Kathy Malera-Bandjalan of the Malera people spoke to Zohl de Ishtar about the proposed gold mine on her ancestral lands in New South Wales.
‘Malera country is Gold Dreaming and we as the Malera people are the children of the Gold Dreaming,’ said Kathy Malera-Bandjalan, a Malera woman. With the voice of her family, Malera-Bandjalan has vowed to stop the mining of her ancestral land on the Timbarra (Malera) plateau in northern NSW (near Grafton) The Malera people are placing an injunction in the Federal court to stop the mine from going ahead. The Malera form a tribe of the greater Bandjalan nation.
Ross Mining and the NSW Aboriginal Land Council have brokered an agreement which would allow gold mining over the next five years. Resulting in four open-cut mines, it would cause significant environmental damage and continue the devastation of the customs and traditions of the Malera people.
Asserting that the mine would destroy major sacred sites, the Malera families, traditional custodians of the area, have refused to give their permission to the project. They insist that the contract, heralded as a historical milestone as the first native title agreement between a mining company and Aboriginal people in NSW, is not valid. They argue that the party that signed on the dotted line was not qualified to do so alone because the bloodline families from Malera still exist and hold connection to their land.
‘Instead of contacting all the blood groups and all the traditional owners of the country, Ross Mining and the State Land Council Native Title Unit contacted a selected few. Under the false supposition that Malera was of limited sacred significance, the legal representation from the Land Council Native Title Unit engineered an agreement about mining on our land without reference to us, the direct bloodline. The particular Aboriginal people the Native Title Unit relied on do not come from the direct bloodline and therefore do not have the right to negotiate on behalf of the traditional owners. You’ve got to be from an area to negotiate on it. We know who the direct bloodlines to Malera are. Other than our family they include the Donnellys and, through marriage, the Robinsons and others.
‘The plateau where they want to mine is one of our oldest surviving mountains of prayer. The Malera plateau connects the Gold Dreamers to all Dreamtime creation stories. It not only has significance to Malera but also to other Aboriginal groups. It can be traced to Indigenous lands and people all over the world. To take a land from a people is to take everything and whilst Malera is alive in the children of the Gold Dreaming, the Malera will always have their special place.
‘Malera people are grandmother’s law. We come from the grandmother’s blood line. The Malera are a matrilineal nation. That means that everything connected to Malera is connected by grandmother’s law. The men, the children, the Earth, the sky, the rivers, the creeks, and the sun and moon. It goes back four generations, on the women’s side. One of the most significant things about our connection to this site as the Malera family is that since Yurals (non-Aboriginal people) arrival to our homelands, we only have had one producing female every generation.
‘The custodianship is with women and men. Women hold grandmother’s law through the direct bloodline, whilst equally acknowledging all family members and their Dreamings and totems to Malera. It’s my responsibility as a Malera daughter. After me it will be my daughter’s responsibility. My mother is still here. She has a higher status than I do in terms of information and knowledge. As Malera people we have our own Elders. I speak with the voice of my family. Everyone in the family is totally devastated by this.’
Malera-Bandjalan maintains that the attempt to mine Malera land is paramount to genocide. She warns: ‘To attack our land is to attack our people. To mine Malera is to totally kill our spirit. It is to kill everything we believe in. It is to cease our existence as a people.’
But, she continues, ‘We are not extinguished. We are not a dead people. We are very much alive and we are very strong. We still practice our belief. The government is not going to get extinguishment out of the Malera people. There’s been a settlement in this country for over 200 years and the Malera people were not extinguished then and they are not extinguished now and we want that really clear.’
Despite the continued existence of the Malera people, a contract was signed between Ross Mining and an Aboriginal corporation, a contract worth $1.3 million. The corporation, Malera-Bandjalan claims, was created by the mining company and the government to supersede the traditional custodians. Malera-Bandjalan is quick to assure that there is no animosity against the individuals involved in the corporation. ‘They are a really respected group of Aboriginal people. Some of them are my relations, my grandmother’s cousins on our grandfather’s side, but that doesn’t mean that they hold the same stories and connection. It’s my grandmother’s line that is from Malera.’
‘It was the Land Council that took away our rights as people of Malera. I guess that’s what hurt the most, that the organisation that was set up to help and support traditional owners in their aim for native title rights is the very organisation that is taking them away with the legal help of the NSW government.
‘We can believe again and practice that belief and give everybody a chance to connect to these places. So that we will be better people in terms of humanity. I can tell you, this country needs it. You only have to look at the state of race relationships now. Aboriginal people, Indigenous people, Malera people, have something much bigger to offer this country That isn’t being understood.
‘That gold has been there since time began. My grandmother and great grandmother lived without digging up that gold. I can’t see the need for my generation, or even my grandkids’ generation, to destroy an Aboriginal site, a special site, a grandmother’s site when this country is so starved spiritually. People should really look at this for what it is. Maybe they’ll see through the lies and see what the government really is doing to our people under the guise of reconciliation in 1997. This isn’t reconciliation This is extinguishment. This is about genocide. Aboriginal people are answerable to their Law and protocol and not to the propaganda that’s been exploited by marketing and corporate identities. These create more tension in understanding the truth and the benefits of Aboriginal spirituality and law.’
This is not the first time the Malera have fought to protect their sacred mountain. There was mining at the turn of the century but Indigenous Australians of the time had little opportunity to protest the violation of their lands. Today they have greater access to the legal institutions of the dominant culture and, Malera-Bandjalan declares, the Malera are prepared to fight all the way.
‘We’ll fight the NSW State government, the Australian government and if we have to, we will go international. We’ve put another native title claim in over the mining site as traditional owners, as custodians, which means that now the State Land Council and Ross Mining must look at it. They’ll have to mediate with us as traditional owners. There will probably be a slog-out where people will have to start proving where they’re from.
‘I think that if the NSW government, the Australian government, the State Land Council and the different groups had any bit of justice in them they’d be looking at this again. They’d be looking at the traditional owners and the custodians to talk about why it’s important not to make another grave site of a development project in this country. How far does development have to go? Development for who? Develop what? To take away our spirituality to develop a material possession? No. Our grandmother’s taught us to be a bit stronger than that.
‘I listen to that song, “Dreams live for so long, even after you’ve gone.” It was my grandmother’s dream to live full-time back in her country. It hurts me because while she was alive there wasn’t an opportunity for us to live where we should have as custodians of Malera. We had the connection and we visited often but because we didn’t have the money to build or buy, we were considered illegal trespassers on our own land. Can you imagine how that has hurt?
‘The Mabo decision, the Wik decision, has now provided us with an opportunity to fight in a different way. And for reasons that history can only explain, we Malera people are now in a better position in our own country to control and gain access to our homelands. We recorded everything we needed to because we knew that there would be a time when we’d have our say. That’s why it is really important for me now.’
Voicing the determination of her people to protect their lands, culture and identity, Malera-Bandjalan asserts, ‘Land is life. Life is people. We are one. You can take the people off the mountain but you can never take the mountain out of the people. The creeks are like the blood through our veins. The Tight is very hard. It is made harder by the lack of financial support and the obstacles that don’t even recognise us and our Law as Malera. But we are a strong people and we will fight to the end. We are from our grandmother’s law and we will not stop. We will win this fight. Malera is ours. ‘Keeping the Faith.’
From Pacific News Bulletin, September 1997, pages 11–12