For Murrawah Johnson, the impacts of the climate crisis and the destruction of land to mine the fossil fuels that drive it are more than simple questions of atmospheric physics or environmental harm.
“What colonisation hasn’t already done, climate change will do in terms of finalising the assimilation process for First Nations people,” the 29-year-old Wirdi woman from Queensland says.
“[It is] totally destroying our ability to maintain a cultural identity, cultural existence and to be able to pass that on.”
Johnson is one of seven global winners of the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activism – described as the Nobel for the environment movement - announced at a ceremony in San Francisco.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
For Murrawah Johnson, the impacts of the climate crisis and the destruction of land to mine the fossil fuels that drive it are more than simple questions of atmospheric physics or environmental harm.
Johnson is one of seven global winners of the prestigious Goldman prize for environmental activism – described as the Nobel for the environment movement - announced at a ceremony in San Francisco.
Johnson is recognised for her role as a co-director of Youth Verdict – a group that won a landmark legal case in Queensland to block a major coalmine backed by the mining magnate and politician Clive Palmer.
Johnson was a youth spokesperson for the Wangan and Jagalingou family council that had fought unsuccessfully against the development of one of Australia’s most controversial resource projects, Adani’s Carmichael coalmine.
The fight to avert the climate crisis, she says, is a clear continuation of Indigenous Australians’ battle for recognition and the ownership of their land and retention of their culture, stories and totems.
As well as the direct physical impacts of resources projects – such as mines damaging sacred sites or sea level rise inundating burial grounds – Johnson says the effects of climate change on the fabric of Indigenous beliefs can be profound.
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