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Watson, Irene --- "Kungkas and the Struggle for the Manta : Interview with Rebecca Bear Wingfield" [2000] IndigLawB 50; (2000) 5(1) Indigenous Law Bulletin 22


Kungkas and the Struggle for the Manta[1]:

Interview with Rebecca Bear Wingfield

by Irene Watson

The Kupa Pita Kungka Tjuta are senior Aboriginal women based in Coober Pedy, South Australia. They are from the Antikarinya, Kokatha, Arabunna, and Yankunjtjatjara peoples. They are known as the ‘Kungkas’ (which means ‘women’), and are custodians for the Seven Sisters Dreaming: a dreaming which travels through the Billa Kallina area north of Woomera, and where the Commonwealth Government proposes to establish a nuclear waste dump. In the words of the Kungkas when describing the area: ‘It’s very important Tjukur - the Law, the Dreaming that must not be disturbed.’[2]

The Commonwealth Government has announced that it will acquire land in an area near Woomera under the Commonwealth Land Acquisition Act 1989. A final selection for the site is proposed for October 2000. The proposed land acquisition will extinguish native title rights over the selected lands, and also override the possibility of the meagre protection of the cultural significance of the area provided for under the SA Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988, and the Commonwealth Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act 1984.

The proposal to place low level and short lived intermediate level nuclear wastes requires isolation from the environment for up to 300 years, and long lived intermediate level radioactive wastes require isolation for tens of thousands of years.[3]

The Kungkas’ struggle to protect the manta has been long. In 1998 they were successful in protecting an important site when one mine shaft closed at Olympic Dam mine, and in celebration the women gathered to dance the ‘poison country’ inma.[4] The following is taken from a submission prepared by Rebecca Bear Wingfield:

The old people were told that the manta should not be disturbed at Roxby Downs, Olympic Dam uranium mine. Kokatha and Arabunna people are a brother-sister tribe, both of whom have affiliations with the sacred site that was destroyed. Handed down from generation to generation by the old people, this information about the Tjukurpa (the law) which tells Anangu people about the dangers of uranium has always been available to Anangu people. The Tjukurpa (the law) is our cultural beginning, dating back hundreds of thousands of years ago, to our creation. We were given that knowledge so that we can understand our responsibilities towards our families, the old people, the grandchildren-everyone. Kokatha and Arabunna people knew about the poison, we knew where we were not allowed to walk, or camp or go near that place, sacred sites all round Roxby Downs.



Old Anangu people taught us to not disturb the manta because this mineral, non-Aboriginal people call uranium was too powerful to deal with, too dangerous, and it killed people who did the wrong things. Under our law mining is wrong. Uranium should have remained in the ground.



In understanding how all this relates to the Non-Proliferation Treaty currently under review, it is imperative that member states of the United Nations and the signatories to the treaty begin to understand that the historical impact of the use of nuclear weapons here in South Australia at Emu, was and still is an act of genocide against Anangu.



In Coober Pedy some 220 kilometres away from the Emu test site people are noticing things like young children being born with extra digits (toes and fingers). A few women including the younger women have problems with miscarriages. This is a difficult issue to talk about because in our culture women’s gynaecological problems are not normally spoken about publicly. But it has to be talked about now because some of us are not able to have children.[5]

The Kungkas’ struggle is being realised by many South Australians who are becoming aware of the dangers that the nuclear waste dump poses to the health and safety, of themselves and future generations. A recent public poll by the Advertiser showed that 87% of South Australians oppose plans for a nuclear waste repository to bury low-level and short-lived intermediate level wastes in northern SA. Ninety-five per cent oppose a nuclear dump for the reactor's long lived intermediate level wastes and 78% support calls for a referendum on radioactive waste at the next election. The South Australian Government has introduced legislation opposing the nuclear high level waste dump. However, the legislation has been deferred until October 2000 due to amendments of the Opposition (the Australian Labor Party) and the Democrats. The amendments are calling for a referendum on the location of the waste dump in SA.[6]

Recently Senator Minchin has denied that the Federal Government had plans to privatise the national nuclear waste repository, following the release of Department of Industry documents by the Australian Conservation Foundation (the ‘ACF’). The documents called for submissions on project management of the site and showed the building and operation of the repository could be done by private contractors. In reviewing the key tender documentation, the ACF campaign officer claimed that the Federal Government processes could allow for the finalisation of the construction contract prior to the completion of the environmental impact assessment and licensing processes. This process, it was claimed, would not allow for the necessary public consultation.[7] Senator Minchin also denied these claims. The ACF has condemned secrecy provisions and commercial confidentiality exclusion clauses proposed by the Federal Government to prevent the disclosure of information submitted during the tender process. The information about the business, commercial, or financial affairs of the private nuclear dump operator are also not to be disclosed to the public.[8]

Eileen Wingfield is an elder Arabunna Kokatha Kungka, (woman), and member of the Kupa Pita Kungka Tjuta. She expresses her concern for the manta:

We’ve been talking about the dump the poison for years. We don’t want it. Irati Wanti, leave the poison. The Seven Sisters Dreaming – we control that. We sit with that every day, and show everyone that really care for it. It’s all over the country. Not only us here in Coober Pedy but north, south, east and west, it’s the same Dreaming. That’s our job all the kungka’s job to protect it.[9]

Rebecca Bear Wingfield is the daughter of Eileen Wingfield and is also member of the Kupa Pita Kungka Tjuta She recently spoke with Irene Watson:

RBW: We want to maintain our culture and our law and everyday it’s part of our life. Everyday we have been actively campaigning to stop the location and siting of a nuclear waste repository dump we have opposed the two proposals for a low level and high level nuclear waste dump.

IW: How was it you became involved in working with the Kungkas to stop the dump?

RBW: I was working in Queensland lecturing and I returned home after the death of my partner, who painted about Maralinga-that was what his life was about. I had largely been involved in nutrition and health and the University side of things, and over cups of tea I began to listen to stories in 1998 of the nuclear waste dump, which I had not heard about. I became increasingly concerned, and about a week after I got home my Mum told me that I was to go to Adelaide to represent her. That is how I become involved. I became her representative at the first meeting they had between Western Mining Company and all the native title claimants for the area. That is where I became fully versed, in the matter of a couple of weeks, about all the issues, including how it related to native title claimants, Commonwealth and State legislation over the area, pastoral and mining leases. After leaving this meeting I had the feeling of a fait accompli, that they had already made the decision to locate the nuclear waste dump in South Australia and that their intention was to have local and national waste from around Australia and international waste. I believe the decision had been made prior to that meeting we were just going through the whole political exercise of community consultation.

I also started to learn about Emu. I didn’t know that Emu was a series of nuclear weapons tests in 1953, I also didn’t know that my mother had been present at these tests. I become involved with my mother and my aunties and the Kungkas at Coober Pedy, and started to hear their stories about how long they had been waiting, more than 40 years to get some justice from that experience. That is when I decided that I had to help them, that it was a mutual relationship because I learnt such a lot, and I learnt a lot of the cultural side of Aboriginal life in a traditional community like Coober Pedy. I had to learn about the land and I had to learn about where all the sites were and they talked me through the country. I realize now that for me to talk publicly about these issues, unless I had been with the Kungkas and I knew what I was talking about and I could talk about where the caves were, where women could go where men could go, and if I didn’t have that intimate understanding I had no legitimate role in this whole process of fighting against the construction of this waste dump.

IW: In struggling to protect the manta, how do you see the western legal system in that process?

RBW: There has been a great deal of pressure placed on the kungkas and other senior people including the men, but I can’t talk much about that. The senior women, we have law, every day and it is from the dreaming, the Tjurkurpa, and we have always had law around us and it has never been different. But now they have been asked to validate their own law in a foreign law system, which is based on the 1788 declaration of terra nullius, of no people. But we have been here and that can never be denied. By our very presence today and so the application of a foreign law is overriding something which is very important and that is the spiritual connection, our understanding of where we are from and our belonging to the land. We are setting up conditions so that our kids and our grandkids have the same responsibilities.

Its been a very big pressure on the old ladies, they have been often made to enter into a situation where it is in direct conflict to their views. They have publicly expressed their opposition to a proposed nuclear waste site and yet they have also as senior women had the responsibility to undertake site inspections. They have been made to go through a foreign process, which I believe is very disrespectful, because they have said ‘no’. ‘We don’t want it’. But, they were still asked to become involved, in a bureaucratic procedure of going to each site, and asked, do you want this one? Is this one a site? Is it an appropriate site? It is very demanding work, because these senior women were having their whole position, their whole validity, questioned. They were put under almost like a microscope and everything they said was open to challenge, in this non-Aboriginal system.

It put a lot of responsibility onto the women because we are talking about a very frightening concept, the transportation and the containing of radioactive waste. We can get into academic debates about whether low level, medium, or intermediate and high level are toxic, but at the end of the day they are going to be so toxic for so long that it is only something that people who are trying to justify their nasty decision use. So, the pressure on the Kungkas to drive around on very hot days and to work with a team of people I found was a very disrespectful process. But I found that the Kungkas did it with honour and dignity and they showed why they are senior women, because they worked against the odds often with people who were not as respectful of their role or what was actually been undertaken. That was the personal side of it that I saw, the pressure that they were under, for people like my mother and all the ladies. I saw the pressure that it put on those Kungkas.

IW: What rights do you believe have been violated in this process?

RBW: As indigenous people and as women it was a human rights issue because it was a denial of our cultural, spiritual, psyche, our very presence. We were totally being annulled. Our presence in that area had been denied. I think that can be related to the establishment of Woomera and the declaration that this was Commonwealth land. Further west and towards Lake Eyre there was the idea that the control and the acceptance that this was either Kokatha and Arabunna peoples country was also removed by the pastoral leases, and then ultimately as was the case with Roxby Downs uranium mine, the multi-national company who has come in and has control through the mining lease. There has been continual denial of Aboriginal people’s presence in that area.

Sometimes people have found it very difficult to have access to the maintenance of their country, because our people still actively undertake to care for all of our waterholes and passing on the knowledge to the children about where the grandparents were born and just being able to travel the country.

Our existence is denied and we have to justify our presence, our right to speak for country, and often it has created a situation where people who were not necessarily going to speak for that area are now saying that they are the people who are speaking for this country. There has been some difficulties with other groups who are not necessarily from that area and who are saying that they now have native title claims for that area. So these are the sort of things that it is almost like abusing peoples’ identity and their cultural heritage, and these are human rights issues.

Just the fact that the Kungkas, in particular, they were living under the first test, to have to go through that experience and then now to say they are going to put all the waste here on the country. To me that is such a poor attitude.

The old ladies and the old people have had enough. They have been battling against the mining, and battling against the illness caused as a result of the first bombs that were tested at Emu and Maralinga, where the fall out was very significant across that area. They have also had to dodge rockets in between all this, and now to put this other pressure: saying that this is a very appropriate site for the waste dump. I find it a very disgusting proposal, and people are saying to us, well you know it’s a wasteland. It is not. Our families have travelled that country for hundreds of thousands of years and there are very significant sites in the area that we are talking about.

The Kungkas will travel to the Sydney Olympics 2000 to tell their story to the international community. They plan to hold cultural workshops where they will sing and speak of the spiritual and cultural importance of their country.


[1] ‘Manta’ means ‘earth’ or ‘ground’.

[2] Kungka’s submission to the Commonweath Joint Parliamentary Works Committee, in the Replacement Nuclear Research Reactor Lucas Heights Report (1999).

[3] David Noonan, Campaign Officer Adelaide, Australian Conservation Foundation, August 2000, d.noonan@acfonline.org.au.

[4] Rebecca Bear Wingfield, Deconstructing the Uranium Myths using Arabunna and Kokatha understanding and Knowledge, paper submitted to The Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty Review, May 2000, New York, United Nations. The word ‘inma’ means ‘ceremony of dance and song’.

[5] Ibid 2-3.

[6] Greg Kelton, ‘Nuclear dump decision on hold’, The Advertiser, 15 July, 2000.

[7] AAP ‘Nuclear Waste Claim Denied’, Weekend Australian, 17, 5-6 August 2000.

[8] David Noonan, ACF Media Release, 1 August 2000, adelaide@acfonline.org.au.

[9] Eileen Wingfiled, recorded by Michelle Madigan, at Coober Pedy (1999).

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