Yami Lester OAM

A Yankunytjatjara man, Yami Lester OAM (1941–2017) was born at Walyatjata in the north of South Australia. As a youth he worked as a stockman, until he went blind after contracting the eye disease trachoma as a result of fallout from the nuclear bomb tests conducted by the British at Maralinga in the 1950s. He joined the Aboriginal Advancement League after moving to Adelaide. He later worked as a court interpreter in Alice Springs and served with the Institute of Aboriginal Development and the Pitjantjatjara Land Council. Along with the efforts of others, his campaign on behalf of Maralinga's Indigenous victims was instrumental in bringing about the 1984 McClelland Royal Commission, which recommended group compensation for Maralinga's Tjarutja people and a clean-up of uranium-contaminated lands. Lester was also involved in the twenty-year fight to return Uluru to its traditional owners, the Anangu people. When Governor General Sir Ninian Stephen handed over the title deeds to the Anangu on 26 October 1985, Lester, the first chairman of the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Board of Management, addressed the crowd who gathered for the ceremony. Lester's life is recounted in the autobiography Yami – shortlisted for the 1993 NSW Premier's Prize – and also inspired Paul Kelly's 1987 song 'Maralinga (Rainy Land)'.