Noonkanbah: Whose Land, Whose Law
A history of the seminal land rights dispute at Noonkanbah in 1979-80.
Publisher: Ligature Untapped
Print on Demand Paperback + E-book: $39.99
E-book: $11.99
Published: Ligature E-Book 2021 , Print on Demand Paperback, 2022, PP 552
ISBN 9781761281983
(Originally published by Fremantle Press in 1989)
In 1976 an Aboriginal community returned to Noonkanbah Station in Australia’s far north-west as the new owners. But their return coincided with an exploration boom that saw their land overrun by miners. Rather than accept this invasion, the people decided to fight for their land.
Their struggle became focussed around the defence of a particular piece of sacred ground against a proposed wild cat oil well. And so began an extraordinary battle involving the Noonkanbah people, the miners and the Western Australian Government. Aboriginal groups from around Australia, the trade union movement and the Australian Government, and even the United Nations were drawn into the dispute as it escalated.
The climax to the struggle was a national event, seen on television screens and recorded in headlines across Australia. A juggernaut convoy of trucks loaded with drilling equipment, running a gauntlet of union pickets, descending on Noonkanbah as scores of police break up a blockade by a small group of Indigenous people sitting in a river bed, singing for their country. Noonkanbah was a real-life drama that became a landmark in the modern history of Indigenous Australia.
Awards
Winner, National Book Council Banjo Award for Non-Fiction, 1990 (pictured)
Winner, Human Rights Australia Literature Award, 1989 (pictured)
Special Award, Western Australia Week Literary Awards, 1990
Two of the awards the book won, as well as the original cover from 1989
From the author
My first book, done in collaboration with photographer Michael Gallagher, written ten years after the events. It was a pleasure and a privilege to know and to work for the wise and courageous elders of Noonkanbah.
It remains an important Australian story. After many years out of print, I was thrilled almost beyond words when it got a guernsey in the Untapped project to reissue classic Australian works, and that it is now available again through Ligature Press.
Reviews
“Noonkanbah is an immensely important, immensely readable book. Steve Hawke’s immaculate prose … documents an event witnessed on national television screens in 1980 … The account enthralls as the finest novels and the classical tragedies do, partly because of Hawke’s translucent writing, and partly because of the poetry of the transcribed voices of Aboriginal elders as they try to convey to courts, government officials, and rig managers their sacramental view of their earth.”
“What makes Steve Hawke’s superbly documented and finely written account of this shameful dispute more than just another piece of bicentennial breast-beating is his ability to get, not only to the reasons behind the conflict, but to the reasons behind those reasons … As Australia reflected on Noonkanbah, it became clear that the same situation must never be allowed to happen again. Noonkanbah was a defeat for the Aboriginals, but as with so many other defeats, they survived and regrouped. Steve Hawke’s brilliant and moving description of the Noonkanbah tragedy provides a much needed insight into the spirit behind that survival.”