Aboriginal Elders Occupy Barrick Gold’s Australian Head Office

July 13th, 2007
Wirad­juri Elders Neville “Chap­py” Williams (third from left) and Ron Gard­ner (back to cam­era in wheel­chair) in tense nego­ti­a­tions with Bar­rick­’s Steve Robin­son (fourth from left) while oth­er Bar­rick staff and pro­tes­tors look on. Bar­rick Gold office foy­er, Perth West­ern Aus­tralia 11 July 2007.

(Span­ish ver­sion avail­able at: http://barrick.live.radicaldesigns.org/article.php?id=165)

Elders and sup­port­ers of the Wirad­juri Abo­rig­i­nal Nation have occu­pied the Aus­tralian head office of the world’s largest gold min­ing com­pa­ny, Bar­rick Gold.

Around 35 peo­ple peace­ful­ly occu­pied Bar­rick Gold’s Aus­tralian head­quar­ters in Perth, West­ern Aus­tralia on Wednes­day in a bid to force the com­pa­ny to meet Wirad­juri pro­to­cols relat­ing to peo­ple with blood­lines to Lake Cow­al in Cen­tral New South Wales where Bar­rick is oper­at­ing a gold mine.

Elders Neville ‘Chap­py’ Williams and Ron Gard­ner sought from Bar­rick:

* copy of the Cow­al Gold Project Ancil­lary Deed between Bar­rick Aus­tralia Lim­it­ed and the so-called ‘Wirad­juri Con­dobolin Native Title Claim Group’
* a response to an evic­tion notice deliv­ered to Bar­rick
* a meet­ing with Bar­rick senior man­age­ment, and
* any legal papers the com­pa­ny has that are the prop­er­ty of the Wirad­juri Elders.

Barrick’s response was to call the police and to ask the pro­test­ers to leave the premis­es say­ing they were ‘tres­pass­ing on pri­vate prop­er­ty’. After a sit-in last­ing around an hour and being threat­ened with arrest, the Elders and sup­port­ers agreed to leave on the con­di­tion that Bar­rick agree to respond to the Elders’ ver­bal and writ­ten demands in writ­ing.

“We’re fed up with Barrick’s lack of cour­tesy to Wirad­juri Elders so we’ve been forced to take this kind of action. We’ve been try­ing to get a copy of the ancil­lary deed and oth­er doc­u­ments like a full inven­to­ry of arte­facts col­lect­ed at Lake Cow­al for a long time now,” Mr Williams said.

“All the Wirad­juri with ties to Lake Cow­al have a right to see the deed and the inven­to­ry, not just the five sell-outs who have signed away our ancient cul­tur­al her­itage. We’ve gone through the cor­rect chan­nels, through Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion, let­ters to Bar­rick and a request I made per­son­al­ly to Bar­rick Chair­man, Peter Munk in Cana­da on only 2 May at their AGM. They keep say­ing the deed is ‘com­mer­cial-in-con­fi­dence’. So what have they got to hide? They should be open with all of us Wirad­juri peo­ple, but they keep on act­ing in secret and putting a lot of spin on their pub­lic­i­ty about the mine and its so-called ‘ben­e­fits’. Their Perth pub­lic rela­tions offi­cer was extreme­ly rude to us and showed us no respect at all.”

“Bar­rick has not gone through the appro­pri­ate pro­to­col, nor have they spo­ken to the right Wirad­juri peo­ple about Lake Cow­al,” Ron Gard­ner said. A nine-year vet­er­an of the cam­paign to stop the gold mine in the Wirad­juri Nation’s heart­land, Gard­ner has strong feel­ings about the mine. Until recent­ly ill health has kept him away from the lake.

“I was shocked and emo­tion­al­ly upset to the point of tears when I saw the mine infra­struc­ture on our sacred place,” he said.

“There are buri­als out there and it’s a mas­sacre site. There are thou­sands of arte­facts and scarred trees in the area that are tes­ta­ment to our People’s long and con­tin­u­ing occu­pa­tion of the region, yet Bar­rick won’t release an inven­to­ry of all the arti­facts they have col­lect­ed or tell us what has hap­pened to the scarred trees that have been removed to make way for the mine.

“The mine has split the Wirad­juri com­mu­ni­ty. You don’t know who you can talk to or trust any more. Bar­rick con­tin­ues to deal with just a small group over the $9.2 mil­lion deal they made. They’ve set up the Wirad­juri Con­dobolin Cor­po­ra­tion (WCC) but you have to join to become a mem­ber. As Chap­py says, “We know who we are. You’re born into Wirad­juri. You don’t need a mem­ber­ship appli­ca­tion”.

“The WCC is not ben­e­fit­ing the major­i­ty of Wirad­juri peo­ple. Most of us still have the same prob­lems, poor health, hous­ing in need of main­te­nance and upgrade and lack of edu­ca­tion and job prospects.

“Bar­rick are wreck­ing the ecol­o­gy out there at Lake Cow­al. The com­pa­ny is draw­ing up to 3650 mega­l­itres of water a year out the ground­wa­ter and Lach­lan Riv­er near the lake and we’re still in the worst drought in record­ed his­to­ry.”

“They are using cyanide to leach gold from the ore. This inevitably leach­es into the soil and can make its way into the water sys­tem. Despite what the com­pa­ny says in its PR spin, gold min­ing is just not safe. One tea­spoon of 2% cyanide can kill a human and a lot of cyanide spills have occurred around the world. They are dig­ging up a mas­sive mount of earth out there and will leave a pit 1 kilo­me­tre long, 825 metres wide and 325 metres deep. It will be there for­ev­er, nev­er to be filled in, a lega­cy for future gen­er­a­tions.”

“They’ve cut down thou­sands of old trees that take hun­dreds of years to grow and pro­vide habi­tat for lots of native species. Yes, they’ve replant­ed some veg­e­ta­tion but thou­sands of trees have died because they weren’t watered in the con­tin­u­ing drought”, Mr Gard­ner said.

“So we’re not going to stop our protests against Bar­rick until we get some jus­tice,” Mr Williams said.

“They’ve made their posi­tion very clear and looks like they won’t budge. But we’re not alone. We have many rock sol­id sup­port­ers here in Aus­tralia like Kungarakan/Gurindji Elder Speedy McGuin­ness from the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry, who is fight­ing his own bat­tle against new ura­ni­um mines on Abo­rig­i­nal land there.

“We have great sup­port from the stu­dents who sat in at Barrick’s Perth head office and our Abo­rig­i­nal and non-Abo­rig­i­nal friends across Aus­tralia and the world in the Coali­tion to Pro­tect Lake Cow­al. We’ve also got a great inter­na­tion­al coali­tion going with First Nations peo­ples where Bar­rick is dam­ag­ing and destroy­ing Abo­rig­i­nal lands in Africa and North and South Amer­i­ca. We’ll nev­er give up the fight until the mine is stopped and our land is returned to us,” he said.

This is an ongo­ing sto­ry. Bar­rick faxed a let­ter to the Elders yes­ter­day after­noon Perth time in response to their demands. The Elders have referred it to their legal coun­sel for advice.

http://www.savelakecowal.org/intro.html
Con­tact: Neville ‘Chap­py’ Williams +61 416 316 774
Ron Gard­ner +61 414 098 536