First nations rights and colonising practices by the nuclear industry: An Australian battleground for environmental justice
This paper highlights current events and original research to explore the tensions between First Nations, industry and government in the context of uranium mining and nuclear waste management in Australia. We outline challenges faced by Aboriginal Australians in their role as custodians of the land,...
Published in: | The Extractive Industries and Society |
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Main Authors: | , |
Other Authors: | |
Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
Language: | unknown |
Published: |
Elsevier BV
2020
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Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/473389 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2019.01.010 |
Summary: | This paper highlights current events and original research to explore the tensions between First Nations, industry and government in the context of uranium mining and nuclear waste management in Australia. We outline challenges faced by Aboriginal Australians in their role as custodians of the land, and as community leaders. A critical examination of some of the barriers to First Nations empowerment includes government engagement through legislation and practices that have repeatedly resulted in dispossession and disempowerment of Australian Aboriginal Traditional Owners. Laws ostensibly designed to provide rights and protections to Aboriginal people are repeatedly curtailed or overridden to facilitate nuclear projects—in particular radioactive waste repositories and uranium mines. We argue that existing measures provide feeble rights and protections for Aboriginal people as laws have repeatedly produced outcomes that favour government and industry and deny Aboriginal rights to sovereignty. Our research highlights patterns of colonial oppression that transgress human rights, and frames mining and nuclear waste in a way that lacks a decolonisation strategy and are based on industrial violence. Theoretical understandings of Indigenous sovereignty through a decolonising lens will highlight Indigenous standpoints, the continued contestation of Indigenous peoples’ customary land rights, and the limitations of post-colonial environmental justice. |
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