Author: Miriam Pepper

The Gomeroi Elders and Traditional Custodians held a candle-lit vigil, smoking ceremony and Corroboree in Gunnedah this Wednesday evening. The Gomeroi have invited the community to support their right to maintain their culture and sacred rites, and to protest with them that seven of their sacred sites in the Leard State Forest have been destroyed by Whitehaven Coal.

The Gomeroi Elders and Traditional Custodians held a candle-lit vigil, smoking ceremony and Corroboree in Gunnedah this Wednesday evening. The Gomeroi have invited the community to support their right to maintain their culture and sacred rites, and to protest with them that seven of their sacred sites in the Leard State Forest have been destroyed by Whitehaven Coal.

This support is being offered by the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change and the Uniting Church NSW-ACT Regional Council of the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress as well as members of the local community.

The ceremony is one of claiming hope. The Gomeroi are frustrated but they continue to peacefully assert their rights and will not back down. Through their lawyers, the Gomeroi have been attempting to employ all legislative and administrative options available to protect their land and sacred sites, but these have so far fallen on deaf ears.

A Section 9 and 10 application for urgent protection was submitted to Minister Greg Hunt in late 2013 but was not given an answer. Another application has been submitted, as well as separate claims in with the NSW Government that they be allowed access to their land in the Leard Forest.

The Gomeroi have native title over land around Maules Creek area. Whitehaven had been given the GPS co-ordinates of eleven of their sacred sites in the Leard Forest and yet seven of them were desecrated and destroyed. Their frustration and grief are palpable.

In addition, the Gomeroi are currently not allowed access to the Forest. They have clearly been denied their rights to their spiritual and religious ceremonial practices at sacred sites.

Consequently, when a young member of the community passed away, the Gomeroi were unable to conduct a smoking ceremony at the relevant sacred site in his honour. Indeed they are obliged by their lore to do so. They approached the NSW Government for permission to enter the forest to conduct their ceremony and were advised that they must comply with conditions to be determined by Whitehaven.

Whitehaven gave permission for a limit of six Gomeroi people to conduct the smoking ceremony, but the remaining circa 150 members were not permitted to attend. For the Gomeroi, this is the white equivalent of people outside a family determining that only six people should be allowed to attend a family funeral.

Thea Ormerod, President of ARRCC, was at the Corroboree and vigil in Gunnedah. “It is surely the role of government to balance various interests but, overall, to protect the common good.” She said. “From a public ethics perspective, it is not the role of government to defend the interests of companies as a priority. More important that the profits of individual companies are considerations of justice, equity, the protection of the commons, human rights and indigenous rights.”