Shane Mortimer
| Shane Mortimer | |
|---|---|
| Born |
24 December 1955 Belmore, New South Wales, Australia |
| Occupation | Ngambri elder, filmmaker and activist |
| Parent(s) | Jim and Lesley Mortimer |
| Website | Shane Mortimer on Twitter |
Shane Mortimer (born 24 December 1955) is a Ngambri man with a strong connection to the local Canberra region.
Mortimer was born in Belmore, Sydney in 1955 to parents Lesley and Jim Mortimer. Mortimer lived unaware of his aboriginality until 1989, when he discovered a maternal line going back to Ngambri woman Ju Nin Mingo, daughter of James Ainslie. His grandmother Adelaide McClelland had been taken from her mother Florence Ellen Lowe at the Brungle Mission, prior to the First World War. She was one of the thousands of stolen Aboriginal children to be forcibly removed from their parents under legislation that operated in Australia between 1910 and 1970.
Mortimer has been living in the Canberra area since the early 1990s. In 2009–10 he co-produced his first feature film, Vulnerable, and he is currently working on a 13-part documentary series on native Australian grasslands. He is also Chairman of the Ag-Arts Residency Kenmore Limited.
Mortimer is an active campaigner against wind farms. He claims that biomass and wind farms are destroying wildlife habitats, adversely impacting on Indigenous communities and do not produce any environmental benefit. He is also concerned the wind power industry has ignored Native Title rights. Mortimer also believes wind farms in the vicinity of Lake George will diminish the fertility of sheep and cattle grazing in the area.
He has supported protests against construction of Cullerin Range Wind Farm, Capital Wind Farm, Crookwell Wind Farm and Gullen Range Wind Farm.
Mortimer lobbied Brendan Nelson, Director of the Australian War Memorial, on the Memorial's refusal to depict Australian frontier wars.
Mortimer argues that, for a sustainable future, native grasslands must be left to regenerate in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). In 2012 he told the National Indigenous Times that 10 per cent regeneration of the degraded indigenous grasslands in Australia would take more carbon out of the world's atmosphere than has been put there since the industrial revolution.
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Wikipedia