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Song for the Rainbow Serpent

McArthur River, Australia - November 5, 2007 - TRT: 02:42

Posted by: Quinn Costello

Three percent of the world’s zinc lies beneath the serpentine riverbed of northern Australia’s McArthur River — and the zinc will soon be headed to China’s steel mills. For Aboriginal Australians, the entire river is respected as the Dreamtime pathway of the Rainbow Serpent, one of the most important of the ancestor spirits who formed the land and still enforces the law. Xstrata Zinc is starting to excavate an open pit mine at McArthur River and is building a 5.5 kilometer diversion channel to redirect water around the deep hole the mining company is digging. When we tried to enter the area with traditional owner Harry Lanson, the mining company threatened to arrest us for trespassing and ordered us to leave. As Harry Lanson asserted his right to visit the land he was born on, to show us his sacred sites, a helicopter landed within 100 feet of our “mob” — which included more than a dozen children. We retreated back down the road to the river. Even after the humiliation and stress, the Aboriginal women proceeded with the dance they had come to do next to the river, to honor the female form of the Rainbow Serpent, which in English they refer to as a “mermaid.”

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