YEELIRRIE MEANS TO DIE
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This is a recording of Reggie Johnson from Kalgoorlie in 1983.

Yeelirrie is most
famous rock
between
from 200, 300 km from Kalgoorlie
go north
towards Meekatharra

The mining company
had already dug up 20 feet deep
and got the 20,000 tonnes of uranium
and left a big hole there

Gets filled up
and the water start to run everywhere
and kill all
the life
the bush life
the kangaroos emus and etcetera

And it's a very poison
I believe Yeelirrie means to die
the moment you unearth from Yeelirrie
the uranium
which is a very destructive
element
that mans could not handle

They just says I believe
what the electicity
and to make bombs

The very bomb
the earth that they get form Yeelirrie
will be very destructive for our people
who living out in the desert

The people that gotta work on that mine
they gonna die

It gonna be in their childrens children
we will all die through this destructive
element
and our lives
will be finish

I think it's a foolish of the government
to give this decision on
the Aboriginal people are real afraid
for this destructive
element
which is gonna be mined

So don't let the mining companies go in
what are they gonna do with the waste
I think it's foolish

I'm against
the Aboriginal people are all against
they afraid

If they have to go down and take one rock away
I believe when you unearth any rock from there
it's just like unearthing a dead body from the grave
and you'll kill them in the long running

In the Dreamtime
is handed down and heard in the Dreamtime
that this place
Yeelirrie
when the 2 great
supernatural men came to that place
in the early history of mankind

And they saw some people there
and the people been interfering with them rocks
and they became dead stones
and they became statues
and they became turn into rocks

So the Dreamtime story
what the Aboriginal told us
is very true

And a very destructive
mineral
the uranium

The very thing that the man gonna dig out
gonna be very destructive
to kill his own race out

I saw in the picture
about Harry Truman
when the time
when the Japanese bombing in those times
it was cruel
and this destructive
element
which is known as Yeelirrie
to die
when men muck around with them things

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