This was published 3 years ago
'Fire in the belly': Indigenous-led environment group powers up
By Miki Perkins
On Bundjalung Country in northern NSW there's a beautiful spot where the creek flows into the ocean, a place where Amelia Telford's family used to gather to mark important occasions like Christmas Day and funerals.
Ms Telford remembers the shock she felt as a teenager when her family drove past one day and saw the area had been affected by a tidal surge fuelled by sea levels. "The park I used to ride my scooter around had been washed away into the ocean. That's the moment when I thought whoa, if I'm seeing these changes now, imagine what my elders have seen and what's to come."
Amelia Telford is launching Seed Mob, the first Indigenous-led environment organisation in Australia. Credit: Jason South
Ms Telford, a Bundjalung and South Sea Islander woman, is the national director of Seed Mob, which launched today as the first Indigenous-led environment organisation in Australia.
It's a long-overdue initiative to place Aboriginal people directly in the centre of Australia's response to climate change, Ms Telford said. The youth-based organisation has 250 Indigenous volunteers, aged 15 to 35, who live across the continent, from the Kimberly region in Western Australia to the islands of Torres Strait.
Members campaign on issues like fracking, climate change and protecting land rights. "We have a right and a responsibility to look after our country, as our people have done for generations," Ms Telford said. "We are facing a climate crisis and our communities are the frontlines."
Anti-fracking Seed Mob members at Minyerri, in the Northern Territory.
"What gives me hope is we have fire in our belly from our ancestors, and we have so much strength and resilience. Our communities know how to lead and we know what to do when the shit hits the fan."
Until now, Seed Mob operated as a program of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Australia’s largest youth-run organisation. It started in 2014 after 50 young Aboriginal people from all over Australia came together at a summit and decided the climate movement was not a space where Aboriginal people felt supported, and they wanted self-determination.
Indigenous peoples aournd the world are among the first to face the direct consequences of climate change because of their close relationship with the environment and its resources, and their political and economic marginalisation, according to the United Nations.
Seed Mob members at a climate change rally.
In Australia, eight Torres Strait Islanders are fighting the Australian Government's attempt to have a landmark human rights complaint dismissed by the United Nations. Their claim, lodged in May last year, accused the Commonwealth of breaching their rights to culture by failing to properly address climate change.
When the Seed Mob program was first launched in 2014, there was a groundswell of young Indigenous people attracted to its ethos and wanting to be involved, Ms Telford said. Its backers are expecting similar growth in interest as it transforms into a stand-alone organisation and have sought to raise money via a crowd-funding campaign.
Torres Strait Islander woman and Seed Mob community organiser Tishiko King said her community had looked after the land sustainably for over 60,000 years.
"Now, more than ever, Indigenous leadership is critical in addressing the climate crisis and building strong, sustainable and resilient communities," she said.