BY WILL KNIGHT
Dinny Tumbler, a sixty-five-year-old Aboriginal man, camps in a small room attached to the home of his daughter and son-in-law at the Bellary Aboriginal community, between Paraburdoo and Tom Price in north-west Western Australia. Dinny never went to school. He says, "I started work on the stations when I was about 12. I only learnt about mustering and things like that. In those days we worked for the station boss from sun-up to sundown."
On August 24, the huge West Angelas iron ore mine was opened by the Western Australia Premier Geoff Gallop, on the land of the Ngarlawonga people. As an Ngarlawonga elder, Dinny was expecting an invitation to the ceremony, but none came. Instead, Robe River Iron Associates, 53% owned by Rio Tinto, recognises as the traditional owners of the land an extended family group of no more than 20 people, who registered a native title claim in 1998 when the requirements under the Native Tile Act were less stringent than today. Dinny is not included in the Gobawarrah Minduarra Yinhawanga claim which stretches from Mount Robinson on the Great Northern Highway to west of Paraburdoo, overlapping the traditional lands of both the Innawonga and Ngarlawonga people.
Anthropologist Dr Bill Day says that he knows of no other case where a small clan claims to hold native title over such a wide area, to the exclusion of other language groups. "All the elders I have spoken to are adamant that the West Angelas mine is on the traditional lands of the Ngarlawonga people. Dinny is widely respected as an Ngarlawonga elder. He was born on Turee Creek station and worked on stations in the area in his youth. As an Ngarlawonga elder he feels hurt that he was not invited to the opening of the West Angelas mine."
After years in the saddle, working for the pastoralists, Dinny is not as agile as he once was. As he waits for someone to drive him to the Paraburdoo post office to collect his pension, he listens to the iron ore trains rumbling through the hills near his camp and wonders where the money goes from a $900 million iron ore mine on the lands of his people.
From Green Left Weekly, September 4, 2002.
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