They're fighting an uphill battle.
Senior Martu artists in Parnngurr in the east Pilbara region of Western Australia are taking on the mining giants.
They painted 'Kalyu' to help raise funds for their campaign.
It depicts the waterways or Kalyu over the proposed Kintyre uranium mine.
"Kalyu tells the story about water that's on the surface, which can be waterholes, springs, rockholes soaks that you can dig up and drink but also see it visibly," says one artist’s grandson, Curtis Taylor.
"Forever that uranium belongs to that place, underground."
"But it's poison, when you dig it up - when it gets exposed."
"We are carrying the land, we are that close," his grandfather Wokka Taylor said.
And the campaign has caught worldwide attention.
Avante-guard British musician Antony Hegarty is joining the campaign, moved by the Martu people’s connection to nature.
"They have an almost unbroken connection to 60,000 years of land stewardship and stepping gently and leaving no trace.
"They're environmental experts and they're spiritual experts and they have a lot to teach us," he said.
"Forever that uranium belongs to that place, underground. But it's poison, when you dig it up."
Backing a push to stop Canadian Mining giant Cameco, along with Japanese owned Mitsubishi from going ahead with the uranium mine.
Concerned environmentalists are also joining the fight.
"From an environmental perspective we're deeply concerned about both site-specific impacts, long term contamination and what happens to this product when it goes overseas,” said Dave Sweeney from the Australian Conservation Foundation.
Rio Tinto sold the resource to the overseas consortium in 2008 for almost half a billion dollars.
The Western Deserts Lands Aborignal Corporation is under investigation after it accepted $A21 million from the mining company before it was sold.
That horrified the Martu elders, who are continuing their fight, despite the mine being given conditional approval by state and federal governments.
The painting hangs on the wall of Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art and print sale proceeds are going towards their campaign.
Cameco said in a statement it is confident the Kintyre project can be safely constructed, operated and decommissioned in a way which maintains the ecological functions and environmental values in the area.
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