A powerful documentary directed by Pip Starr that chronicles one of Australia’s most significant and successful Indigenous land rights and environmental mobilizations: the opposition of the Mirrar people and their allies to the proposed Jabiluka mine in the heart of Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory. The mine would have threatened sacred land, major rock art sites, and the ecosystem of a World Heritage Area.

The film follows the 1998 blockade in which over 5,000 people converged on Mirrar country to stop the mine’s development. It features the organising tactics of traditional owners, activists, and supporters: mass non-violent direct action camps, strategic media engagement, global solidarity networks, legal challenges, alliances across Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, and sustained pressure on governments and corporations. It shows how the Mirrar combined cultural sovereignty with environmental justice, refusing to accept development without consent and turning a remote Australian landscape into a global movement moment.

Update on the campaign and mine:

• In 2024, the Australian government announced that mining would never proceed at Jabiluka, with plans to expand Kakadu National Park to permanently protect the area.
• The mine lease was not renewed, and Mirrar traditional owners secured a legal position that affirms their right of veto over future development of the site.
• Ongoing work remains: rehabilitation and care of the land, monitoring of mining-adjacent sites like the neighbouring Ranger uranium mine, and safeguarding heritage and ecosystems for future generations.

Filmed with depth and dignity, Fight for Country shows how Indigenous leadership, mass mobilisation and persistence can protect land, culture and life — turning what seemed inevitable into a victory for sovereignty and ecological justice.