This story was initially printed by Grist. Join Grist’s weekly publication right here.
In 2019, Australia was on the cusp of approving a brand new coal mine on conventional Wirdi land in Queensland that will have extracted roughly 40 million tons of coal annually for 35 years. The Waratah coal mine would have destroyed a nature refuge and emitted 1.58 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
However that didn’t occur, due to the advocacy of Murrawah Maroochy Johnson, a 29-year-old Wirdi girl of the Birri Gubba Nation, who led a lawsuit in opposition to the coal firm in 2021, and gained.
The case was groundbreaking in some ways, however maybe most strikingly, Johnson’s work helped set a brand new authorized precedent that pushed members of the court docket to journey to the place First Nations individuals lived so as hear their testimonies and views, as a substitute of anticipating Indigenous individuals to journey lengthy distances to settler courts.
The lawsuit was additionally the primary to efficiently use Queensland’s new human rights regulation to problem coal mining, arguing that greenhouse gasoline emissions from the Waratah coal mine would hurt Indigenous peoples and their cultural traditions.
Due to the litigation, the mine’s allow was denied in 2022, and its attraction failed final 12 months.
Due to her work, Johnson is now amongst a number of of this 12 months’s winners of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize honoring international grassroots environmental activism.
The previous couple of years have been transformative for Johnson, who’s the mom of a toddler and anticipating her second child in just a few weeks.
Our companions at Grist spoke along with her to find out about what motivates her, how she views the local weather disaster, and what different younger Indigenous activists can be taught from her work.
This interview has been edited for size and readability.
Q. You’ve got been engaged on behalf of your individuals because you had been 19 years previous. What drives you to do that work?
A. It’s positively not a selection. First contact right here was simply 235 years in the past. At that time, terra nullius was declared, which stated that the land belonged to no person, which primarily implies that the primary interplay with colonizing invading powers was one among dehumanization.
They noticed us right here, however to say that the land belonged to nobody actually says that we’re subhuman. They deemed us of a standing the place we couldn’t personal our personal land regardless that they noticed us right here inhabiting our personal lands, dwelling and thriving.
And so there’s an extended legacy of resistance in first contact frontier wars but additionally by means of advocacy over the generations. I’m simply a teenager who will get to inherit that nice legacy.
I used to be raised by very robust dad and mom. My father, my grandfather, my nice grandparents, had been all resistance fighters. There’s quite a lot of duty that comes with inheriting that legacy and feeling like you want to do your half.
But in addition, I really feel prefer it’s not a selection as a result of on the finish of the day, what’s actual is our individuals, our regulation, our customized — irrespective of the colonial equipment makes an attempt to vanish us, dilute us, soak up us into homogenous Australian mainstream and full the assimilation course of.
To me, that’s continued injustice that our individuals face. And each First Nations particular person, I really feel, each Indigenous particular person, has an obligation to withstand that as effectively.
As a result of on the finish of the day, we First Nations individuals right here in Australia, we’re the oldest steady dwelling tradition on the planet, and what comes with that’s the truth that we have now the oldest dwelling creation tales, we have now the oldest dwelling regulation and customized.
That in and of itself is so vital that we will’t simply permit it to be washed away. I feel that there must be a continued lively effort, by my technology and all future generations, to take care of our methods.
For us, colonial, Western, white contact is simply such a small blip in time for a way lengthy our individuals have been right here and the way lengthy we’ve maintained our methods and regulation and customized and tradition.
We have now to collectively acknowledge that we have now an obligation of care and duty to take care of the best way of our individuals. I’m actually happy with having the ability to inherit that and likewise having a duty to guard and keep it.
Q. Are you able to inform me about your perspective on local weather change?
A. It’s at all times known as human-induced local weather change, however I feel that that time period doesn’t permit for colonial powers to be held accountable, or massive polluters.
I feel it’s really extra correct to say that it’s colonial-induced local weather change, as a result of it’s really the method of colonization violently extracting and exploiting the sources of Indigenous nations, peoples’ land, particularly within the International South, that’s resulted within the disaster of local weather change that we face as we speak.
I see local weather change not simply as a disaster, but additionally a possibility. In a single sense, if what stays of our cultural data is so intimately depending on our land, and getting access to our lands and waters, then local weather change is a large menace.
For instance, within the Torres Strait and all through the Pacific, what do you really do when your nation, your homelands, your territory disappears due to the impacts of local weather change? What does that imply for our id that really derives from being the individuals of that distinctive nation and that distinctive place?
Local weather change may actually sign finality of our numerous and distinct and distinctive cultural identities as Indigenous and First Nations individuals within the sense that land could develop into so modified or so disappeared that our persons are not in a position to resonate or acknowledge or establish with it anymore or be taught from it anymore. In order that’s actually scary.
However I feel the opposite aspect is a chance as a result of local weather change creates a way of urgency.
It’s that sense of urgency that’s going to be pushing our peoples to work collectively as Indigenous and First Nations individuals around the globe, to spotlight the significance of the shift required to deal with local weather change, but additionally to recenter our conventional techniques of caring for nation and sustainability and dwelling in concord with the land as an answer to local weather change — actually fight this normalization of colonial historical past and the worldwide system and energy techniques as unquestionable.
Q. That jogs my memory of how, on the video asserting your Goldman Prize, you talked about that “there’s rather a lot to be realized from our methods of being.” Are you able to develop on that concept?
A. We’re at this second the place we will actually take the very best of our conventional methods of being and actually use that to affect the selections that we make about our future.
What actual local weather justice is, to me, is de facto drawing on the best strengths that we have now when it comes to our conventional regulation and customized, utilizing that as a steering system when it comes to the selections we make about what the long run appears to be like like.
In case you’re going to shift the whole international financial system and international construction of how enterprise is finished, then you definately wish to be speaking to the consultants. So that you wish to be speaking to First Nations individuals and data holders.
I feel local weather change will finally lead those that are dedicated to the present system to be pressured to be uncovered to the truth that quite a lot of First Nations individuals have been dwelling with for a very long time: that this present international system doesn’t work for us. Within the context of capitalism, it’s designed to work in opposition to us and facilitate outcomes for only a few.
Local weather change is right here due to the present international techniques, and that implies that, ultimately, the system will develop into out of date. It already is in terms of the survival of humanity. I feel that finally individuals will come to see that the system doesn’t work for them. It’s by no means been designed to work for the plenty.
So, I actually see an enormous shift towards management from First Nations individuals. Indigenous or non-Indigenous, individuals — that is my hope right here in Australia — begin to act in accordance with conventional rules of caring for nation regulation and customized and actually reestablishing previous methods, governing methods, of those lands. I feel that’s the one solution to actually handle local weather change.
And possibly I’ve received an enormous creativeness, however I see it as a part of my duty to work as laborious as I can towards that objective of making that actuality, one during which a contemporary society primarily adheres to First Nations regulation and customized in a contemporary context.
Q. You’ve talked rather a lot in regards to the significance of drawing from conventional data. After I take into consideration what it means to be Indigenous, I take into consideration each the data we have now and likewise the problem in bringing that ahead due to how colonialism has eroded our ties to each tradition and land.
What would you say to Indigenous individuals who care about land and tradition, however are feeling disconnected from each? How do they discover their manner again?
A. That is one which I really actually wrestle with typically as a result of within the Australian context right here, we had the Stolen Technology, when Indigenous kids had been forcibly faraway from their dad and mom and indoctrinated. So you’ve gotten complete generations which were dispossessed of their cultural inheritance, of their households, and likewise their peoples have been dispossessed of future generations as effectively.
The colonial course of was a finely tuned machine by the point it got here by means of the South Pacific and Australia.
In a single sense, we’re lucky that it was solely simply over 230 years in the past first contact occurred, however on the identical time, this colonial equipment was so finely tuned that they didn’t want as lengthy to do as a lot injury as they’ve been in a position to do.
Being in a settler colony, we’re coping with mass incarceration, mass suicide charges, and the disappearing of our individuals. It feels prefer it’s laborious to catch up. We will’t take a break or catch our breath as a result of we’re coping with the very actual, frontier problems with shedding our individuals.
However on the identical time, what’s required for therapeutic and to truly rebuild our cultural power is time. And really having the ability to take the time to be on nation, to sit down with nation, to be taught, and to reconnect.
It’s this actually delicate tug of battle that every one First Peoples who’ve been topic to colonialism should face, and we have now to form of grapple with each day, what can we put our power into?
Am I combating pressured little one removals and assimilation on the each day? Am I combating the schooling system? Am I doing land and nation work and going by means of the authorized system?
Or am I simply form of working as a person, sovereign particular person, below our personal regulation and customized and that’s how I resist and keep my power?
It’s so huge when it comes to how we have now to separate ourselves up in a solution to cope with the problems at hand, which primarily is the disappearance of our individuals, but additionally our lifestyle and customized.
On the finish of the day, for me, I simply should take heed from my ancestors and my very own those who we’ve seen the tip of the world earlier than.
My nice grandparents and their technology noticed the tip of their world already, they usually’ve been combating. They had been within the bodily frontier on the entrance line, and survived that, and noticed every thing that they knew to be ripped away from them.
So I’ve to only acknowledge that I’m very fortunate to be born within the technology I’m born in, with a lot extra alternative. However on the identical time, there may be that massive hole in familiarity with tradition and our methods.
Q. Earlier than your profitable litigation in opposition to the Warratah mine, you fought in opposition to the Carmichael mine, submitting lawsuit after lawsuit. However the mine nonetheless opened in 2021 and is now in operation. How do you deal with such setbacks, and the grief of local weather trauma and colonialism? What would you say to different Indigenous activists who’re coping with comparable challenges?
A. Being a teenager, going by means of that, it’s actually laborious. You’re up in opposition to the precise powers that be of the colonial equipment: the state authorities, the federal authorities, the mining foyer itself, and this concept that our conventional lands must be destroyed for extraction and exploitation for the advantage of everyone else.
For the advantage of the state when it comes to royalties, and for the advantage of the remainder of settler Australia, the place we, the individuals and our lands, are the collateral injury. And so for a very long time I used to be very heartbroken, very depressed. For a very long time I didn’t know what my subsequent steps had been.
However the actuality is that I really feel very a lot so guarded by my ancestors and all our individuals. I had time to mourn and get again on my toes earlier than the chance to hitch the Youth Verdict case in opposition to the Waratah coal mine got here alongside.
All I can say is we stored going. We’re combating for our individuals, each single day. And one thing that I used to be at all times reminded of alongside the best way was that regardless that it may not be the silver bullet that makes vital change, it’s nonetheless necessary that we create our personal legacy of resistance and that we do our greatest every single day to take care of what we maintain expensive.
We’ve received to do the work as a result of we’ve received to do the work. It stands by itself and it’s our obligation as conventional custodians every single day to do the work of sustaining and defending nation.
We placed on the document that we don’t consent, this isn’t free, prior, and knowledgeable consent as we’re entitled below the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
And each step of the best way, simply sustaining that resistance, even when it’s simply telling our story and difficult the prevailing, dominant, colonial narrative, I feel is necessary to do each single day.
So when it comes to recommendation, I feel it’s to maintain going. Take a break when you want to. And have a cry, as a result of I cried for like eight years straight, however I feel simply understanding what a few of my very own individuals have been by means of and the horrors that they needed to cope with, it’s the duty that we inherit to take care of the combat and proceed on as finest we will.
We’d not be capable to remedy every thing in a single or two generations. However once more, we’re the oldest dwelling tradition on the face of the earth.
So, in that respect, we’ve been right here the longest and, so long as my technology and our future generations keep our personal identities, cultural identities, and resistance as finest as we will, we’ll be right here lengthy into the long run as effectively.
Header Picture from Goldman Environmental Prize
