Kevin Buzzacott

Kevin Buzzacott (1946 – 29 November 2023), often referred to as Uncle Kev, was an Aboriginal Australian rights campaigner and elder of the Arabunna nation in northern South Australia.

[2] Over the years, he and his family resided in several places, including Alice Springs, Tarcoola, and Gawler (north of Adelaide).

[1] After moving to Alice Springs in the Northern Territory, in 1985, he was involved in a successful campaign to stop a dam being built on the Todd River.

He also helped establish the Arrernte Council there, and served as a regional councillor for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC).

In the court case in which Buzzacott was the appellant, he claimed that Downer's failure to pursue World Heritage listing amounted to genocide against his people.

[1] In 2002 Buzzacott reclaimed his tribe's emu and kangaroo totems used in the Australian coat of arms from outside Parliament House, Canberra.

In January 2006, Buzzacott gave a talk at RMIT in Melbourne where he argued that the Howard government should accept 43 West Papuan asylum seekers who had landed on Australian shores as refugees, using a canoe to paddle to Mapoon in Far North Queensland.

In February 2012, Buzzacott legally challenged the Commonwealth Environment Minister Tony Burke's environmental approval of the Olympic Dam mine expansion.

[26] In 2003 the Special Broadcasting Service and the Australian Film Commission Indigenous Unit produced a documentary called We of Little Voice in the "Australia By Numbers" series, which featured Buzzacott on a journey through northern South Australia to hear the stories of Aboriginal elders who had experienced the effects of the nuclear industry, from uranium mining to nuclear testing.

[27] In 1999 Buzzacott published a collection of poetry, which included the text of his keynote address at the "Global Survival and Indigenous Rights" conference in Melbourne in November 1998.