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LAND in outback South Australia used for nuclear weapons testing in the aftermath of World War II will be handed back to the traditional Aboriginal owners. Environment and Conservation and Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation Minister Jay Weatherill today told Parliament the final section of the Maralinga test site would be returned to the Maralinga Tjarutja people. "The Maralinga nuclear test occurred during a period in our history when little regard was given to Aboriginal people and their connection with the land," he said.

LAND in outback South Australia used for nuclear weapons testing in the aftermath of World War II will be handed back to the traditional Aboriginal owners. Environment and Conservation and Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation Minister Jay Weatherill today told Parliament the final section of the Maralinga test site would be returned to the Maralinga Tjarutja people. "The Maralinga nuclear test occurred during a period in our history when little regard was given to Aboriginal people and their connection with the land," he said.

After 136 years, the Ontario government is planning on revising its 136 year old mining law to reflect modern circumstances (including prohibiting exploration on private land in Southern Ontario). Drafted in the 1873 when the exploitation of natural resources was seen as the key to economic success, mining was treated as an activity that superseded anything else. Based on a "free entry" system, a mining company could explore and stake land anywhere in the province, including personal property, aboriginal lands, and some zones of ecological sensitivity. And in Canada (and Ontario), mining was and still is serious business. The largest private sector employer of Aboriginal people, mining provides Ontario with a trade surplus of about $3.3 billion annually. However, pressure has been mounting to modernize the Mining Act and reached a fever pitch with the jailing of Aboriginal protestors trying to block mining activities from occurring on traditional land.

"The barrister wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair will represent a group of Australian Aborigines suing the British government over nuclear testing on their land, a report said Saturday. Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement spokesman Neil Gillespie said Cherie Blair had been engaged by a group from Emu Field, in Australia's red desert centre, who are seeking compensation over 1953 atomic tests by Britain. Five cases had been lodged in the British courts over illnesses allegedly linked to the fallout from two nuclear weapons exploded in the Great Victoria Desert in October 1953."

""We don't need nuclear power", Sam Watson, Aboriginal community leader and Socialist Alliance Senate candidate, told a picket against the proposed nuclear waste dump at Muckaty in the Northern Territory, held outside PM Kevin Rudd's electorate office in Norman Park on April 12. "It is a fundamental principle of Aboriginal culture that you preserve the land and the environment, to hand on to future generations. Nuclear waste means radioactive poison for hundreds of thousands of years. "This nuclear dump would mean toxic waste would be returned to Aboriginal land, to permanently contaminate the water table. There are much cheaper and cleaner options for generating electric power. "

"ABORIGINAL traditional owners have initiated a Federal Court legal challenge to plans by the federal government to build Australia's first national radioactive waste dump near Tennant Creek, in the Northern Territory. Mark Lane Jangala, a senior elder of the Ngapa clan, says he and many other senior elders were not consulted about the nomination of their land. They say the proposed dump, on the disused Muckaty cattle station, would threaten a sacred male initiation site."

Anti-nuclear activists in Alice Springs say changes to uranium royalties in the Northern Territory will make way for the exploitation of Aboriginal communities. The bill extends the royalty system so miners pay a fixed rate only if they are making profits, rather than basing the rate on production. The bill was passed in the federal Senate earlier this week. Jimmy Cocking from the Arid Lands Environment Centre says the Federal Government has bowed to industry pressure and Aboriginal people will suffer. "It's going to be easier for companies to get it up so you might find that companies who are more marginal - not the big producers but the more marginal companies - will start digging and then find out that they can't even pay for the rehabilitation costs," he said. "That's of concern because you end up with a big radioactive hole and no money to fill it with."

"About 250 people attended the Students of Sustainability (SoS) conference at Flinders University in Adelaide over July 4-8. A highlight of the conference was the attendance of the Indegenous Solidarity Rides bus full of passengers on their way from Newcastle to the convergence at Alice Springs. They presented workshops on the NT intervention, its effects on Aboriginal communities and the struggle to repeal the racist laws. Another strong feature of the conference was the many workshops given by members of Aboriginal communities in South Australia about the disastrous effects the mining and uranium industries were having on their land and water."

CONTAMINATED: The chief of Daren Township welcomed the proposal to build a nuclear waste facility because of the NT$5 billion in promised compensation Led by a royal descendant of an ancient line of Aboriginal Paiwan kings, residents and environmentalists yesterday staged a parade in Daren Township (達仁), Taitung County, to protest Taiwan Power Co's (Taipower) plan to build a storage facility for nuclear waste there. Taipower announced in March that Daren Township and Wangan Township, Penghu County, were the two candidate sites for the nuclear waste dumping ground. Opposed to the plan, more than 100 Paiwan and Puyuma Aborigines and environmentalists rallied outside a local elementary school yesterday morning, where they were blessed by Paiwan elders in a traditional ritual before they departed. The demonstrators then carried a cross on a two-hour march to the site selected for the facility.

"Australian aborigines and former servicemen are to sue the British Ministry of Defence over diseases and disabilities that they claim were caused by nuclear testing in the Outback more than 50 years ago. Maureen Williams 57 from Coober Pedy has joined the class action against the British government over the atomic testing at Maralinga Maureen Williams 57 from Coober Pedy has joined the class action against the British government over the atomic testing at Maralinga Photo: Mark Brake. A group of 250 people, including 150 former servicemen, say they have suffered cancer, skin disease and deformities because of the fallout from blasts. If they win, the British Government could be faced with a bill for compensation which will run to millions of pounds, according to lawyers for the group, which will be represented by Cherie Booth QC. "

Taiwan has tried and failed to sell its nuclear waste to North Korea and China. Now, the government is seeking a burial place at home. The top choice is a poor aboriginal community. When it comes to nuclear waste, most people say, "not in my back yard." But most residents of Nantian village in southeastern Taiwan's Taitung County favor building a low-level nuclear waste dump five kilometers away. Taiwan has thousands of barrels of low-level waste - mostly contaminated clothing, boots and mops used by the workers at the island's three nuclear power plants. Engineers at Taipower, the electricity monopoly, say it will take about 100 years for the harmful radiation to decay.

Taiwan has tried and failed to sell its nuclear waste to North Korea and China. Now, the government is seeking a burial place at home. The top choice is a poor aboriginal community. When it comes to nuclear waste, most people say, "not in my back yard." But most residents of Nantian village in southeastern Taiwan's Taitung County favor building a low-level nuclear waste dump five kilometers away. Taiwan has thousands of barrels of low-level waste - mostly contaminated clothing, boots and mops used by the workers at the island's three nuclear power plants. Engineers at Taipower, the electricity monopoly, say it will take about 100 years for the harmful radiation to decay.

"Aboriginal landowners in Australia's far north are battling government plans to construct this country's long-term nuclear waste storage facility on their land. Diane Stokes, an indigenous woman from the Warumungu and Warlmanpa tribes in the Northern Territory, is opposed to radioactive waste being dumped on her clan's land at Muckaty Station, a former cattle station located some 200 kilometres north of the Territory town of Tennant Creek. "We don't want it to come to the Northern Territory. Nobody wants it there," said Stokes at a public meeting held in the southern city of Melbourne on Apr. 21. The question of what to do with Australia's radioactive waste from the country's medical, industrial, agricultural and research use of nuclear material has been ongoing for decades and remains far from resolved. "

DOCTORS at the only Aboriginal medical service in Alice Springs have threatened to leave if the Federal Government allows a Canadian company to mine uranium near the town. Protesters will press Northern Territory MPs to stop their support when Parliament sits in Central Australia tomorrow. They say it threatens the town's future and could set a precedent for other urban centres.

DOCTORS at the only Aboriginal medical service in Alice Springs have threatened to leave if the Federal Government allows a Canadian company to mine uranium near the town. Protesters will press Northern Territory MPs to stop their support when Parliament sits in Central Australia tomorrow. They say it threatens the town's future and could set a precedent for other urban centres.

The chief executive officer of Alice Springs' native title body says traditional owners should not support a uranium mine south of the town. Darryl Pearce from Lhere Artepe says Aboriginal people would prefer to see solar technology projects instead of uranium mines.

Uranium exploration should be suspended in Ontario until its impact on health, the environment and aboriginal land rights is properly addressed, said a report released yesterday by the Community Coalition Against Mining Uranium. The report emerged from a series of public meetings in Ottawa, Sharbot Lake, Kingston and Peterborough in April. It also called for a royal commission to review Ontario's Mining Act, deeming it out of date.

A French physicist and a US actor have joined representatives of indigenous peoples from Africa, Australia and the United States to send US lawmakers a stark warning about the dangers of uranium mining. "We want US lawmakers to understand that uranium mining is highly pollutant and that there is currently no scientific answer to the question of radioactive waste containment," Bruno Chareyron of France's CRIIRAD laboratory, which measures radioactivity in the environment, told AFP Friday. "We want them to know that the information they are given by the mining companies is not wholly reliable," he said. Representatives of the Tuareg nomads of Niger, Native Americans and Australian aborigines told of the ravages of uranium mining on their communities.

Recent uranium workshops hosted by the Yamatji Marlpa Aboriginal Corporation in Western Australia were an opportunity for traditional owners to become involved in a new mining industry from its beginning, Yamatji chief executive Simon Hawkins told MINING DAILY. "A lot of the previous mining activity in Western Australia occurred pre-Native Title so traditional owners see uranium as an opportunity to actually have a proper partnership with the activity on their country post-Native Title," Hawkins said.

The tragic legacy of Britain's nuclear testing at Maralinga in the South Australian outback is now a well-documented chapter in the nation's history. But for the Aboriginal people whose land was used for the tests, there is a feeling that their voice has not been heard. Now a group of women from remote communities in South Australia's far west coast have written and illustrated their story for the first time. Transcript KERRY O'BRIEN, PRESENTER: Thanks to the efforts of a Royal Commission, the tragic legacy of Britain's nuclear testing at Maralinga in the South Australian outback is now a well documented chapter in the nation's history.

THE largest native title claim in South Australia, covering a uranium mine and the iconic Wilpena Pound rock basin, will be signed off today by the Federal Court in Adelaide, in a move welcomed by state and federal governments. The court is expected to formally recognise claims made by the Adnyamathanha Aboriginal people to more than 41,000sqkm of land in the Flinders and Gammon Ranges and surrounding areas, about 350km north of Adelaide. The claim by the Adnyamathanha people was lodged in 1994 after the landmark Mabo judgment in the High Court, recognising the existence of native title. Attorney-General Robert McClelland said today's sign-off by the courts, which has been agreed by the state Government, pastoralists and mining companies, marked a "significant achievement for all parties".

Opponents of the idea to use the Northern Territory for nuclear waste dumping will seek support for their campaign in Wollongong. Following the high-profile transfer of spent nuclear fuel to Port Kembla last month, the organisers of a public forum at the Illawarra Aboriginal Cultural Centre are hoping they might find sympathy for their cause in the Illawarra. The public forum will be held on April 22 at 6pm and coincides with the World Nuclear Fuel Cycle Conference, a major industry event being held in Sydney. Traditional land owners from the Muckaty land trust in the Northern Territory will speak at the forum. In 2011, the first shipment of Australia's re-processed low and intermediate level waste is due back from Scotland and France and needs to be stored somewhere, based on an agreement signed in the 1990s.

"Dianne Stokes says the Rudd government's decision to push ahead with plans to dump nuclear waste on the red-soil land north of Tennant Creek has caused trouble in her Warlmanpa tribe. ''People have given away land that doesn't belong to them … now there is big trouble among us,'' she said. For centuries, Aboriginal clans followed their dreaming across the low scrub land that became known last century by white people as Muckaty cattle station. Now, some members of one of those clans have agreed to allow Australia's first national waste dump to be established on 1.5 square kilometres of land they claim is theirs in return for $12 million, most of it in cash."