CLICK HERE TO SEE SLIDE SHOW OF THE CELEBRATION & DANCE
By Michael Woodley
For a year now, we Yindjibarndi people of the Pilbara have been suffering a split in our community engineered with terrible outcomes by the Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) who intend to mine Yindjibarndi country. Despite having Native Title to our homelands, and despite showing Australian courts and the Native Title Tribunal that the Yindjibarndi people – our culture, Law, language and wellbeing – are dependent upon our connection with our ancestral land and water, the never-ending pressure of Fortescue Metals Group continues to devastate our community and our children’s futures.
This is the hard ground.
One bright light illuminates our struggle. Our wonderful Yindjibarndi Elder, Ned Mayinbungu Cheedy, who has for so long been a beacon of strength and a sharer of knowledge among us. His contribution was recognised nationally by the award of the most prestigious NAIDOC 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award. And for Ned, and all of our children, on Tuesday the 6 of September, Yindjibarndi painted up and danced.
Yindjibarndi people can not live by mining alone.
In his push to mine our country, FMG’s founder, Chairman, and largest shareholder, Twiggy Forrest, tells us that our future lies in getting a job with his company and giving over our country to his mines, but Twiggy’s teaching about how we should be and how we should live does not compare to the teaching of our elders. We know that we cannot live by mining alone. We are finished if we cease to honour the heritage and Ngurra (country) passed on by our ancestors, which speaks to our inner needs and our very being as Yindjibarndi people.
Mining will not dominate our country forever. The huge ore deposits will be exhausted within a few generations and when the minerals are all shipped overseas, mining will be worth nothing and all the money will amount to less than nothing for our future generations.
Our fight against Twiggy Forrest and FMG is not just about our rights as the first people of this Ngurra, it is about doing right by our country and our descendants. We believe that if we keep body and soul together with our country and its unique Yindjibarndi Law and heritage, our Jalurra and language and teaching will be alive long after Mr Forrest and his FMG are gone and forgotten.
The Jalurra we danced for Mr Ned Cheedy in his 105th year, were about remembering and celebrating who we are and where we come from; honouring the knowledge and values of our old people; respecting the country that was and is before mining and money, and which runs deeper than mining, and gives us self respect and true identity.
MEDIA CONTACT
Michael Woodley
CEO Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation
0419 097 130
mwoodley@juluwarlu.com.au
media@juluwarlu.com.au
FACEBOOK
http://yindjibarndi.org.au/facebook.html
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Yindjibarndi website brought down by cyber-attack… and restored!
Media Release www.yindjibarndi.org.au
14 September 2011
Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation, Roebourne, WA
Yindjibarndi website brought down by cyber-attack… and restored!
On Monday night the website of Roebourne-based Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (YAC) was disabled by a “Distributed Denial of Service” (DDoS) attack. The site was down for 48 hours before being restored by Hosting Engineers at the Westnet Network Operations Centre late on Wednesday afternoon.
Visitors to the site were greeted by this message during the attack:
Service Temporarily Unavailable
The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later.
Apache/2.2.11 (Unix) PHP/5.2.9 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635 Server at www.yindjibarndi.org.au Port 80
The YAC website was established specifically to distribute information about the tactics used by Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) to divide the Yindjibarndi community in order to gain access to their traditional country on terms far below industry standards. The site makes available an archive of reports and data about FMG’s activities and behaviour, and hosts a ‘Yindjibarndi Fighting Fund’ donation facility.
Westnet has not yet identified the source of the attack, and YAC does not suggest it was FMG.
A DDoS attack aims to block legitimate access to a website by overloading the target website with a flood of external communication requests from IP addresses around the world, thus preventing the host server from processing genuine requests.
Perpetrators of DDoS attacks typically target sites of high-profile multi-national corporations and Governments. “That a tiny organisation like ours has been illegally targeted in this way is amazing to us”, YAC CEO Michael Woodley said, “but we are grateful to Westnet for working so quickly to get the site up again, and we hope it’s a permanent fix”.
The Australian Federal Police have been informed of this cyber-crime.
The Yindjibarndi social media campaign was previously in the public spotlight in April 2011 when FMG attempted to gag the YAC documentary, ‘FMG’s Great Native Title Swindle’, by forcing the US-based videohosting site, VIMEO, to remove the film. However it resurfaced on YouTube and went viral.
“Our video exposed FMG’s destructive tactics during a meeting in Roebourne in March this year,” Mr Woodley said, “but now Fortescue has purchased a hyperlink advertisement on GOOGLE that appears at the top of every GOOGLE search containing the words ‘Yindjibarndi’, ‘native title swindle’, or my name, and
which connects to a spin-doctor’s presentation of the meeting”.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Michael Woodley, CEO Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation 0419 097 130
mwoodley@juluwarlu.com.au
For background & research materials please visit: www.yindjibarndi.org.au
Re: When the ground is hard, Yindjibarndi dance
To the Elders and community of Yindjibarndi
never give up.Most Australians are now seeing the truth about
Minning Corporations, and the effect on our beautiful landscape.