Eulogy by Marcia Langton

It’s good to be amongst Lyndon’s friends. I met Lyndon again and Sherinda and Jasminda when my daughter and Jasminda went to school for some time.

It’s not that I knew Lyndon well but he was such an important person, in my life, because he was such an intelligent person who made it possible to translate what Aboriginal people were concerned about, their grievances, into powerful campaigns and national statements that grabbed the attention of hundreds of thousands of people.
 
Philip mentioned his ability to organise tours of Aboriginal spokespeople from communities up north. It’s difficult now to imagine how important those events were. So, I can remember being at one such event here in Melbourne where Lyndon had invited the people from Marpoon who been burnt out of their community by the police, to speak with the then newly formed North Queensland Land Council, and this was at a time when only crazy brave people associated with Aboriginal people and he was certainly that. So there was an event organised in a big hall and Mick and others spoke.

And captured people’s hearts with stories about what happened in those communities far away from the southern cities.
 
His work on the uranium mines in the NT, also turned out to be critically important to Indigenous people. As Philip explained he had obtained some documents which exposed the unethical corporate practices of companies involved. And he organised with me a series of events against CRA, which later became Rio Tinto, and those events turned into a massive campaign against uranium mining on Aboriginal land.
 
So far away again from the southern population, the companies were opening up mines on aboriginal lands in the most appalling circumstances.
 
And Lyndon did the research, very thorough research, and was able to understand what those of us involved didn’t understand about corporate practices, environmental standards and the inner workings of corporations and he turned mountains of information into genius campaign strategies and this all culminated in possibly the biggest demonstration I have ever seen in my life.
  
Hundreds of thousands of people, in Melbourne, marching against Uranium mining and hundreds of thousands of people truly understanding the injustice that was caused by the mining.

So, I got to know how Lyndon’s mind worked, I can’t explain it, he was able to absorb huge amounts of information and understand it very quickly and translate it into common sense statements.

So he was an inspirational person for his ability to do that. He was the most intelligent activist of that time and also I think the kindest and the most fun for sure.
 
Those of us who got to know him, and he did get to know most of the Aboriginal people out on the frontiers who were creating the Aboriginal movement at that time, had enormous respect for him and people would come down from the North and they’d see the circumstances on which the activists worked and lived. And they were shocked to see these white people were so poor. It gave the people even more respect for him. They were so poor, even poorer than some of the aboriginal people and yet they were prepared to work very long hours every day and do extraordinary things. He earned the respect of Aboriginal Australia and made a contribution that was lasting.
 
Not many people realized that those campaigns against mining on Aboriginal land and against the mining companies radically change the culture of those companies. So that they had to become socially responsible and they had to do something more than public relations exercises about what was happening to Aboriginal people.
 
I had the opportunity to say this to him just a little while ago and he remembered with absolute clarity the details of much of that campaign and I was amazed that a person who was so sick could remember such minutiae from those times. And I had the opportunity to say to him that those campaigns led to mining companies having to deal with much more reasonable way with Aboriginal people and it’s led to over 400 grievances against mining companies and the indigenous people of Australia. 
So he changed the culture of an entire industry. I wanted to say that especially to him, as I didn’t want to miss out on that opportunity to tell him.

My heart goes out to Sherinda and Jasminda, and his many friends and family.

It was such a pleasure to have known him and to have worked with him and to participate in those wildly exciting events, which I’m sure wouldn’t have happened without him.