Michael Woodley Part 1: Yindjibarndi Native Title Fight
Release Date: 08/10/2018
Petra Tschakert: Geologist, Anthropologist, IPCC Scientist
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
"Overshoot means we consciously and willingly allow to go above 1.5 while waiting for the right technology...to then rapidly bring down the overshoot. It would fulfill the goal laid out in the Paris Agreement however the damage done on the way is tremendous. The obligation of scientists is to lay out different ( plausible) scenarios. Its governments and industries who then take these plausible scenarios and insist that we have the luxury to wait because technical solutions will save us in the end. The reason why this interpretation is so flawed (and I think this is when I cracked...
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Peter Newman: Environmental Scientist and Sustainable Transport expert
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
"We changed the world to start to see that automobile dependence was not a good thing...we were much hated by the automobile associations, the vehicle companies, the oil companies. They used to run people who would follow us everywhere. And they were given money to write papers attacking us." Professor Peter Newman reflecting on his work in the US with colleague Professor Jeff Kenworthy _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ WA Scientist of the Year in 2018, Peter Newman AO...
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Saul Griffith: Australia's Electric Future
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
If you follow thought leaders on the energy transition, you’ll be familiar with the hashtag Electrify Everything. The argument is that a huge proportion of ‘global energy needs’ can be met with electricity sourced from renewables – and to use it we simply need to – electrify everything. This is the message of Australian inventor and engineer Saul Griffith – recently returned from two decades in the US where he’s advised, among others, NASA and the Biden Administration. Saul Griffith's book, “The Big Switch – Australia’s Electric Future” details some very clear thinking...
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Paul Cleary: Yindjibarndi Native Title Fight
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
"I think it’s a scandal in this country that so much wealth is being extracted and Aboriginal people are no better off."
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Matthew Evans: Soil
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
The people who can sweep us along in their enthusiasm and can-do attitude offer solid foundations for optimism as we witness the earth struggling …and the solutions seem too much for us as individuals to contemplate.
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David Carter + Jeff Hansen: An Unlikely Alliance
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
It began with a deep sea cod. David Carter and Jeff Hansen
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Andrew Wear: Solved
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
Andrew Wear is a very experienced public policy expert from Melbourne. He’s worked across a vast array of different policy areas from Planning and Community, Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources and that came in handy when he decided to write a book that just generally looked at how some of the world’s biggest problems were being solved. The book is called SOLVED and it details how ten countries solved ten big problems from climate change to multiculturalism.
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Tom Cronin: The Portal
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
The idea of “saving the world” is one tossed out in a glib way in conversation, a grandiose statement few believe can manifest
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Matthew Kemp: Inventing the Artificial Womb
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
The idea of an artificial womb – a place where a prematurely born baby could continue to safely gestate closer to full term, is one scientists have worked on intermittently since the late 1950’s. Until recently it’s been considered a wild card, a fairly unorthodox angle on dealing with pre-term birth. In this conversation, Assoc Professor Matthew Kemp discusses the determination, dedication and serendipity that has gained the artificial womb project significant recognition.
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Dominic Smith: Writing The Electric Hotel
Rare Air with Meri Fatin
Dominic Smith's fifth novel The Electric Hotel is set around the birth of cinema, the three decades across which most silent film was made.
info_outline“Until we know no more Yindjibarndi are coming, we’ve got no right to give this country away.”
Michael Woodley, Bidarra law carrier, CEO Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation
As a journalist and sometimes just as a human being, I have followed the story of the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation and Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group in their native title negotiations, since 2011.
In late October 2015 I finally went to this place I’d been talking about for years with my Three Gates Media colleague Marnie Richardson. We stood at the top of Mt Welcome in Roebourne, in 40 plus degree heat and looked in all directions. Across the Harding River, we saw the place where the Yindjibarndi first camped in the 1930’s when they were herded off their land (situated south of here)…the bleak cemetery carpeted with red dust, the Fifty Cent Hall, scene of numerous native title meetings, the disused Victoria Hotel outside which sixteen year old John Pat was bashed to death in 1983 sparking the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody.
Roebourne is far from a tourist destination. The weekend we arrive it’s almost deserted due to sorry business. It’s a town battered by many demons delivered by white fellas. But the commitment to keeping culture and making change for the better has a vibrant beating heart.
The first time I interviewed Michael Woodley, I’d had to draw myself a picture to understand the complicated situation that had arisen. THIS interview is primarily a chance to meet Michael Woodley himself. But to understand the man, you have to understand the struggle.
In the first half of our conversation Michael gives a simple explanation of how negotiations went sour, talks about his grandfathers, including Ned Cheedy who, aged 104, stood up and spoke in angry defiance at a Native Title meeting in March 2011… and about the irrevocable changes brought to a culture tens of thousands of years old, when white fellas came to mine their land.
Three Gates Media thanks Michael Woodley for sharing his story.
Traditional song performed by Michael Woodley.
Recorded by Meri Fatin at Woodbrook Law Camp. October 2015
Theme music Les Jeunes Pousses by Françoiz Breût