[20] The effectiveness of the cleanup has been disputed on a number of occasions.[21][22]
In 2003 South Australian PremierMike Rann opened a new school costingA$2,000,000 atOak Valley. The new school replaced two caravans with no running water or air-conditioning, a facility that had been described as the "worst school in Australia".[23]
In May 2004, following the passage of special legislation, Rann fulfilled a pledge he had made to Maralinga leaderArchie Barton as Aboriginal Affairs Minister in 1991,[24] by handing back title to 21,000 square kilometres (8,100 sq mi) of land to the Maralinga Tjarutja andPila Nguru people. The land, 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) north-west of Adelaide and abutting theWestern Australia border, is now known asMamungari Conservation Park. It includes theSerpentine Lakes and was the largest land return since PremierJohn Bannon's hand over of Maralinga lands in 1984. The returned lands included the sacredOoldea area, which also included the site ofDaisy Bates' mission camp.[25]
In 2014, the last part of the land remaining in theWoomera Prohibited Area, known as "Section 400", was excised and returned to free access.[26]
The Maralinga Tjarutja Council is an incorporated body constituted by the traditional Yalata and Maralinga owners to administer the lands granted to them under theMaralinga Tjarutja Land Rights Act 1984 (SA).[27] The head office is inCeduna.
The Maralinga Tjarutja and the Pila Nguru (orSpinifex people) also jointly own and administer the 21,357.85-square-kilometre (8,246.31 sq mi)Mamungari Conservation Park, which area is contained in the area total for the council area.Emu Field is now part of the council area, too, while the 3,300-square-kilometre (1,300 sq mi)Maralinga area is still a roughly square-shapedenclave within the council area.
The land surveyed and known as Section 400, 120 km2 (46 sq mi) within the Taranaki Plumes,[28] was returned toTraditional Ownership in 2007. This land includes the area of land occupied by the Maralinga Township and the areas in which atomic tests were carried out by the British and Australian governments.
The final part of the 1,782 km2 (688 sq mi) former nuclear test site was returned in 2014.[29]
Maralinga Tjarutja, a May 2020 television documentary film directed byLarissa Behrendt and made byBlackfella Films forABC Television, tells the story of the people of Maralinga. It was deliberately broadcast around the same time that the drama seriesOperation Buffalo[30] was on, to give voice to the Indigenous people of the area and show how it disrupted their lives.[31][32]Screenhub gave it 4.5 stars, calling it an "excellent documentary".[33] The film shows the resilience of the Maralinga Tjarutja people, in which theelders "reveal a perspective ofdeep time and an understanding of place that generates respect for the sacredness of both", their ancestors having lived in the area for millennia.[34] Despite the callous disregard for their occupation of the land shown by the British and Australians involved in the testing, the people have continued to fight for their rights to look after thecontaminated land.[35]
The film, which was produced byDarren Dale, won the 2020AACTA Award for Best Direction in Nonfiction Television and the Silver Award for Documentary (Human Rights) at the 2021New York Festivals TV & Film Awards.[36][37]
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