Bidyadanga Frack Free Protest

Today groups with vested interest attended the Mangrove Hotel to vote regarding whether Fracking should go ahead in the Bidyadanga area.  Bidyadanga is located 180 kilometres from Broome.

I spoke with Madeline Jandi who was protesting fracking in her country.  I asked her about the deal that had been done with the mining companies by the people who were supposedly representing the Bidyadanga traditional owners.  She said that the people who had done the negotiation were not native title holders and did not have the right to agree to any deals.  She said that they were there to represent all the people that had been left out and had not been heard since day one.

She claims the Muhgala and the Juwaliny people who also hold the stories of that land.  She says they have land rights also.  The elders or the people from this group were not invited to come to the negotiation table.

Bidyadanga is the largest remote Aboriginal community in Western Australia with a population of approximately 750 residents and is home to the Karajarri, Juwalinny, Mangala, Nyungamarta and Yulpartja language groups.

The recognised traditional owners of the land are the Karajarri people. There is dispute that other language groups that were as a courtesy given hospitality when they were brought in by the La Grange Mission in 1955, have now signed off on deals for fracking without their consent. The first Aboriginal people near La Grange were the Nadja-Nadja (salt-water people who spoke the Karajarri language). The Mangala, Yulparija, Juwaliny and Nyanyumarta people came to La Grange from the desert and the coast.