Reflections from Waddananggu
The power of truth-telling, honesty, and living prefiguratively
It has been a couple of weeks since I’ve returned from Waddananggu, the one year celebration of the Wangan and Jagalingou peoples’ reoccupation of their lands. The W&J people have been fighting the Adani conglomerate for over a decade now to stop the building of the Carmichael mine on their ancestral lands. I spent the past weeks reading through the history of the W&J resistance to better understand the countless insidious ways in which the state and industry have acted together to violate the W&J people’s rights to their land, their culture, their sovereignty.
In Australia, under the Native Title Act, mining companies have to secure an Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) from the First Nations folks whose lands they wish to extract from. However, if the traditional owners refuse an ILUA, the mining company can always appeal the decision through the Native Title Tribunal (NTT). The NTT essentially gets the final say to grant a mining lease despite a refusal from the traditional owners.
Adani approached the W&J Traditional Owners Council with an ILUA three times since 2011. The W&J people rejected their offer all three times. The decision was overturned each time, and the mining leases were granted every. single. time.
To the state — as is the case in the US and across the globe — no never really means no. No means “let’s just do it anyways.”
The Queensland government even went as far as to remove W&J native title over their ancestral lands, granting Adani exclusive possession. The Wangan and Jagalingou have to now ask permission to access what was theirs to begin with.
Adrian Burragubba — senior W&J cultural custodian and a fierce First Nations leader — and his family have experienced firsthand the havoc wreaked by the Adani mine. Billions of liters of water are being extracted from their traditional lands to wash Adani’s coal, threatening the sacred Doongmabulla Springs. These springs are an essential part of the Dreaming, the W&J origin story that has been passed down through generations since the beginning of time. The destruction of these springs is not just about the destruction of the physical land but it is about the genocide of a cultural identity that has defined who each W&J member was, who they are now, and who they will be in the future.
It is a massive injustice to First Nations folks across Australia when we speak of colonization as a phenomena of the past. Having my ancestral roots in India, I hear the word “post-colonial” thrown around incessantly (whether that’s an accurate description of the country is a discussion for another day), but it is undeniable that colonization here is very much alive, thriving, and so tangible. This might be obvious for some folks that live in Australia, but I don’t think people internationally – even in justice-oriented organizing circles – really understand how recently colonization invaded these shores (1788, in case you’re wondering).
I provide this temporal context because, having lived in a settler colony for years, I feel as if I am reliving American history. This isn’t to say that colonization is not ongoing in the United States but rather to compare two British settler colonies at two different timepoints of colonization.
The Australian government does an exceptional job at selling Australia as a fantastic tourist destination, but folks across the globe need to understand that First Nations sovereignty has never been recognized here. There are zero treaties signed between the government and Indigenous folks. In fact, most of the current First Nations land struggles are on Crown land, as in, land that still “belongs” to the British Crown. The British used what they had learned from the subjugation and decimation of Indigenous folks in the United States to be smarter in their colonial project here. This is what I mean when I say colonization is alive and thriving.
I have heard countless land acknowledgements in my organizing work in the United States, and while I do believe that people think they understand that they are on stolen and unceded lands, I also think that folks in the United States feel so far removed from the history of land annexation that we might not truly feel implicated in this genocide. As much as I hate to admit it, there’s even a part of me that would say the words “stolen and unceded” but I’m not sure if I felt culpable in the ongoing erasure of Indigenous sovereignty until I came to a country where so many folks can, on one hand, date back their family history to the first settlers.
When we first learn about colonization in school, we often theorize how we would have never been a Homesteader, would never have bought into Manifest Destiny if we lived in 19th century America. Living in Australia, however, has allowed me to come face to face with these hypothetical scenarios. It’s one thing to understand how colonization is ongoing in the United States, but it’s a whole different thing to understand how we, as non-indigenous settlers, are implicated in the continuous erasure of Indigenous sovereignty.
I do not state this to make non-indigenous folks feel guilty. While guilt is an important feeling to work through to take responsibility for our harm, it is also a tool of colonialism because it individualizes blame while ignoring the system. So this is not about guilt. It is in fact, the very opposite. It is about recognizing how deeply entrenched oppression is such that we perpetuate it and are part of the colonial project without choosing to be. This is true if we were in 1500s-USA or present-day USA. Recognizing this allows us to instead question how we can live out our values more honestly in solidarity work as non-indigenous folks. We begin to approach solidarity work not out of guilt, but because it allows us to take back our consent to participate in the system.
Let me be clear though. Indigenous resistance movements do not need white/non-indigenous folks to save them. First Nations folks in the United States and Australia have been fighting colonization from the very beginning.
For the Wangan and Jagalingou, resistance looks like annexing their land and setting up a ceremonial fire that has been kept alive 24/7, 365 days a year, through the intense rain, frigid cold, and blazing summer. Resistance looks like sharing and practicing culture – from teaching about traditional plants on bush walks through the forest, to giving language lessons in local high schools to revitalize the Wirdi language. Resistance looks like actively living out the future they want to see.
W&J members performing a traditional dance. Photo credits: the wonderful Jamie Patterson
It’s obvious that portraying Indigenous folks as happy recipients of colonization is incredibly dangerous, but it’s not enough to talk solely of the brutalities of the past and present, nor is it just to portray Indigenous folks as passive victims of these brutalities. Centering the powerful stories of Indigenous resistance is equally important to speaking the truths of the horrors of colonization. This kind of truth-telling is often missing even within leftist educational spheres.
Coedie, Meisha, Shara, Uncle Adrian, Nate, Murrawah, and every Wangan and Jagalingou member pushing back has greatly undermined the power of the Adani conglomerate. The W&J people have also been inspired and continue to inspire other indigenous rights struggles across the continent and the globe. The fight to save Murujuga from the Scarborough gas project. The fight to save the Former Deebing Creek Aboriginal Reserve from development. The list goes on.
After spending time at Waddananggu, I’ve been thinking about how to practice reciprocity and contribute to the W&J resistance as a non-indigenous foreigner. Beyond sharing the W&J peoples’ stories on social media and financially supporting the cause, I hope my reflections here contribute to truth-telling about Australian history. I hope I can help us all be more honest and active accomplices in Indigenous struggles – yes, in other parts of the world – but also within our own communities.