CAEPR Visiting Indigenous Fellow wins national conservation award

A Visiting Indigenous Fellow at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) has won a national conservation award for helping protecting in his country in the southwestern Gulf of Carpentaria region.

Jacky Wongili Green, a Garawa man, received the 2015 Peter Rawlinson Award from the Australian Conservation Foundation, which said he had made an outstanding contribution to the environment in his people’s fight against a lead and zinc mine on the McArthur River.

"I'm so happy to win this award, I just wish all my old people from McArthur River who been fightin' that mine could be here,” Jacky said at a ceremony in Melbourne.

“It's hard for us to see our country destroyed just for money. We all gotta stand together and look after this country. It doesn't matter what colour you are, black, white or brindle, we all gotta work together."

Jacky has been a visiting fellow at ANU for more than two years and teaches in the Indigenous Studies program. He is also an established painter who has described his people’s fight against the mine and government bureaucracy in his works.

CAEPR Research Fellow Dr Seán Kerins, said Jacky had worked with local clans in the Gulf region to reconnect young people with their country, create ranger programs and start carbon farming projects. Jacky also worked with Garawa and Waanyi people to declare more than 11,000 square kilometres of their land as the Ganalanga-Mindibirrina Indigenous Protected Area.

“From leading a campaign against the environmental pollution of his region from Glencore’s massive lead and zinc mine in the McArthur River, to working with other Indigenous groups to regain ownership of their lands, to the establishment of Indigenous ranger programs – Jack Green is a worthy winner of this year’s Rawlinson Award,” Australian Conservation Foundation CEO, Kelly O’Shanassy, added.