Home
Podcasts
How Raising the Warragamba Dam Wall Would Erase Indigenous Heritage

Episode:
13
How Raising the Warragamba Dam Wall Would Erase Indigenous Heritage

Guests:
Kazan Brown, Gundungurra Elder

Gundungurra Elder Kazan Brown speaks with quiet urgency about what raising the Warragamba Dam wall by up to 17 metres would mean for her people. The proposal threatens 5700 hectares of UNESCO World Heritage listed national park and 1541 cultural sites in the Burragorang Valley, some thousands of years old. For a people who survived the first dispossession when the valley was flooded in the 1940s, this is a conversation about what it means to lose Country twice.

Show Notes

This podcast episode continues the discussion on the proposal to raise the Warragamba Dam wall in Western Sydney by up to 17 metres. We talk with special guest Kazan Brown, a Gundungurra elder from the region, who is incredibly concerned that if the proposal goes ahead it will endanger 5700 hectares of UNESCO World Heritage-listed national park and flood 1541 cultural sites of the Gundungarra people in the Burragorang valley, some dating back thousands of years. The flooding of the valley in the 1940s completed the first cycle of dispossession from land, traditional economies and ceremony. Now, the Gundungurra people, who had lived in the Burragorang valley for 50,000 years, could lose any remaining cultural sites.

‍

Resources:

What are we doing about this proposal?

The ARRC have taken a few steps to raise our concerns and take action to prevent the raising of the Warragamba Dam wall:

  • We have written a letter to Minister Rob Stokes asking that the exhibition period for the Environmental Impact Statement be extended, as it is large document with not enough time for review.
  • We are submitting EIS submissions, as an organisation and as individual team members.
  • We have published an article further detailing the impact the raised wall is likely to have on the residents of Western Sydney, the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area, including hundreds of Aboriginal sites and places of cultural significance, and our threatened native biodiversity. If you find this article helpful, we recommend you share it with your networks.
  • We have released another podcast episode with the Honourable Bob Debus, former Attorney-General, Minister for the Environment, Minister for the Arts for the Blue Mountains electorate and Chairperson for the Colong Foundation For Wilderness. In it, we discuss the flawed rationale behind this proposal, and encourage you to have a listen and have your say by writing a submission against the EIS.
Gundungurra traditional owners Kazan Brown (right) and her daughter Taylor Clarke, with a scar tree on land that would be inundated by floodwater at Burnt Flat if the Warragamba Dam wall were raised. Photo credit: Wolter Peeters, SMH.