Murrandoo, the man
23.11.2002
Aboriginal leader Murrandoo Yanner relishes a good fight and has no plans to lose the battle at Pasminco's Century Mine. Tony Koch reports
MURRANDOO Yanner had his violent altercation at 15. He decked his woodwork teacher and was promptly expelled.
Later, as a middleweight, he won nine from 14 bouts.
Murrandoo Yanner is still fighting. Fighting against what he says is white man's intolerance and avarice.
Strikingly handsome and eloquent, the Mornington Island hell-raiser has emerged as the powerful voice of disgruntled Aborigines throughout the state.
Yanner is leading the protest against Pasminco's Century mine in far north Queensland, which he says has broken promises regarding the training of indigenous workers.
In November, 1991, Phillip Yanner of Burketown died.
He was a leader in his community, the father of six boys and two girls, and an elected representative on the National Aboriginal Conference -- the precursor to ATSIC.
One of those sons was in the second year of a journalism cadetship with the ABC. Jason Yanner was asked by his family to come home, that it was his lot to follow in the footsteps of his father and be a leader of his people.
He'd spent two years at university, been kicked out of two high schools (one for retaliating after the woodworking teacher slapped him). His finishing years were on Mornington Island -- one of the most dysfunctional indigenous communities in Australia where social problems including domestic violence, alcoholism, unemployment and hopelessness are rampant.
On returning home, Yanner junior realised that he had to be accepted spiritually as well as physically by his people -- particularly the elders.
With the respected elder ``Blue Bob'' he and several other youths ``went bush'' to go through the rites of initiation to become men.
This included, at age 21, being circumcised in the bush with a knife, and taking the traditional Aboriginal name -- Murrandoo.
``I'd actually like you to write that they had to use a chainsaw, not a knife, and that the foreskin was then used as a saddlebag for an elephant,'' he said yesterday.
``That should stir up a bit of interest among the girls.''
Murrandoo Yanner is married with five children -- boys Mangubabijarri, 8; Murrandoo, 6; Milmarja, 4; Maali, 2; and the latest, a daughter Mayarr, aged four months.
He has been with his New Guinean wife, Rachel, since a year before his father died, and the couple married in Burketown in 1998. Rachel, a quiet, strikingly attractive woman, met her future husband on Mornington Island when her parents moved there so her father could continue his ministry in the Uniting Church.
Murrandoo presents to the general public on short television grabs as today's Charlie Perkins, the angry young Aborigine prepared to make outlandish threats about armed uprisings and so on.
He has been thrown into the watchhouse on five occasions, and been charged with 58 different offences -- mostly for pub brawls and consequent assaults, and resisting arrest.
He has not been in prison, and is a moderate consumer of alcohol who is all too aware of what grog in excess does to his people.
The ``public'' face of Murrandoo Yanner is much different from that of the man in private. In non-confrontational circumstances one is presented with a handsome, fit young man, lean and hard, with black eyes that bore right into you. And a ready grin that warns he knows if you are about to try and have a lend of him.
He is about a week short of completing his one term as an ATSIC commissioner representing the Gulf region, and did not renominate for election because he felt the time spent on travel to meetings in Canberra cut too much into the opportunities available to work for his people ``here on the ground''.
What is really different about Yanner is that older people -- Aboriginal elders -- recognise him as a leader. That is unique in this culture, where age equates with experience and wisdom.
Yet it is to Yanner that the community turns in time of trouble. And in Burketown/Doomadgee/Mornington, that is often.
It was Yanner who took control two years ago when an aircraft flying Mornington elders crashed into the Gulf with the loss of all lives. He ordered the bar closed on the island until the search was completed (it was abandoned after 10 days), and he directed the search efforts.
It is Yanner who is phoned when there is a suicide and he is the one who is expected to provide solace for the distressed family and to handle the ``white authorities'' and the inevitable inquiry.
And it was Yanner who led the local indigenous people's efforts to get a decent go when the Century mine was opened just an hour's drive from Doomadgee, Australia's poorest and most depressed township.
Yanner earned a reputation as an intransigent in those negotiations, causing enormous problems for government and the mine developers with his insistence on a deal which gave something to the people whose land was yielding up the billions of dollars in mineral wealth.
But it is disappointment at the result that is causing the present troubles -- the sit-in by Yanner and some 150 other Aboriginal people at Century who he says have not honoured their deal -- mainly the lack of ``real'' jobs for local Aborigines.
``This protest is being led by Brad Foster and Alec Doomadgee, and it is a real luxury to just be invited to be a supporter, which I am proud to do,'' Yanner said this week from within the mine mess hall where the protesters were assembled.
``The mine management will tell you that there are 150 blacks employed at Century but the truth is that only 20 per cent or so are on full-time jobs,'' he said.
`THE rest are paid for by the taxpayer or the government -- doing TAFE courses that take between seven and 13 weeks.
``The real rort is that the provider of the course -- truck-driving or catering -- gets $10,000 for each person he puts through, and some have done five and six courses and still have not been offered a permanent job.
``So the trainer gets $60,000 for that, and the Murri boy or girl gets qualified in peeling spuds or reversing a tip-truck and we are expected to accept that we are getting a good deal.
``Look at what is going on here . . . 30 police, most of whom arrived with the mine management. They see their job as policing against us and we are the innocent party. They are on the side of this multinational company.
``The island murris are complaining about spillages from the mine because the James Cook University people are examining why dugong and turtles in the Gulf now have developed abnormalities. We can't eat them -- and the mine people don't want to talk about it.
``The Gregory river which runs by Century is contaminated and drying up for the first time in memory, and people are catching barramundi in little ponds where they are stranded because the river has gone.
``These are the issues and we want to talk properly about them, but we are being stalled by the company, and the Beattie Government and Tony McGrady just send in the cops to stir everything up.
``When did you last see 30 cops together if it was not their Christmas party? That's what's been flown in here to stand over a group of Aboriginal elders -- there's two men here in their 90s -- and a bunch of women and kids.
``And how pathetic is it to bring in SWAT team police with their black overalls and guns on hips. I wonder how many rapes and murders and real crimes are being committed and not investigated while these cowboys are wandering around feeling important, but concentrating only on the poor bad blackfella -- not the lilly-white multinational miners.
``I'll tell you now, we'll win this. We'll go when we are told, and the bullyboys will be flown back to Townsville and Brisbane, and then, a week later, we will come back and they will be flown in again and we will just keep it up until they get sick of the cost and we get a resolution that recognises that our people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.
``There are more public telephones here at Century than there are in the entire Gulf, and they have great bitumen roads, mobile telephone coverage and unlimited access to our water.
``The local Waanyi people have been treated dreadfully by these people, including the Beattie Government, and the stand they are taking is reasonable.
``We are sick of being pushed around and treated like we are still Jacky Jackys.''
