Sickness Country

"As for nuclear power, the indigenous people in the NT grew up with knowledge about the “sickness country” and that they had a responsibility to ensure it was not disturbed. We would do well to listen to them."
  
That the Jawoyn had some gnostic sense of epidemiological folk wisdom which picked up the presence of environmental uranium is something you often hear repeated.

More likely antinuclear campainers impute "sickness knowledge" to Indigenous people, if it happens to coincide with Uranium ore deposit and concomitant political imperative. Otherwise the myriad taboos and proscriptions transmogrify into "spiritual heritage".

http://sicknesscountry.blogspot.com.au/

The blog author Director of the Canadian chapter of the International Medical Geology Association makes no claim of causality just coincidence, makes some chiding remarks about consumerism and spruiking up the creation of Kakadu National Park .

 http://www.smh.com.au/business/spirit-of-bula-haunts-a-shattered-nation-20110318-1c0mq.html
  
"If that wasn't bad enough, the Jawoyn people's mythical Bula, transplanted thousands of kilometres from home, began to cast a pall over those living in the shadow of nuclear power reactors at Fukushima and infected the spirit of global financial markets." is not particularly florid compared with the tone of the rest of this tract of bilge. 

KABOOM goes the economy, off goes the Gieger counter, that spotty dog has tipped over the rubbish bin - the whole catastrophe, ergo, there goes Bula again and the wise Jarwoyn stand back shaking their heads at the folly of the gubba.  

However, would we know if Bula were to go ahead and prototype a fast breeder reactor as part of a strategy to develop a fuel cycle which can utilize Thorium? Who are we to fathom the ways of Bula? Ekeing a living as a hunter gathering is not some noble savage, " Living in harmony with Nature". It would be a bloody tough life, more like "Dying in harmony with Nature". For us as comfortable middle class Westerners to ventriloquise the Jawoyn with own political agenda is patronizing in the extreme.  

This whole "sickness country" meme needs to be hauled into the light of day to cop a healthy tan.