The temporality of community sentiment on the Australian continent: mineral extraction, waste storage and Indigenous protest writing

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Australian federal government has recently recommenced a previously paused process to select a site for a national nuclear waste storage facility despite significant opposition from Australian Indigenous communities and others. This article considers what some might understand as a contemporary issue by examining its relationship to previous events. It emphasizes how Western linear temporality facilitates disregard for negative community sentiment and the consigning of previous wrongs to the past. In contrast, Indigenous temporalities – where time is understood as immanent and space and time intermingled – emphasize positive relationships and require the remediation of past wrongs to support just futures. Thus, historical nuclear weapons testing in Australia, current plans for waste storage, and historical and ongoing ecological and social consequences of resource extraction are all related, reflecting the violence of British colonization and contemporary settler colonial governance. Using a literary studies approach, this article examines historically significant moments of Indigenous Australian protest writing regarding extractive industries, nuclear waste storage, and settler colonial governance, to show that some Indigenous communities in Australia have clearly communicated their negative sentiments. It argues for equitable relationships as a first step towards the restitution of past wrongs and the creation of just futures.