Harsh realities in land of the Dreamtime

An Aboriginal dancer performs in the Woggan-ma-gule (meeting of the waters) Morning Ceremony on the traditional sacred land of the Gadigal people as part of Australia Day celebrations in Sydney, Jan. 26, 2008. (Mick Tsikas/Reuters)

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ARNHEM LAND, Australia — In the lush, green grasslands of northeast Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory, we come across the equivalent of a bald patch.

The land resembles an open African savanna more than the dense tropical expanses typical of this remote part of Australia.

I am with a local indigenous woman, Roslyn, who surveys the broken earth flattened by buffalo and says that as a child she remembers a wild and verdant landscape with many species of plants and waterlilies.

The waterlilies are gone. The buffalo, introduced from Indonesia, have trampled over the earth — destroyed grasslands and flattened flowers.

When I ask Roslyn how it feels to see the land transformed, her face creases, she puts her hand against her heart and shakes her head. “It is very painful,” she says. Across the river, a buffalo hunt is in progress. Men stalk them with spear guns.

The buffalo are seen as a pest and ruinous to the environment, and hunting is encouraged. Meanwhile the people living on the nearby Arafura Swamp have noticed areas of Australian native plant melaleuca die, which they suspect is a result of saltwater intrusion into the wetlands.

Environmental change is posing the most significant threat to the traditional Aboriginal way of life since English settlement of Australia more than 200 years ago.

Climate change, mining and the introduction of species such as the buffalo have caused new problems for Aborigines. All threaten to weaken the traditional, strong ties some Aboriginal people have with their ancestral lands.

Many Aboriginal tribal groups with a significant attachment to the land, who still maintain a traditional hunter/gatherer lifestyle, are finding environmental forces are limiting food stock, increasing disease, harming sacred sites and making life on the land unsustainable. These challenges are not all new.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/environment/090804/new-threat-australias-aborigines