Eileen Wani Wingfield is an Aboriginal

Indigenous Australians

Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....

 elder from Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. She was jointly awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize

Goldman Environmental Prize

The Goldman Environmental Prize is a prize awarded annually to grassroots environmental activists, one from each of the world's six geographic regions: Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. The prize includes a no-strings-attached award of...

 in 2003 with Eileen Kampakuta Brown

Eileen Kampakuta Brown

Eileen Kampakuta Brown is an Aboriginal elder from Australia. She was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2003 together with Eileen Wani Wingfield, for efforts to stop governmental plans for nuclear waste dump in Australia's wild desert land, and for protection of their land and...

, for efforts to stop the plans for nuclear waste

Radioactive waste

Radioactive wastes are wastes that contain radioactive material. Radioactive wastes are usually by-products of nuclear power generation and other applications of nuclear fission or nuclear technology, such as research and medicine...

 dump in Australia's wild desert

Desert

A desert is a landscape or region that receives an extremely low amount of precipitation, less than enough to support growth of most plants. Most deserts have an average annual precipitation of less than...

 land, and for protection of their land and culture.

Wingfield (with other elder women) formed the Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta

Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta

The Kupa Piti Kungka Tjuta is a council of Senior Aboriginal Women from Coober Pedy, South Australia. They protest against Government plans to dump radioactive waste dump in their land, and for protection of their land and culture....

, Cooper Pedy Women's Council, in 1995.

Early life

As a young woman Eileen Wani Wingfield mustered cattle and sheep with her father and sister, but later on her own children were taken by the authorities, who were kidnapping bi-racial children and training them for a life of servitude.

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 Pedi, 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 Eileen Kampakuta Brown

Eileen Kampakuta Brown

Eileen Kampakuta Brown is an Aboriginal elder from Australia. She was awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2003 together with Eileen Wani Wingfield, for efforts to stop governmental plans for nuclear waste dump in Australia's wild desert land, and for protection of their land and...

for his 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.'