Neil emailed the following:
Now THAT is world citizenry and leadership!
I have been challenging all that will listen (and many that won’t) that supply chains start with the supply end of the chain! And we as citizensmust take responsibility for what we allow to occur with ‘our’ resources.
I have travelled through parts of Kakadu and seen the aboriginal rock paintings of stick figures with spears through their joints and new-born children. These apparently warn of the dangers of living for too long in the uranium-rich country no doubt pronounced ‘taboo’ by the recognition over
longer time periods that exposure causes birth defects and illness. These were hard-learned lessons over generations of inhabitation observation and deduction. They may not have been based on the science of quantum physics and sub-atomic particles but they knew something wasn’t good or healthy about the juxtaposition of people and uranium.
From Australia’s political standpoint “It’s not OUR problem…our accounting systems and accountabilities stop at ‘supply’…” Where are the paintings warning of the dangers? Where are the taboos? At the source!
What is the half-life of an exponentially decomposing colonial exploitation culture that pollutes its own people without warning? If only our ‘democratic’ reporting mechanisms were as transparent as those in a place-based community with connection to land. Where they see and are brave enough to face up to the real-time/ real-place impacts of decisions not
peddle carefully “sanitised for public consumption” versions that stem from political manipulation bureaucratic self-censorship and absentee virtual-wealth oriented corporate and media vested interests in order to preserve unsustainable status quo processes.
We in Qld are told we do and will reap the ‘benefits’ of a coal mining and CSG boom. We are carefully not told that it is destroying our planet’s atmosphere jeopardising our other economic providers (e.g. agriculturetourism well-being) the lives of our newborn and ultimately life on Earth.
Go well Yvonne Margarula – may the Mirarr triumph in a world in need of less processed natural resources and more global ethics!