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WATER IS PRECIOUS IN THE DESERT
The story of Australia’s Biggest Free Water Grab
GRAHAM PULA BEASLEY
ROSIEANNE NAPANANGKA HOLMES
SARAH NABANGARDI HOLMES
JACLYN NANGALA HOLMES
NED JUNGARRAYI KELLY
OWEN JAPALJARRI MILLER
WARRICK JAPANGARDI MILLER
DOREEN NANGALA MURPHY
VALERIE NAKAMARRA NELSON
MARTHA NAKAMARRA POULSON
CYSILA NAPANANGKA ROSE
Concept by Maureen Nampijinpa O’Keefe
Opening Saturday 26 October, 2 pm
The Cross Art Projects
In the presence of Maureen Nampijinpa O’Keefe (Poet and convenor of Running Water Community Press), Valerie Nakamarra Nelson (Artist), Harry Price (Arlpwe Art and Culture Centre) and Alex Vaughan (Arid Lands Environment Centre)
Exhibition runs 26 October — 16 November 2024
Presented by The Cross Art Projects In proud collaboration with Arlpwe Art & Culture Centre, Arid Lands Environment Centre and Running Water Community Press (Mparntwe/Alice Springs)
Martha Nakamarra Poulson, Hunting Soakage, 2024, acrylic on linen, 92 x 92 cm, #19-24
‘Don’t they see that there are people living on this land? Living off this land? It’s like when the British tested rockets at Maralinga—they were blind and didn’t see that people were living there. Then they made the people sick and blind. The birds fell out of the sky. Their country was ruined. Yami Lester was blinded and he had no idea what was happening. Today we know what’s about to happen, there is about to be a water crisis. We have to stop it before it happens.’ – Maureen Nampijinpa O’Keefe, Kaytetye, Warlpiri poet, convenor Running Water Community Press. [1]
Water is Precious in the Desert, is an exhibition about water in danger. Ancient aquifers — those well-known like the Great Artesian Basin and others, little-known, like the aquifers lying under arid lands in the Northern Territory — are the major sources of fresh water for the world’s driest and flattest continent. Disquiet over water, land and resource extraction lie at the heart of the northern Australian policy narrative, known by the euphemism “develop the north”.
The artists draw inspiration from their rich and complex country and time spent camping at soaks and observing, collecting, and hunting seasonal flora and fauna. Some water places are sacred sites needing to be appeased according to law and custom. More broadly, looking after country relates to regular burns, cleaning out soaks and related activities. Hence, artists working at Arlpwe Art and Culture Centre in Ali Curung community, are renowned for painting the vast seasonal almanac of the seed story and bush medicine.
Water is Precious in the Desert is a response to a watershed moment. In Central Australia, nearly all water is obtained from groundwater systems. Ali Curung is surrounded by huge pastoral leases: Neutral Junction, Murray Downs and Singleton Stations. In 2021, the biggest groundwater licence in Northern Territory and possibly Australia’s history was quietly granted to Singleton Station (under the NT Water Act 1992). After the water grant, Traditional Owners requested an Aboriginal Cultural Values Report (commissioned by the Central Land Council and undertaken by anthropologist Susan Dale Donaldson in 2021).
There, Maureen Nampijinpa O’Keefe described, ‘The land of honey that Singleton, and frogs. The land of plenty, our own big garden, that’s how I look at it. It is everyone’s hunting ground, especially from Alekarenge.’ [2]
The community of Ali Curung in Central Australia has a population just under 500. It is located about 2 hours southeast of Tennant Creek on Kaytetye land held by the Warrabri Aboriginal Land Trust. Ali Curung (or Alekarenge) means ‘belonging to the dog’, referring to the Aleke (dog) Dreaming sites where the community is located. Here, the Dreaming is known as Altyerre (in Kaytetye), and in the neighbouring languages as Altyerr (in Alyawarr), Jukurrpa (in Warlpiri) and Wirnkarra (in Warumungu). In Kaytetye the word for water is arntwe. To government it is better known as part of the draft Western Davenport Water Allocation Plan (2022-2033).
Works in the exhibition show country and water as an all-embracing concept. Martha Nakamarra Poulson paints glorious vistas of ancestral soaks (also called Indigenous wells) with ghost-gum and bloodwood trees rising over sparse shrubs and low trees. Poulson writes about a deeper meaning, for example on the work ‘Soakage Dreaming’: “It came from west/south of Yuendumu. It came all the way travelling toward Warumungu land Tennant Creek. It was making soakage while travelling.” Doreen Nungala Murphy Rankine also recalls her country with near hallucinatory intensity focusing on a creek’s powerful serpent-like line through country.
‘Sacred sites’ are places where mythological Altyerre ancestors reside and, in this region, primarily relates to reliable sources of water including swamps, soaks, creeks, and seasonal flood-outs and claypans (Donaldson 2021). Other artists map this underlying conceptual significance of water: they also show the location and flow of water between soaks, swamps and creeks or clouds gathering after a rainmaker’s ritual summons. These definitive paintings by waterkeepers Sarah Napangardi Holmes, Ned Jungarrayi Kelly, Warrick Japangardi Miller and Valerie Nakamarra Nelson cry: “Water is sacred. Water is life.”
Ned Kelly, whose father worked on Singleton Station, explains in the Cultural Values Statement the consequences of not looking after the land and its groundwater dependent sacred sites, ‘That Dreaming Tree is the Kwerrimpe [ceremonial women] digging lilies. If that tree is touched or injured, sickness will come and blindness for Aboriginal people and white people too. That lily wasn’t a traveller, it just belongs to this one place. People need to say no to this water or go blind.’ [3]
The Singleton Station water licence is nearly three times the size of the largest groundwater licence in NSW. Over the 30-year life of the lease the water removed will be twice the size of Sydney Harbour. This “nationally significant horticultural project” or “desert oasis” will grow watermelons and related water intensive fruits which may include “fodder”. Three years ago, “water mining” or the stealthy legal theft of artesian water burst into the national narrative as an ABC news story, ‘Sacred sites under threat’. [4]
After the granting of the water licence, Ali Curung residents listened to the victor’s watery story about a food bowl — over 70% for export. The analogy reportedly given by emissaries of the offshore entity Fortune Agribusiness Funds Management Pty Ltd, owners of Singleton Station and the water licence, was that they just wanted to take about “a teaspoon from a bucket” of water. The bucket being the artesian aquifer. [5] It is a big bucket. The oasis will be watered by 144 bores that will extract 40,000 megalitres a year. This bounty is free. [6]
The Centralian newspaper Land Rights News reported concerns, “Why do they need so much water? We are trying to conserve our water. This will leave native title holders with nothing. Look what happened in the Murray Darling.” (Land Rights News, April 2024.) The paper noted native title holders and their supporters feared the licence could lower the water table, damaging groundwater-dependent trees, springs, soaks, and swamps, and threaten cultural sites.
The approval of the water licence triggered a fight using legal and cultural means. The title ‘Water is precious in the desert’ signals a campaign initiated by poets and writers at Running Water Community Press led by Maureen Nampijinpa O’Keefe. Living right next door to the licensed area, Ali Curung residents wrote a Community Statement to say, “No”. They said, “That is too much water to be taken for the [future] generations” and began a Water Justice Project with video storytelling in partnership with the Arid Lands Environment Centre to protect artesian water. The legal story is still playing out in the Northern Territory Supreme Court as Native Title holders appeal Singleton Station’s 40,000 megalitre a year licence, representing a massive public subsidy. [7]
Groundwater depletion and chemical contamination is part of a wider catastrophe. Artists and contemporary exhibitions are increasingly focused on how water shapes thinking and hence existence. In Australia the revolutionary exhibition ‘Saltwater: Yirrkala Bark Paintings of Sea Country. Recognising Indigenous Sea Rights’ (Australian National Maritime Museum and Buku-Larrngay Mulka Centre, 1999), proved how ecological and historic knowledge flows into claims for ancestral rights. Freshwater artists have joined the fight for the life of mighty river systems like the Baarka/Darling River facing ruin by over-extraction. The exhibitions ‘Save Our Darling Baarka’ and ‘ngaratya (together, us group, all in it together)’, both opening at Broken Hill Art Gallery, subsequently travelled widely as the river’s crisis ambassadors. In the Central Desert an established tradition of artists mapping country and water and the cross-cultural pitfalls of the practice are documented in artist Kim Mahood’s acclaimed book ‘Position Doubtful’ (2016). ‘Living Water’ (curated by Dallas Gold) was the symbolic closing exhibition at long-running RAFT Artspace in Mparntwe/Alice Springs (2023). These profound examples position the concept ‘Living Water’ as a sacred element with many manifestations in art and First Law that grounds ontologies, relationships, and obligations.
Museum exhibitions such as ‘Naadohbii: To Draw Water’ (Museum of Victoria/Winnipeg Museum, 2022), point to the international ecological solidarity between Indigenous people central to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Article 11 asserts the right to practise and revitalise cultural traditions and customs. Such exhibitions draw on the power of truth-telling as a call to action. These international declarations have flown into campaigns to recognise Nature as a subject of rights argued as a relationship of interdependence and guardianship.[8] In a few cases, representatives of wild rivers have claimed legal personhood for waters, such as the Martuwarra Fitzroy River in Western Australia and in Melbourne the Yarra River Protection (Wilip-gin Birrarung murron) Act 2017, established the river and its corridor as a single living entity for protection. Aboriginal water interests and a lengthy history of calls for reform are pending jurisdictional adoption in the National Water Initiative (2024).
In contrast, the Northern Territory gives water away for free. Arid Lands Environment Centre in Mparntwe estimates the value of Singleton Station’s public subsidy is between $70 to $300 million. (Singleton Pastoral Lease is just one of the Territory’s 233 pastoral leases.) Because it is free, there is no money for monitoring by government and therefore no data. As only 5% of water in the Territory is subject to a water plan, there is no intelligible planning. The NT Planning Act (2008) does not mention landscape, social well-being and protecting Indigenous culture and tradition. The view is that the land is still terra nullius and available for exclusive occupation and development.
The coupling of “free” to “significant horticulture” also hides the potential to use groundwater for cotton (sneakily described as “fodder”) and fracking. Only fracking is covered by the Federal water trigger as per the National Water Initiative. Water plans nationally are meant to be legally binding and enforceable but in the Territory water plans only need to be “taken into account” when making water licence decisions. Negligence extends to considering Aboriginal Cultural Values “later”. This evasive process, and the risk of escalating damage, was called out in the influential documentary The Great Australian Water Grab for ABC TV’s legacy program 4-Corners (19 August 2024).
There are two major regional aquifers in the Western Davenport region with connectivity between the two basins. Due to a lack of information, the limits are vague and next to nothing is known about recharge. Clearly the draw-down of the water system is much wider than the area defined in a licence. Singleton’s agents hoped the image of a teaspoon would stick in people’s minds while conflating the difference between aquifer storage and recharge. In other words, the “teaspoon” and “bucket” analogy oversimplified complex groundwater matters and ignored the fact that removing water will lower groundwater measurements (called water drawdown). Arid Lands Environment Centre estimates water extracted could lower the water table by 50 metres in parts of the aquifer. [9]
The family of several artists were displaced by massacres over water at Barrow Creek and later the even more brutal police-led massacre of men, women, and children at Coniston Station in 1928 where over a hundred Warlpiri and Kaytetye people were murdered (estimates vary, and many say more). Once called the Warrabri settlement (after the Warumungu and Warlpiri residence) the community chose the Kaytetye name Ali Curung (Alekarenge) in 1978 after the land was granted under the Northern Territory’s Aboriginal Land Rights Act (1976). The community is an amalgamation of residents from other reserves and missions and a place where massacre survivors sheltered. Maureen O’Keefe and Valerie Nelson are family of survivors of Coniston massacre to the west and carry the terrible consequences of organised violence and displacement.
Drinking water quality and security is essential for viable Aboriginal communities and legislation for the right to safe drinking water is urgent especially where groundwater is the only available water source. Drinking water has already failed at the Warumungu Aboriginal Reserve in Tennant Creek and the Phillip Creek Mission further to the north, and Ali Curung’s water has to be treated. The Cultural Values Report identified a total of 40 sacred sites within the drawdown area, 29 within the immediate drawdown area and a further 11 within the impacted alluvial and sandplain area (Donaldson 2021). Without water, groundwater dependent ecosystems will die. Without water, Ali Curung residents will be refugees again: no water means no food and dying cultural sites.
Poet and publisher Maureen Nampijinpa O’Keefe says, ‘We have to speak on behalf of the insects and animals. The insects are working hard, they all have a job to do. You are not going to see all the ants marching along with protest signs, we have to do it for them. You look at the honey bee giving life to others by pollinating flowers. There will be nothing without the bees, and no honey for us. The bees need the gum flowers to make the honey. If our bloodwoods and other gums die, the bees will have no food and can’t make honey. We love our sugar bag. It makes me cry when I think of not having any more honey.’ [10]
Jo Holder
Director, The Cross Art Projects
Notes
- Maureen O’Keefe in Singleton Water Licence Aboriginal Cultural Values Assessment Preliminary Overview Report by Susan Dale Donaldson to the Central Land Council August 2021, page 10 in overview and page 83 in full Public Report.
- Maureen O’Keefe in Susan Dale Donaldson 2021, full Report, page 44. The full Singleton Water Licence Aboriginal Cultural Values Report.
- Ned Kelly in Susan Dale Donaldson 2021, full Report, op cit, page 31.
- ABC report August 2021
- The Central Land Council is the native title representative body for the southern half of the Territory. The CLC submitted 28 Recommendations to protect ecology and native title to the Productivity Commission’s Water Reform investigation, 2024.
- Fortune Agribusiness was granted a licence to extract up to 40 billion litres of water each year for 30 years (a staged 40,000-megalitre licence) and install 144 bores. The water licence stages up to the maximum amount of water over the first 8-years of the project. The immediate surrounding water drawdown areas are across Neutral Junction Pastoral Lease, Warrabri Aboriginal Land Trust and Iliyarne Aboriginal Land Trust. Information at FAQ on Singleton Station.
- Estimates by Arid Land Environment Centre, Singleton Station Fact Sheet.
- ICAMOS 2017 and UNESCO 2003 guard cultural values and ancient religions.
- Singleton Pastoral Lease and Neutral Junction Pastoral Lease are subject to native title determinations. A challenge to the 30-year groundwater extraction licence granted to Fortune Agribusiness by Native Title Holders’ Mpwerempwer Aboriginal Corporation, with the Central Land Council providing legal advice, and Arid Lands Environment Centre was heard in September 2022. On 31 January 2024, a decision by Justice Peter Barr, upheld the legality of the NT government process. Mpwerempwer Aboriginal Corporation voted to appeal to the full bench of the NT Supreme Court. The hearing took place in August 2024 and a decision is pending.
- Maureen O’Keefe in Susan Dale Donaldson 2021, full Report, op cit, page 76.
Martha Nakamarra Poulson, installation view.
Martha Nakamarra Poulson, Hunting Area, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 107 x 91 cm (#23-238)
Martha Nakamarra Poulson, My Family’s Country, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 80 cm (#23-262)
Martha Nakamarra Poulson, Up Around the Bushes, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 80 cm (#23-312)
Martha Nakamarra Poulson, North of Yuendumu 2023, acrylic on canvas, 61 x 61 cm (#23-189)
Martha Nakamarra Poulson, North of Yuendumu 2023, acrylic on canvas, 61 x 61 cm (#23-189)
Installation view (left to right): Warwick Japangardi Miller, Ned Jungarrayi Kelly, Valerie Nakamarra Nelson.
Ned Jungarrayi Kelly, Two Napaljarri, 2024, acrylic on linen, 107 x 107 cm, #24-330
Valerie Nakamarra Nelson, Cabbage Gum Bore Soakage Dreaming, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 107 x 107 cm, #24-397
L to R: Owen Japaljarri Miller, The Waterholes, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 90 x 45 cm, #24-59. Sarah Nabangardi Holmes, Sand Hill and the Floodways, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 56 x 91 cm, #23-43. Sarah Nabangardi Holmes, Floodways, 2024, acrylic on canvas, 61 x 61 cm, #24-237.
Links & Downloads
Ali Curung Community Statement – Stop Singleton Water Licence > Download as pdf
Arlpwe Art & Culture Centre
The Aboriginal word Arlpwe means “…this country all over, no waterhole, no rivers, only soakage and Spinifex country” (Mr Mick Waake).
Arlpwe Art and Culture Centre studio and gallery sits on Kaytetye Country in Alekarenge / Ali Curung, about 400 km north of Mparntwe / Alice Springs. It is Aboriginal owned not-for-profit, comprised of artists from the Kaytetye, Alyawarr, Warlpiri and Warumungu nations. Traditional Owners chose the name Arlpwe (pronounced ahl-boa) at its establishment in 2008. Arlpwe is a Kaytetye name for the country north of Alekarenge.
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Acknowledgements
The Cross Art Projects thanks all involved in creating this exhibition especially Maureen Nampitjimpa O’Keefe, Alex Vaughan and Harry Price at Arlpwe Art and Culture Centre. Thanks to the Central Land Council (Evie Rose and legal team) and Susan Dale Donaldson. At The Cross Art Projects thanks to Reiana Aramoane, Belle Blau, Simon Blau, Ace Bourke, Phillip Boulten.
Concept by Maureen Nampijinpa O’Keefe
We pay our respect to Gadigal people and all First Nations people globally and stand in solidarity.
