Art Exhibition
Sunday, 28 April 2019 – 10 am – 5pm
Yaama Ngunna Baaka (Welcome to Our River) Exhibition
Bruce Shillingsworth’s River Collection
Mosman Art Gallery and Community Centre
1 Art Gallery Way, Mosman, NSW Australia 2088
For the flyer: please click here
Bruce Shillingsworth is a Muruwari and Budjiti man, a talented artist and water for the rivers activist, Bruce will showcase his ‘River Collection’ paintings in this gallery exhibition at Mosman Gallery.
Bruce’s family and land is in north-west NSW river communities that hug the Namoi, Barwon, Darling Rivers; Brewarrina, Bourke, Enngonia, Wilcannia and Walgett.
Bruce’s family are painters, dancers and rainmakers. Bruce is a cultural educator in Sydney and leads a cultural revival dance group in the north-west.
The north-west river communities have been devastated by water stealing by big cotton farmers and irrigators.
This gallery exhibition will showcase river stories and raise funds for the Water for the Rivers corroboree campaign.
Yaama (Ngemba language - Brewarrina)
Ngunna (Budjiti, Muruwari language - Enngonia and Weilmoringle)
Barka (Barkangi language - Wilcannia)
$10 entry.
A portion of the monies raised from the night will go to the Water for Rivers campaign.
Contact Judy 0424 288 194
https://www.facebook.com/events/343325006290280/
https://www.evensi.com/yaama-ngunna-barka-river-exhibition-mosman-art-gallery/301537109
http://mosmanartgallery.org.au/visit-us
Video clip of Uncle Bruce
Bruce Shillingsworth - 2019 Corroboree Project - Yaama Ngunna Barka (Welcome to our River)
By Rory McLeod, Filmmaker – 28 March 2019
Bruce Shillingsworth: "This River's in big trouble. We need your help desperately. We need our rivers to survive, to sustain us and to look after us."
Bruce Shillingsworth is calling all the different nations to come to Brewarrina for a "Corroboree Project" to "get the water back in the river". Yaama Ngunna Barka (Welcome to our River).
Bruce Shillingsworth: "I'm here calling for our people out there, First Nations People, to come together in supporting us here in Brewarrina. To get the water back in the river, to let our rivers run freely. We need ceremonies, we need dancers, we need rainmakers to make it rain, we need special lawman, to sing the land, to talk to the spirit. We need our stories and our knowledge to be told again. We need to heal our country through the spirit. Call on Biami our great spirit."
For more information about when and how this is happening please join the group (Water for the Rivers): https://www.facebook.com/groups/1037056726490116/
And or follow on twitter: https://twitter.com/BruceShillings2?lang=en
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaCNHuJZtwE
More videos with Uncle Bruce:
FIX NSW rally, 03/03/19. - 7:30 MINS INTO VIDEO - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUnIO7QWnI&feature=youtu.be
Uncle Bruce Shillingsworth and Viv Freeman interview - NITV - 14 Nov 13 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOSuCt9xomk&feature=youtu.be
Never Enough Shillingsworths.m4v - 12 Apr 2011-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMGK7SyA5Zw&feature=youtu.be
Video/Audio clip with Uncle Bruce from 27 Feb Forum
Video: Recording of a Public forum on the future of the Murray-Darling Basin held by the University of New South Wales’ (UNSW) Global Water Institute - 27 Feb 19
https://hospitality.unsw.edu.au/livestream/future-murray-darling Or https://youtu.be/Pq97P-Z03Jo
Audio: A Voice of Authority on the Murray-Darling –
[13:29] - Murray-Darling River Crisis: Bruce Shillingsworth is a Muruwari and Budjari man from Brewarrina and he speaks passionately on the way the sacred river has been laid waste and what we need to do to fix the mess
https://www.3cr.org.au/wednesday-breakfast/episode-201902270700/failure-parents-next-us-lurches-back-cold-war-dirty-adani
We need to pause the Basin Plan”: Community debates the future of the Murray-Darling Basin - 4 March 19
After seven years and $8 billion spent as part of the Murray-Darling Basin Plan, new solutions must be found to fix the dying river system.
This was one of the messages that came out of a public forum on the future of the Murray-Darling Basin held by the University of New South Wales’ (UNSW) Global Water Institute recently.
...Slattery said ...“It’s fair to say that, despite the $8 billion already spent as part of this $13 billion plan, we’re worse off than when we started,” she said.
“We need to pause the Plan. The government has had 25 years, they’ve put a lot of money into it, and it’s been a failure.
“… We need to start thinking about community-led solutions to get the outcomes we want, not just for the environment but for our regional communities as well.”...
Bruce Shillingsworth, from Brewarrina in northwest NSW, took the opportunity to speak about the importance of First Nations peoples’ connections to land and water.
“Aboriginal people have a lot of knowledge and understand the environment,” he said.
“The river is our blood, and without blood, we will die.”
Shillingsworth said the current situation was a man-made disaster that must be fixed.
“My old people said to me, ‘One day we’re going to be squabbling over water: who owns it, who controls it, who takes it all and who’s not getting any of it’.
“You can blame the drought, irrigators, big corporations, but we are here now to fix it … We need to fix the Murray-Darling Basin. It’s not a political football. It’s lives we’re talking about.”
You can watch a recording of the forum here and find all our Murray-Darling Basin coverage here.
https://watersource.awa.asn.au/environment/natural-environment/we-need-to-pause-the-basin-plan-community-debates-the-future-of-the-murray-darling-basin/
Documentary
When the River runs dry – Australian Doco – 2019 by Rory McLeod - Filmmaker
Are you sick of seeing millions of dead fish, of corporate greed and corruption? We are too. We want to be able to sit down on the riverbank with the people we’ve been interviewing and share in the joy of a healthy river full of fish and wildlife. Safe in the knowledge that it won’t be ruined again for the sake of greed and profit again. …https://www.pozible.com/project/when-the-river-runs-dry https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIT6tkav0Ck
Related: Locals moved to help save the Darling - 22 Feb 19
https://www.castlemainemail.com.au/locals-moved-to-help-save-the-darling/
Audio
Brewarrina resident Bruce Shillingsworth talks about water issues on the Barwon River - 7 Feb 2019
Aboriginal man and Brewarrina resident Bruce Shillingsworth discusses the why he and other community members have come to Sydney to protest at the office of Water Minister Niall Blair. Bruce details the lack of drinking water and argues that the Aboriginal community should manage the river for the environment. The interview was live from Martin Place and the sound quality is poor.
https://soundcloud.com/radio-skid-row/brewarrina-resident-bruce-shillingsworth-talks-about-water-issues-on-the-barwon-river-07022019
Background Info
3 March 19
The Murray-Darling is the longest and most important river system in Australia, running from southern Queensland all the way to the ocean in South Australia. Although it covers just 14 per cent of the total Australian land mass, it’s also home to 20 per cent of the country’s agricultural land. … Wilcannia is several hundred kilometres upstream from Menindee, the scene of three major fish kills in recent months which saw more than 2 million fish die, including Murray Cod estimated to be over 50 years old. … Like Menindee, Wilcannia’s water supply is also drying up, with the river passing alongside the town reduced to a series of fetid green pools. Traditionally used as the source of the town’s water supply, the Barka at Wilcannia’s today is undrinkable, courtesy of toxic blooms of blue-green algae combined with lot water flow caused by over-extraction of water upstream by irrigators, and a growing drought in the region. … Successive investigations into the management of the Murray-Darling have found that drought is only one factor in the state of the river system.
A report by The Australia Institute blamed over-extraction from the basin by irrigators upstream, and mismanagement by the Murray Darling Basin Authority. South Australia’s Royal Commission into the basin also found the Authority had mismanaged the river, and had acted illegally by factoring in economic considerations when calculating the amount of water needed to sustain environmental flows in the Murray-Darling.
A third inquiry, commissioned by the federal Labor Party and completed by the Australian Academy of Science, acknowledged drought was a factor in the recent mass fish kills at Menindee, but laid much of the blame on mismanagement of the river system by the MBDA.
https://newmatilda.com/2019/03/03/wilcannia-threatens-close-major-highway-save-darling-pleas-ignored/
Friday essay: death on the Darling, colonialism’s final encounter with the Barkandji - April 5, 2019
... The nation’s longest river system (at 2750 kms) and 15th largest in the world, is lifeless. This river, the equivalent of several storeys deep, has supported Barkandji people for thousands of generations; the last five or so alongside Europeans. They say the river Barka is mother.
Along the Barwon-Darling, at the top end of the river system, the majority Aboriginal-populated towns despair at the state of the river and its heavy impact on their health, recreation, future and sense of being. ...
As we came to understand from Barkandji people, the crisis on the Barwon-Darling represents the biggest threat to their continued survival on country since the sheep invaded. It calls for a new order of government, with alternative economies and a central role for the Barkandji world view....
In the last 18 months, Barkandji people have held three rallies during which they briefly blocked the Barrier Highway, which passes from the east through Wilcannia to Adelaide. But their campaign and concern for the river goes back decades (if not since 1850). In recent months they have grown increasingly despairing as they watch the water levels get lower and lower.
The mass fish kills downstream at Menindee Lakes in late January brought the horror to a national audience. Television images of cod fish cradled as if slain children in the arms of grieving farmers reverberated with a concerned public. But for Barkandji people, this underscored their powerlessness in the debate over their river.
As Wilcannia Local Aboriginal Land Council’s Kevin Cattermole told us,
It’s so sad that it took a million or more fish to die for people to really listen, when we’ve been saying this, we’ve been fighting for this for a number of years now. Well before the fish kill in Menindee. Well before that we tried to get people to listen…
He went on to say, “We have no water … there’s nothing there … All the water gets taken out of Bourke and us poor buggers in the middle, we’ve got nothing. That’s why we jumped up and down. We’re tired of having no water”. ...
Long-time Wilcannia resident and Local Aboriginal Land Council CEO, Jenny Thwaites observed that:
A few years back we had two years in a row where we had high rivers. In the time that I lived here, when we had a high river it used to last for months, now it’s up for a couple of weeks and then it’s gone. And since then, we’ve gradually seen the water getting lower and lower and lower …
https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-death-on-the-darling-colonialisms-final-encounter-with-the-barkandji-114275
Once Were Waterways: cultural dispersal & environmental vandalism in the lower Murray Darling Basin
…anguish and despair from the Mutti Mutti Traditional Owners over the state of the Bidgee. The waters of the river were rotten, they said.
The toxic algae bloomed because there was rarely adequate amounts of water permitted to flow through the weirs upstream. The algae made the fish inedible, which meant fishing was now pointless. The toxic water also meant there was no more swimming, which used to occupy the community’s youth.
The link between the health of the river and health of the Mutti Mutti people, young and old, was emphasised repeatedly. As was the loss of important cultural practice which was disappearing with the frogs, mussels, shrimp, yabbies, crays, eels, turtles, fish, and water fowl that had effectively abandoned the Bidgee, or perished, or were too contaminated for use.
Access to special and significant sites along the river was also often restricted or outright denied by landowners. Gates are locked. Fencing can run down the riverbank and into the water.
More disastrous though was the lack of natural “over the bank” flow which provided seasonal nurseries for wildlife, replenishing lagoons, billabongs, below-ground water stores, entire ecosystems sufficiently to endure prolonged extreme conditions in future years. The result was distressed, dying country, or dead and already arid country, ghost memories of lively waterways beside the river channel.
“In five to eight years the Bidgee will be as dead as the Barka,” they agreed.
“We are all suffering,” lamented Mary Pappin, a Mutti Mutti Elder whose mother was born on the bank of the Bidgee a kilometre upriver from the office the meeting sat in. “The state of mind of our people is very sad indeed.”
There was also mention of water theft, of illegal pumping, of illegal canals, levees and culverts constructed by “alpha irrigators” to “harvest” water travelling across floodplains into their supersized private reservoirs because they were worried somebody else might waste it.
“Our old people used to go out to meet the flood waters,” said Aunty Mary. “I’ve been waiting years now for that water to come down.”
“We have been dispersed from our waterways and now we want our water back,” declared Brendan Kennedy.
“We want to be drivers of water. We want to be instrumental in the management and ownership of water for our people. We don’t want to be tacked onto the back of your trailer. We don’t want to just be consulted, written up into your plans and then have you misconstrue things and say that you have met your obligations. We don't want to be here just so you can tick boxes. We want to be heard and be part of the solution.”
In July 24, 2017 ABC Four Corners broadcast Pumped, an expose of how the Murray-Darling Basin was being corrupted...In general, Pumped was applauded as exemplary investigative journalism and a vital intervention in the interests of the Australian public. However, it overlooked First Nations perspectives and experiences almost entirely. There was no voice from the Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations (NBAN), nor from the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN) in the lower basin to the south, and there was a notable absence of the Barkandji people in between.
In 2015, the Federal Court recognised the rights of the Barkandji to 128,000 square kilometres of land in western New South Wales, which includes land on both sides of the Barka, or Darling River, for nearly its entire length. It was the largest Native Title determination in the state, running from the south-west NSW border with Victoria, north to the town of Wanaaring in the state’s north-west.
Aboriginal media outlet, IndigenousX worked with MLDRIN to provide a necessary First Nations perspective on the controversy. Two days after Pumped went to air, Barkandji Elder William ‘Badger’ Bates, a director of the Barkandji Native Title Prescribed Body Corporate, had a column published in Guardian Australia as part of the collaborative partnership between that news organisation and IndigenousX. Uncle Badger’s voice reached a national readership, and revealed the issues afflicting the Barka to an international audience through the Guardian group’s US and UK bureaus.
“For the last five to eight years, we say the Barka’s buka,” wrote Uncle Badger. “That means the Darling River’s dead. It stinks of the dead fish. It’s rotten.” …
Watti Watti and Wemba Wemba woman Jacinta Chaplin Morgan grew up in Nyah West in the 1970s and 80s and on the riverbank near Nyah’s football oval, she pointed out old community campsites. A burial site had been fenced with cyclone wire to keep visitors from parking their RVs on it, but it was more difficult to identify the campsites Jacinta spoke so fondly about. Giant, centuries-old red gums stood back from the river, most dead. Around them, saplings had matured into a scrap of thirty-year growth. Fields of tall, invasive thistles covered a bone dry plain.
Jacinta explained that one of the first consequences of the water reforms in the 1990s had been the loss of places of cultural and spiritual significance to her people.
“There’s a lot of culture sites in here, in this forest, for my family group,” she said. “We used to have big family camps and all sorts of people would turn up. You’d meet distant cousins that you’d never met before, different family would bring their in-laws and stuff, and everybody would just be together.”
“You’d get to spend a weekend or a few days with them. You’d get to teach the younger kids things. Like in this area where all the thistles are now, we used to be able to get the Bardi grub and all the little bush plants. Now that the thistles are here you can’t even camp here. You can’t take the younger ones and show them.”
“One of my younger nephews just turned 18 and he hardly knows anything because we can’t get out here to show them. It’s just all dying off.” …
Beside the Murray River at Wood Wood, Marilyne Nicholls, a local artist, explained how the new water management reforms had destroyed ancestral fishing practices. Marilyne, who identified as a multi-nation woman, explained how the fish would come in and clean the land when the seasonal river flows came over the bank. With this way, she said, the old people never knew any ‘blackwater events’.
“The fish come in and eat around where all the food is on the land. At the moment the river doesn’t flow like that anymore” she said.
“There’s too much control in the waterways on how much water goes in, the height of the water. There’s too much demand, and that demand is not a cultural demand, or an environmental demand. It’s a demand around crop growing. It could be cotton, rice, or almonds and apricots, for which this place is well known, from here all the way down river to Mildura, especially to Robinvale.”
“The Watti Watti people are not even in the picture. We’re only a box to tick if the managers are consulting.”
Back on the Bidgee, Mutti Mutti women Aunty Pasty Winch, an Elder, and Tanya Charles sit close to the colossal decaying trunk of a red gum Patsy’s mother was born beneath early last century. Below, the Bidgee is motionless with a green hue to its surface. …
“They’re still saying we can drink the water, but we know we can’t drink it. You can smell it when you turn the tap on” said Tanya. “It makes your stomach turn. But we’ve got to bath in that water. And not everybody has got rain tanks. So we’ve either got to buy the water at high prices in town, or boil the water and even when you boil it it’s still disgusting.”
“Traditionally, if the water in the river went bad the people could dig holes, starting from the edge of the bank and going back, and they would have ten holes, and that bad water was purifying through the holes, and by the time it got to the last hole it was beautiful, clean water and they were able to drink it. They knew how to do that many, many moons ago, didn’t they.”
The women agreed there is a genuine danger that the lower Bidgee will go the way of the Barka. They said at times the water level is allowed to drop so low it’s possible to walk between banks across a dry Bidgee riverbed.
“But I’m hoping that the community – black and white–won’t let that happen,” said Aunty Patsy. “I think at the end of the day people might come together. We need people to start making noises. People have got to stand together and not let this happen like it did out there at Wilcannia and Menindee and along the Barka. It’s not gonna be good if it does go the same way. I mean, this river is old. It’s been here forever.” ...
"We want to be instrumental in the management and ownership of water for our people."
Brendan Kennedy
“We want a seat at the table,” he says. … “It has to be more than a rubber stamp exercise though,” he reiterates. “The presence of a First Nations representative couldn’t and shouldn’t be misconstrued as any kind of mandate to manage water on behalf of any of the Traditional Owners.”
“That’s not how we’re entering into it,” he says. “We’d expect our representative to be pushing the envelope. To be pushing for the full recognition of our traditional water rights.”
https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/feature/once-were-waterways-cultural-dispersal-environmental-vandalism-lower-murray-darling-
Water for the Rivers group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/1037056726490116/
Voice of the Barka - https://www.facebook.com/VoiceOfTheBarka
Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations - https://www.facebook.com/mldrin
NSW Aboriginal Fishing Rights Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/311045709074385
Great Artesian Basin Protection Group – https://www.facebook.com/greatartesianbasinprotectiongroup/
Water is Life National Gathering & Action 12 Feb 19 –
…demonstration in the foyer of Parliament House in Canberra that involved First Nations rights groups from around the continent calling for climate justice and more specifically a federal royal commission into the management of the Murray-Darling Basin….
https://www.facebook.com/events/380533082680392/
https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/feature/once-were-waterways-cultural-dispersal-environmental-vandalism-lower-murray-darling-basin
Posts tagged as #murraydarling on Instagram - http://picdeer.com/tag/murraydarling
Youtube/Vimeo video clips
Various clips:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=MURRAY+DARLING+RIVER+ABORIGINAL+YOUTUBE
Save the Darling, Wilcannia, NSW by Brendon Adams – 12 March 19 https://www.facebook.com/Bbadams7/videos/10157084890927389/?t=10
Our World - Australia’s Water Wars – by Nick Lazaredes – 29 March 19
Our World - Australia's Water Wars from Lazaredes on Vimeo.
Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations – 1 Feb 19
WE WANT OUR RIVER BACK!
First Nations people have lived along our rivers on country for more than 60,000 years. Uncle Gerald Quayle was brought up protecting flows, fish and communitites downstream. We've seen the fish kills, we've seen the toxic water, the rorts exposed and now the lies at the very heart of our water management framework. No more excuses. Its time for governments to heed the voice of the people. We want our rivers back.
Email Scott Morrison (ScoMo)
http://www.melbournefoe.org.au/save_mdbasin
https://www.facebook.com/mldrin/videos/547096255778742/?t=15
Various articles at:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/murray-darling-basin https://www.greenleft.org.au/tags/rivers-crisis
https://independentaustralia.net/site-search?q=murray+river
https://newmatilda.com/?s=darling+river
Public Hearings in Menindee: ‘ground zero’ of the Darling River crisis – 24 March 2019
…Aunty Beryl Carmichael, a Ngiyaampaa First Nations Elder, … spoke about how life used to be in Menindee, when the lakes had water in them. The town would swell to a few thousand, as people from other inland towns would come and holiday at the lakes, to swim, fish, camp and enjoy the cool waters. The abundance of animal life was astonishing – numerous types of native fish thriving in the lakes, different types of mussels, huge yabbies, and literally thousands of birds. …Aunty Beryl grew distraught as she talked about the toxic water that was now in the weirs. “We can’t drink the water, we can’t wash in it, everything’s dead – I keep thinking, what world am I living in? What world am I living in? Nothing makes sense.”
https://www.earthlaws.org.au/public-hearings-in-menindee-ground-zero-of-the-darling-river-crisis/
Wilcannia: The town with no water - March 2019
The river stopped flowing through Wilcannia, in north-western New South Wales, in September last year. It’s now just a series of dank green ponds. Signs by the bridge over the Lower Darling warn of harmful algae that “may cause serious harm to humans and animals”. The animals have no choice, though, and the kangaroos are still drinking it, despite the smell.
Wilcannia’s 700 residents, the majority of them Indigenous, only drink water that arrives in boxes on the back of trucks from the desert-dry Broken Hill, 200 kilometres away, or from even further afield.
...
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/rural/2019/03/09/wilcannia-the-town-with-no-water/15520500007800
OUTBACK TOUR: Wilcannia Threatens To Close Major Highway If Save Darling Pleas Ignored - 3 March 19
Aboriginal leaders from the Far West of NSW are threatening to close down the Barrier Highway – the main road linking Adelaide and South Australia to the eastern states – for a week if the NSW and federal governments continue to ignore growing calls for high-level inquiries into the management of the Murray-Darling Basin. ...
Uncle Cyril Hunter, a senior Barkindji elder, told the protest rally that unless governments started listening to the concerns of residents, protest action would escalate.
“I hope the government take notice of this rally,” Uncle Cyril said. “If not, I’ll be going against them… when we meet up with the state government. We’re gunna close it next time for a week. A whole week.”
“That’s what I’m going to put across to the [government].” ...
https://newmatilda.com/2019/03/03/wilcannia-threatens-close-major-highway-save-darling-pleas-ignored/
Rivers in crisis: The deliberate murder of the Menindee Lakes – 14 Feb 19
…The decision to decommission the Menindee Lakes also strips out the water that is at the heart of the Barkandji native title claim. The Barkandji were granted NSW’s largest native title claim in 2015. The claim includes the towns of Broken Hill, Wilcannia and Menindee.
The success of the Barkandji’s claim relied heavily on evidence of their continuous occupation around the Barka (Darling River). …
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/rivers-crisis-deliberate-murder-menindee-lakes
NSW water crisis: dead fish brought to water minister’s office - 7 Feb 19
Gamilaraay man Raymond Weatherall, who is spearheading the “Water for Walgett” campaign, said that the group was taking action “because we know the lack of clean water in communities and the death of the fish is not simply a result of drought and heat.”
“State governments have created this environmental state of emergency.
Indigenous communities are concerned that regional towns in the Murdi Paaki (River People) region, including Walgett and Wilcannia, are having water stolen from them and diverted to big irrigators.” ...
Wangkumarra man Albert Hartnett, who grew up in Bourke, told the protest that the water crisis was a result of colonialist policies that prioritise big irrigators — many of whom are also big donors to Blair’s Nationals party.
“As a young fella growing up in Bourke, I could feel the water being taken away from the river. The whole ecosystem gradually began to fall apart.”
“There was a time when we would be catching yellow belly, catfish, black bream, mussels, Murray cod, yabbies and other species.”
“Over time they all began to disappear ... and now the water’s just not there. Not for drinking, not for washing, nor medical use or anything else.”
“The Baarka [Darling River] is dead and we need to resuscitate her.”
Muruwari and Budjiti man Bruce Shillingsworth said: “The river is our blood. Without blood we can’t survive.” ...
Activists want a new representative body of sovereign tribes around the Murray Darling region to be formed to restore the rivers and prioritise the communities’ needs over those of big irrigators.
https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/nsw-water-crisis-dead-fish-brought-water-minister-office
We can help save the Murray-Darling, Indigenous nations say - 3 Feb 19
Recognising Aboriginal legal rights to access and manage water is the key to addressing the “unfolding ecological and cultural disaster on the Murray-Darling”, Indigenous nations of the river system say.
“With our rivers facing ecological collapse and our communities on the brink of survival, there is no other option left,” the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN) chair, Rene Woods, said.
“Governments need to buy back water for the environment and support First Nations to acquire water for cultural flows, in addition to environmental water.”
The call comes in the wake of the SA royal commission finding gross maladministration, negligence and unlawful actions in the multibillion-dollar plan to save Australia’s largest river system.
“If water resource plans and associated water sharing plans do not protect the recognised native title rights of First Nations, cultural values and the ecological health of these rivers, they are next to useless,” Rene Woods said.
Traditional owners have been calling for an end to “aqua nullius” for some time, raising the concept of cultural flows, defined as “water of a sufficient and adequate quantity and quality to improve the spiritual, cultural, environmental, social and economic conditions of those Indigenous nations.”
...The majority of NSW’s water sharing plans have zero allocations for native title.
In the Barkandji case, the plan commenced more than a year after their native title determination was handed down, but still said “at the commencement of this plan, there are no native title rights in these water sources. Therefore the water requirements for native title rights are 0 ML/year”.
Traditional owners have also suggested the establishment of an independent Indigenous water fund or trust to allow Indigenous nations to participate in the water market and allocate water to meet self-determined objectives. ...
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/03/we-can-help-save-the-murray-darling-indigenous-nations-say
For centuries the rivers sustained Aboriginal culture. Now they are dry, elders despair - 22 Jan 19
...Two rivers meet outside Walgett in north-west New South Wales: the Barwon and the Namoi. They are major tributaries in the Murray Darling system.
But they’re both empty, and this has never happened before.
Gamilaraay and Yuwalaraay elders who have lived on these rivers all their lives cry when they say they have never seen it as bad as this, and they doubt it can ever be recovered. “This to me is the ultimate destruction of our culture,” Gamilaraay elder Virginia Robinson says, sitting with the Dhariwaa elders group in Walgett.
“All people think about now is there’s no water. Aboriginal people were very close to nature and that’s all unbalanced now. There’s no nature to go back to.”
“We’ve got no water, no special places to go, no animals to hunt. Our totem animals are dead, their bones are everywhere.”
... “We appreciate the water that people are bringing us,” Robinson says.
“But it’s not the solution. We want to advocate for better water management. This is not the drought. It’s worse than that.”
“It’s a triple whammy: drought, land clearing and climate change – that means no water.”
“When your totem animals are gone – the bandarr [kangaroo], the dhinawan [emu] – who are you as a person?”
Vanessa Hickey lives on the western side of town near the levee bank, and spent her life on the river. When she heard there was water flowing into the Namoi she bundled up her kids and they went down to see.
“It was just a trickle,” Hickey says. “But oh! The feeling of watching it arrive, it was great. I felt real happy and alive again.”
“For a lot of my people here, when we’ve got no water in our rivers, it feels like we’re drained as well.”
“When we got water, we’re happy. We are river people.”
“All I want to do is protect it. I’ve seen the destruction in 20 years. Look at it now!”
“We had two beautiful, flowing, fast rivers. Today, we got nothing, I can touch the bottom of the Barwon. 20 years ago, we would jump in, trying to touch the bottom.
It took a few greedy people, and now we’ve got nothing.”
Vanessa Hickey
“My kids are never going to have what I had growing up and that’s heartbreaking for me. It’s sad. It took a few greedy people, and now we’ve got nothing.”
“I don’t like coming down here, sharing stories with my son, I just break down and cry. What is there for him?”
“You got no water, you got no life.”
Hickey wants to develop a ranger program to look after country, to monitor the health of the rivers and make sure water users do the right thing.
“I’d sit out here all night if I had to, if it made a difference.”...
“I haven’t got words for how this feels. It’s a deep grief,” Ashby says.
“I remember those rivers being crystal clear. As kids we used to dive for mussels and throw them back up the bank to cook and eat.”
“The river has a responsibility … It’s the bloodline of this country.”
Rhonda Ashby
“There were stories about the water dog, Marrayin, the mirri, going down all the way to Menindee. The water dog lived in a water hole there and we knew to be careful and not be there after dark. He was there to make us aware of the rules,” she says.
“The river has a responsibility not just to us, but to plant and animals. It has a right to connect up to other waters. It’s the bloodline of this country. It’s like us: if our blood stops flowing, we get sick. The water, if that flow stops, we all become sick.”
“When I lost my mum, the first place I looked to go was the river. I didn’t want to be around people, I went to the river and sat and mourned. It helped me to grieve.”
“It’s like a library. The river is a quiet space. Those trees are like books, full of stories of the place, it’s a place of knowledge. It’s where you look for quietness.”
“North of Lightning Ridge is the Narran River, another artery in the Murray-Daring system. It’s where my grandmother was born. There are a couple of birthing trees still left, where Yuwalaraay women would have their babies. Newborns were washed in the river. People knew the exact spot on the riverbank where their life began.”
The Narran is dry too. Brenda McBride is a senior Gamilaraay-Yuwalaraay woman taking care of this place.
“The water,” McBride says, “is held in massive dams upstream by irrigators, miners and pastoralists, including the huge Cubbie station.”
Cubbie is licensed to take 460,000 megalitres, the equivalent of all irrigation entitlements downstream in north-western NSW, for its cotton farms.
McBride picks up a handful of black soil where the river used to be.
“These veins off the Murray-Darling are just as important as the river. The water has got a memory. It lives in a cycle. Everyone’s pulling the water out, so it’s just not coming here. With land clearing we get dust storms every week. It just breaks your heart.”
“You can walk up and down the Narran. Nothing. We know who’s got the water – Cubbie.”
“Where is our water? For our totems – you’re the turtle, I’m the dhinawan, the emu. That’s a part of you, gone.” ...
Ashby takes us up to Kangaroo Point in Lightning Ridge. Her nephew Creed, 12, is in the car.
I ask him, what does he think of the water shortages?...
“It’s so bad. It makes me sad what’s happening, with irrigation and mismanagement of the water.”
“Some say it’s drought but it’s cockies [landholders] pumping all the water out,” Creed says.
“Water is life. Most people grew up on the river hearing stories and if there’s no river, where’s our culture?”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/22/murray-darling-river-aboriginal-culture-dry-elders-despair-walgett
'It's happening again': Menindee residents devastated as fish kill conditions return – 17 Jan 19
…“It’s happening again,” says Menindee local Graeme McCrabb, as we stand on the banks of the Darling River, downstream from the fish kill on 7 January that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of fish, including 70-year-old Murray cod.
…Residents fear conditions are lining up for another mass fish kill a week after hundreds of thousands died. ...“This is the biggest environmental catastrophe in the river’s history and no one from the federal government has been here,” McCrabb says.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/17/its-happening-again-menindee-residents-devastated-as-fish-kill-conditions-return
Menindee fish kill leaves devastated town wondering if its future is gone too - 20 Jan 19
Badger Bates' eyes fill with tears when he pulls up at the Menindee Lakes lookout.
These watering holes were once vast, and deep — a vital oasis for the local community and their livestock.
Now, the only sign of life is a handful of weary cattle, standing in the dust.
For Badger, a Barkindji elder, it's a devastating scene.
His people have lived on the Darling River, or "Barka", for more than 40,000 years.
“For me, you take the water out of the Barka and I'm not even black, I'm nothing, I'm just lost,” he says. ...
“Now without water, both the black and white people in town are walking around like zombies,” Badger says.
...“The Murray Darling Basin Authority should actually talk to locals and Aboriginal people that live on the river,” Sharon Bonselaar, a fourth-generation farmer in the area, says.
...One of the main arguments used to justify releasing water from the Menindee Lakes was that it would evaporate if it was left there.
“Don't anyone try to tell me or my people or the rest of the people that these lakes evaporate ... we have known them for thousands of years before,” Badger says....
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-20/menindee-fish-death-leaves-devastated-town-worried-about-future/10729132
Native title holders back Greens' call for royal commission into Murray-Darling - 17 Jan 19
The Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations back Sarah Hanson-Young’s claim that Menindee fish kill is just the latest example of mismanagement. ...
(NBAN)... claims native title holders have been left out of important decision-making about the Darling River. ...
“We’ve heard evidence of meter tampering, water theft, children being hospitalised because of toxic water, cases of fraud, donation scandals and corruption. The mass fish kill that has struck the Lower Darling in recent weeks is just the latest in a long list of problems with the management of the Murray-Darling Basin.” ...
The Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations have backed the Greens’ call, saying the Nationals’ stewardship has been akin to “Dracula in charge of the bloodbank.”
NBAN deputy chair, Ghillar Michael Anderson, and director, Cheryl Buchanan, said the disaster being experienced in the Murray Darling was not just due to drought.
“It is is also a culmination of man-made mismanagement… and major development without scientific evidence-based planning in the formative years of the MDBA,” they said.”
The Aboriginal nations along the Darling have native title and have been demanding greater recognition of cultural flows associated with their title. The river is at the centre of the Barka people’s cultural beliefs, and the Barkinji around Wilcannia are literally “the river people”.
Yet they say they were excluded from the high level meeting convened by the Murray Darling Basin Authority and senior water managers.
“NBAN has great difficulty in understanding why the so-called expert water planners would attempt to normalise our current circumstances. First Nations now demand urgent answers and to be included in all future top-level water planning within the Murray Darling basin,” they said.
“The MDBA and state authorities in NSW are to blame for turning the Menindee Lakes native fish nursery area into the equivalent of a sewer,” they said.
“Surely commonwealth and state water ministers should understand that they no longer have carte blanche rights to leave First Nations Peoples out of future government planning not just for water, but also for biodiversity, ecology and everything to do with our culture as it relates to management of Country, which includes water as a vital component.”
The angry release comes after a major fish kill at Menindee Lakes which saw hundreds of thousands of fish killed. There are fears that another one is imminent, after the current hot spell ends. ...
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jan/17/greens-to-introduce-bill-for-royal-commission-into-murray-darling
No Consultations
The MDBA convened a meeting in the national capital on January 14 to co-ordinate a response to the environmental disaster for the months of extreme weather ahead. ...
Nobody from the Barkandji, on whose Country the fish kill occurred, was invited. NBAN and MILDRIN were also left out. New South Wales Aboriginal ...Land Council CEO, James Christian said representatives from the council had not been asked to participate either.
That day, Uncle Badger was travelling to Wilcannia from the Menindee Lakes area to inspect a weir when contacted by NITV News. He was surprised to learn of the meeting and said he had not previously been informed of it or received any kind of request to be included in it.
“This is what happens all the time,” he said.
Along the mighty River Murray, locals said the health of the ecosystem is just as dire, due directly to the mismanagement of the water. ....
https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/feature/once-were-waterways-cultural-dispersal-environmental-vandalism-lower-murray-darling-basin
Bruce Shillingsworth
Bruce works in Brewarrina and teaches indigenous children about coping with racism, avoiding prison and alcohol and encouraging the youth of far west NSW to complete their education. To ease
indigenous kids into city life, Bruce often brings groups of children to Sydney for safe excursions. He is the community youth worker and runs the local youth centre. http://www.territorystories.nt.gov.au/bitstream/10070/235468/20/ntn01nov11020x.pdf
Federal Court of Australia
McKellar on behalf of the Budjiti People v State of Queensland [2015] FCA 601
...NATIVE TITLE – consent determination – requirement
under s 87 of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) – resolution
by agreement of claim for determination of native title...
https://www.atns.net.au/objects/npsteoubxmo/-au-cases-cth-fca-2015-601.pdf