Yakka Munga Blockade (2019)

From AnarWiki

The Yakka Munga Blockade was a picket by Aboriginal Australians in 2019 to stop the destruction of cultural sites from land-clearing on a Chinese-owned cattle station in the Kimberley, Western Australia.

Background

Aboriginal Australians had been pretty brutally treated by the colonial government of the British Empire, stealing and enclosing aboriginal land and wiping out 98% of the population. After Australia's independence in 1901, there were apartheid-esque conditions for aboriginals (many also being pushed into slavery and/or massacred by police) but even after the aboriginal rights movement, they still face a lot of discrimination, being vilified or fetished in white Australian culture, harassed by police and abused by corporations for cheap labour.

The Yakka Munga site contained several sacred aboriginal artifacts and had been sold off to Chinese investors as a cattle site (harming the region ecologically), land clearing (of 24km by 50 meters) had been destroying some of the few sacred sites left and the company acted without the consent of the aboriginal land council.[1]

Events

Aboriginal protesters physically blocked the site in a picket, stopping trucks carrying workers from entering.[1]

Results

The Western Australian Department of Water and Environmental Regulation issued a stop work order to the company, the campaign was thus successful.[2]

References