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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-30/santos-tiwi-islands-barossa-traditional-owners-legal-fight/104025414>
'The fight to stop climate change is slowly creeping from the environmental
front lines of land and sea to the hallowed halls of Australia's courtrooms.
Where once protests and stunts were the mainstays of climate action, it's now
more likely to involve gavels and wigs — and one side usually has much deeper
pockets than the other.
With Australia increasingly recognising Indigenous land claims, now the climate
battle often involves First Nations people.
Armed with relatively meagre resources, they're usually represented by legal
charities and supported by philanthropists — and facing off with
multi-billion-dollar fossil fuel companies or governments.
The climate movement appears to be driving change, among other consequences,
judgements have forced fossil fuel projects to consult more with traditional
owners.
According to Tiwi Islander Antonia Burke, a First Nations woman, it gives First
Nations people new power after centuries of oppression.
But now multinational oil and gas giant Santos is hitting the climate movement
where it hurts — and some experts say it could change the face of Australia's
democracy.
Santos is now pursuing the charities that cheered on a First Nations group in a
failed action earlier this year, looking to recover its own legal costs.
These charities were not parties to the case, nor were they witnesses in court.
They didn't indemnify the parties or direct the litigation.
For some of those groups, the only available evidence of their involvement in
the case comes down to tangentially-linked social media posts and celebratory
remarks in their annual reports.
The way Ms Burke sees it, the removal of support networks is just a different
form of oppression for First Nations people.
"If you remove all of our resources, that leaves us with nothing, right?"'
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
