Eileen Wani Wingfield is an Aboriginal elder from

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. She was jointly awarded the

Goldman Environmental Prize The Goldman Environmental Prize is a prize awarded annually to grassroots environmental activists. History Awardees are named from each of the world's six geographic regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, an ...

in 2003Goldman Environmental Prize
''Eileen Wani Wingfield''
(Retrieved 2 December 2007) with

Eileen Kampakuta Brown Eileen Kampakuta Brown (born 1 January 1938) is an Aboriginal elder from Australia. She was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2003Goldman Environmental Prize''Eileen Kampakuta Brown'' (Retrieved on 2 December 2007) together with Ei ...

, for efforts to stop the plans for

nuclear waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. It is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear ...

dump in Australia's wild

desert A desert is a landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions create unique biomes and ecosystems. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About one-third of the la ...

land, and for protection of their land and culture. Wingfield (with other elder women) formed the '' Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta'',

Coober Pedy Coober Pedy () is a town in northern South Australia, north of Adelaide on the Stuart Highway. The town is sometimes referred to as the "opal capital of the world" because of the quantity of precious opals that are mined there. A blower truck ...

Women's Council, in 1995.

Early life

As a young woman Eileen Wani Wingfield mustered cattle and sheep with her father and sister. During this time she had to hide from the authorities, who were removing biracial children from their families and sending them to institutions to be trained for a life of servitude. She married and had her own children, but they were found and taken by the authorities.

Protest against Nuclear Tests

In the 1950s and 1960s, a dozen full-scale nuclear tests were conducted in the southern Australian deserts by the British military. The Aboriginal inhabitants were told nothing of these tests in the aftermath of which many old people died prematurely, many people went blind, suffered radiation sickness or developed cancer. It was not until decades later that the true cause of the illnesses was understood. In the early 1990s the Australian government suggested building a radioactive waste dump near Woomera in South Australia, to store waste from the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor in Sydney and from nuclear facilities around the world. Aboriginal communities feared further poisoning of their land, water and health. When she moved to Cooper Pedy, Eileen Wani Wingfield joined Eileen Kampakuta Brown in the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta or the Cooper Pedy Women's Council, with five other senior women. Eileen Wani Wingfield was honored along with

for her efforts in April, 2003.

Mission

They travel round Australia speaking against the project and working at keeping their culture alive. The group's declaration of opposition makes the following comments: 'It's from our grandmothers and our grandfathers that we've learned about the land. This learning isn't written on paper as the whitefellas knowledge is. We carry it in our heads and we're talking from our hearts, for the land.' In 2000 she and

published ''Down the Hole,'' a children's book based on their own childhood experiences of hiding from the authorities.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wingfield, Eileen Wani Australian environmentalists Australian women environmentalists Australian Indigenous rights activists Australian women human rights activists Living people Australian anti-uranium activists Year of birth missing (living people) Goldman Environmental Prize awardees