Australian Mining Company Blew Up Ancient Indigenous Gorge Rock Shelters for Profit

By Calla Wahlquist and Lorena Allam, Guardian UK

04 August 20

Mining company tells Senate inquiry it proceeded with detonation despite knowing one of the shelters was of ‘the highest archaeological significance in Australia’

io Tinto could have chosen one of three options to expand its iron ore mine that would not have damaged a 46,000-year-old highly significant Aboriginal heritage site in Juukan Gorge, but chose a fourth option that did damage the rock shelters “in order to access higher volumes of high-grade ore”.

In a submission to a Senate inquiry on the destruction of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters, Rio Tinto acknowledged that “various opportunities were missed to re-evaluate the mine plan in light of this material new information” on the significance of one of the sites.

It repeated earlier public comments that the destruction of the rock shelters, dubbed Juukan 1 and Juukan 2, “should not have occurred”.

“Rio Tinto has unreservedly apologised to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people (PKKP), and we reaffirm that apology now,” the submission states. “For the benefit of current and future generations of Australians, we are determined to learn the lessons to ensure that the destruction of heritage sites of exceptional archaeological and cultural significance, such as the Juukan rock shelters, never occurs again.”

Rio said it “failed to meet our own internal standards in relation to the destruction of the Juukan rockshelters in May 2020”. Former senior employees of Rio Tinto also made submissions to the Senate inquiry saying the same thing.

The Rio Tinto chief executive, Jean-Sébastien Jacques, is due to appear before the inquiry on Friday.

The rock shelters, in the Hammersley ranges in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, were damaged in a mining blast on 23 May as part of the expansion of Rio Tinto’s Brockman 4 iron ore mine, despite the PKKP repeatedly saying they wanted to preserve the site and issuing an urgent request to stop the blasts five days before the detonation.

In their 46-page submission, Rio Tinto said the company had drilled 382 blast holes and loaded them with explosives by 13 May, the day before the PKKP learned of the upcoming destruction. They said they engaged an independent expert to see if the blast holes could be safely unloaded, but that a management committee, including the iron ore chief executive, Chris Salisbury, “did not consider it feasible to remove the shot from the holes to protect Juukan 1 and Juukan 2”.

“There was insufficient time to do so safely given the limitations on the stability of the explosives and the unacceptable environmental and safety risks,” the submission said. Salisbury toured the site with representatives from the PKKP in early June and found they were “impacted but not entirely destroyed”.

The submission said Rio Tinto was made aware in 2014, and again in 2018, that one of the rock shelters, Juukan 2, was of “the highest archeological significance in Australia”, as reported by archeologist Dr Michael Slack, who conducted excavation and salvage works on the two rock shelters in 2014.

In his 2018 report, which Rio Tinto received in December of that year and forwarded to the PKKP in January, Slack wrote that “the Juukan 2 rock shelter has the amazing potential to radically change our understanding of the earliest human behaviour in Australia”.

“To date, there is no other site of this age with faunal remains in unequivocal association with stone tools. The significance of this cannot be overstated.”

Rio obtained ministerial consent to destroy or damage the sites from the Western Australian government under that state’s Aboriginal Heritage Act in 2013, following consultation with the PKKP and their then representatives, the Yamatji Marlpa Aboriginal Corporation, and said it did not reconsider that agreement in light of the new information from the 2014 digs.

It also said the PKKP had signed a financial agreement with Rio Tinto in 2011, and again in 2013, not to oppose any applications to destroy or damage heritage under section 18 of the Aboriginal Heritage Act, “provided Rio Tinto used its reasonable endeavours to minimise impacts of those operations on Aboriginal heritage sites and consulted with the PKKP about the means of doing so”.

It said that of the four options considered for the open-cut iron ore pit in 2013, before ministerial consent was sought, “three avoided the shelters to varying distances. The fourth option impacted the rock shelters in order to access higher volumes of high-grade ore, and was the option that was chosen by Rio Tinto.”

The Western Australian government submission to the Senate inquiry admitted its current laws were in dire need of an overhaul.

It said the Aboriginal Heritage Act has “been a source of conflict involving Aboriginal people and land use proponents” because it “does not encourage protection of Aboriginal heritage through co-existence with compatible land uses or modification of proposals to avoid or minimise impacts”, lacks dispute resolution processes, and any “penalties for infringement are very low in comparison to other Australian states and territories.”

It said new legislation has been under discussion for several years and would be introduced in 2020. However, it also said the federal Aboriginal heritage act, while “outdated”, gives the environment minister, in this case Sussan Ley, the “power to make a declaration to protect an area, object or class of objects from a threat of injury or desecration”.

It is a power used sparingly. The federal environment department’s submission, also lodged on Tuesday, said that of 541 applications received since 1984, seven have resulted in long-term declarations of protection.

Environment ministers have made at least 21 declarations for short-term or emergency protection, but in a majority of the cases “there was insufficient evidence for the minister to conclude that the areas specified in the applications were significant Aboriginal areas” as defined in the act.

The federal government’s submission does not directly address questions about whether the minster was approached to use the power to prevent the explosion at Juukan Gorge but states “the minister cannot make a declaration unless an Indigenous person (or a person representing an Indigenous person) has made an application for it”.

The WA and federal governments are also scheduled to appear at the inquiry’s first public hearings on Friday.