Flow of Voices 3: Social Licence

Miriam Charlie, Jacky Green, Stuart Hoosan and Nancy McDinny

First time outsiders tried to push us off our Country they did it with guns and poison. This time they doing it again, and they still using poison.

Our fish, creeks and waters are slowly being poisoned by mining companies. Some creeks in the Gulf country, mile after mile, got water like battery acid. There's no life, nothing but poison.

In other places fish and livestock been testing positive with lead. We losing our food, our way of life. Our river been diverted when the mining company dug a huge open-cut pit on our sacred site. They made huge waste rock pile too. And that's full of toxic waste that's gonna slowly leak acid into our waterways.

On top of this we got the fracking mob turn up and start drilling to suck all the gas out of our country. They got us real worried. They going to use so much of our water and damage our country, just like the rest of them miners.

Government and mining companies, they all in this together. They just like the one-eyed fella. He got one eye on the money while he covers the other one. He knows he's damaging our country, but he covers his eye so he don't see the destruction. He don't have to worry about it, as long government and mining company getting their money. He just don't care.

They all poison our life, just like the first time.

This painting's about what's happening to us and our country right now. It's not just us blackfellas that are real worried, but white fellas too. We all gotta be lined-up together, black and white, to protect our country. It's what gives us life.