First Nations anti-coal mine activist Murrawah Johnson wins 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize

Murrawah Johnson’s actions to block Clive Palmer’s planned Waratah coal mine in Queensland have been recognised. (ABC News: Conor Byrne)

Murrawah Johnson — a 2024 recipient of one of the world’s most coveted environmental awards, the Goldman Prize — was born into a “legacy of resistance fighters”.

When the Wirdi woman was seven years old, her family was excluded from a parade at Nebo, a small central Queensland town south-west of Mackay.

So her dad wrangled their extended family onto a trailer and insisted on a traditional dance performance for the townsfolk.

“My father made it a point that we were there and we weren’t going to be erased from inclusion in such things on our own traditional lands,” she said.

Ms Johnson’s regional upbringing made her acutely aware of racial discrimination and the “colonial project”.

“Being the first Aboriginal family to move back to country [in Nebo] ruffled a lot of feathers in the town,” she said.

The start of something

When she was 19, Ms Johnson took her first step as a career campaigner.

She raised her hand at a community meeting about the then-proposed Adani Carmichael Coal Mine in the Galilee Basin.

“I said, ‘I have a question: Where’s the environmental impact statement here?'” she said.

“I was pretty much shut down by the lawyers.”

The mine went ahead and produced its first shipment of coal in 2021, but elders from the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council invited Ms Johnson to continue to use her voice on behalf of her people.

In 2019, as co-director of First Nations activist group Youth Verdict, she launched a historic and successful campaign against billionaire Clive Palmer’s proposed Galilee Coal Project in the Queensland Land Court.

The landmark decision against Waratah Coal was the first time a group had successfully argued that a coal mine would impact human rights by contributing to climate change.

“Our strength is storytelling, and this [was] an opportunity for First Nations people [to highlight] our experience of climate change, loss of culture, and destruction of country through the breaching of our human rights,” Ms Johnson said.

The group organised dozens of First Nations witnesses, and for the Queensland Land Court to travel on country throughout the state.

“[It was about] understanding as well, our witnesses, their cultural knowledge, and their knowledge of country is not just lay-witness evidence,” Ms Johnson said.

“It is expertise in and of itself, because it is thousands of generations of intergenerational knowledge.”

Lawyer Alison Rose was special counsel for the Waratah Coal v Youth Verdict case.

“It was the first time that cultural evidence about the impacts of climate change on country and culture has been heard on country,” Ms Rose said.

“That’s never happened before, as far as we know, anywhere in the world.”

But a fortnight out from the trial, while suffering from COVID-19, life took an unexpected turn for Ms Johnson when her first child made an early appearance in the world.

The 29-year-old can’t help but laugh now about the timing of her daughter Wulum Nandy’s unexpected arrival.

While knee-deep in work for the court case, she had promised to call her lawyer back promptly about some urgent business.

“I did not call her back in an hour,” Ms Johnson laughed.

In 2022, the Land Court of Queensland delivered the historic decision that the mining lease should be refused, which Queensland’s Department of Environment and Science upheld in April 2023.

Despite the win, Ms Johnson said the fight continued.

She fears climate change and “the colonial project” will be the final nail in the coffin for Indigenous people.

“It’s a little bit scary to think that climate change might be the thing that finalises … the assimilation process,” she said.

“Climate change and the negative impacts of it is permanently dispossessing us of country because that country just isn’t there anymore.”

The Goldman Prize

Ms Johnson’s endless work on these campaigns led her colleagues to nominate her for the highly prestigious international Goldman Environmental Prize.

The annual prize, founded by American philanthropists Richard and Rhonda Goldman in 1989, acknowledges grassroots environmentalists from the world’s six regions, and is worth more that $228,000 ($US150,000).

Ms Johnson has been honoured as the recipient in the Islands and Island Nations category.

The prize acknowledges her role in blocking the Waratah coal mine, which “would have accelerated climate change in Queensland, destroyed the nearly 20,000-acre (8,000 hectares) Bimblebox Nature Refuge, and added 1.58 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere over its lifetime”.

It is the seventh time in the prize’s 35-year history that an award has come to Australia.

Speaking from Far North Queensland, Ms Johnson expressed gratitude to those who nominated her.

“I couldn’t believe it … this is an amazing opportunity to give more of a platform to the work that we’ve done,” she said.

With baby number two’s arrival imminent Ms Johnson will not be attending the award ceremony, but said she does plan to take some time away from the coal face of activism.

But she is already considering her next steps.

“I have so many ideas for new litigation,” she said.

“I’m taking my time to consider how I’m going to be able to make the most of this opportunity with the award and really continue to invest in this work, my own community, people and family.”

The legacy of her ancestors is never far from her mind.

“The fact that First Nations people in Australia still exist, despite the best efforts of the colonial frontier, is a testament in itself to the strength of our old people and our ancestors,” she said.

And Ms Johnson also wants to set an example for her children.

“Not to put too much pressure on them, but they’re going to inherit this as well and … I want them to be able to be proud of their mum,” she said.