The traditional owners of Juukan Gorge say Rio Tinto provided them with incomplete information, publicly misrepresented the level of consultation, incorrectly described the significance of Aboriginal heritage sites to government authorities, and continued to load explosives above the 46,000-year-old heritage site after promising to delay the blast.
In a coldly furious submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the destruction of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters, the PKKP Aboriginal Corporation said the Puutu Kunti Kurrama Pinikura people were “experiencing great spiritual, emotional and physical pain” at the loss of the sites, which were destroyed in a mining blast by Rio Tinto on 24 May.
“We are extremely angry that, over an extended period, Rio Tinto did not act on our input nor the input of specialist archaeologists and anthropologists relating to the cultural importance of the Juukan Gorge rockshelters,” the submission said.
“We are also angry that, once we raised the alarm bells in the months and weeks leading up to the disaster, Rio Tinto ignored our requests and concerns.
“In the days before the disaster, Rio Tinto kept loading charges around Juukan 1 and Juukan 2 and then only took steps to avoid blast damage to sites over which they did not have legal authority to destroy.
“The Juukan Gorge disaster tells us that Rio Tinto’s operational mindset has been driven by compliance to minimum standards of the law and maximisation of profit. PKKP believes that this is reflective of the industry as a whole.”
Rio Tinto has repeatedly said it could not remove the explosives from the site because the safety risk and environmental risk was too great. But the PKKP said they had since learned that 156 blast holes – 40% of the 382 drilled around the gorge, including those closest to the rockshelters – were not loaded with explosives until after the PKKP had requested, and Rio had agreed, that blasting be delayed on 15 May.
The PKKP said it had hired lawyers with the view to lodge an injunction or an emergency appeal under federal heritage legislation, but decided not to go ahead because Rio said that delaying the blast could cause a safety risk.
They learned after the caves had been destroyed that Rio Tinto had only attempted to remove explosives near sites that it did not have legal permission to destroy, and had not sought advice on the feasibility of removing explosives to protect the rockshelters.
Richard Bradshaw, the lawyer for the PKKP, contacted the office of the federal Indigenous affairs minister, Ken Wyatt, on 20 May, and was told by a senior adviser, Jarrod Lomas, that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Act was the responsibility of the environment minister, Sussan Ley.
Bradshaw then called Ley’s office and flagged a possible emergency declaration under that act. He was told someone would call him back. No one did. He called Ley’s office again that afternoon, and was again told someone would call him.
The next day, Bradshaw received an email from the commercial law firm Ashurst, which had been engaged by Rio Tinto to fend off a potential injunction, reminding the PKKP that under their agreement with the company they could not speak publicly, and could trigger the forfeiture of payments.
A ‘grossly unequal’ negotiation
Rio Tinto received permission from the WA government in 2013 to destroy the two rockshelters, which are on the western edge of its Brockman 4 iron ore mine. They sit in Juukan Gorge, named for a Puutu Kunti Kurraman who was also known as Tommy Ashburton. Juukan married Topsy Williams, a Pinikura woman.
The gorge is on the western edge of the Hamersley Range in the Pilbara, 60km north-west of Mt Tom Price and about 300km inland of Karratha. It is 400 metres long and 70 metres wide, a tributary of the Purlykuti Creek, and part of a cultural landscape connected to a men’s ceremonial business.
Under the PKKP’s initial agreement with Rio Tinto it waived the right to raise objections to an application to destroy heritage, or to raise concerns in the media. It said those agreements were the product of a “grossly unequal negotiating position” between the parties, in which the PKKP were advised not to request the protection of Juukan Gorge because it sat on an iron ore body.
Rio said it would not pay the PKKP royalties because the mining lease was granted in 1964 – long before the native title claim was submitted in 2001. It then agreed that royalties would be paid for new mines including Brockman 4.
The company revealed to the Senate inquiry last month that it was considering three options for the mine that would have avoided damage to the rockshelters, but chose a fourth to pursue an additional $134m in high-grade iron ore. Its CEO and two other executives have since resigned over the incident.
Included in the announcement about the resignations was the claim that the board had “engaged extensively with … Traditional Owners”. The PKKP said the board has made no contact with them to date.
The rockshelters, dubbed Juukan 1 and Juukan 2, were surveyed by an archaeologist paid for by Rio Tinto in 2014 and found to be of high archaeological significance. The most archaeologically significant site, which showed continual occupation through the last ice age and contained a 4,000-year-old hair belt that was a DNA match to PKKP living today, “has been completely destroyed by the blast”.
The PKKP say they “totally reject” suggestions that they had, at any point, given free, prior and informed consent for the area to be destroyed. They also reject the premise of Rio’s mea culpa, which is that if the full significance of the sites had been known at the right levels of the company it would not have destroyed them.
“It is convenient to assert that the Juukan disaster was a consequence of ‘missed opportunities’, but to do so ignores the facts,” the PKKP said.
“The ‘material new information’ received by Rio Tinto after making the decision to extend the mine-plan was information which confirmed what Rio Tinto already knew. At the time Rio Tinto made the decision to extend the mine plan, Rio Tinto was aware that the Juukan 1 and Juukan 2 were sites of high significance, and it made its decision on the basis that its profit was of greater importance.”
The archaeological and ethnographic surveys outlining the significance of the sites, dating back to 2003, were commissioned by Rio Tinto.
The PKKP said the damage and hurt done to them by the destruction of the site was “incalculable.”
“Within the PKKP family is an old lady,” the submission said. “She is in her late 90s and quite frail. She is the last remaining daughter of Juukan, and she named the gorge and the rock shelters on behalf of her father, who is a very respected ancestor of many. No one has told her that the rock shelters and Gorge have been lost as they all fear it will result in her passing. Everyone hopes she will never find out.
“PKKP are in shock. The PKKP people feel betrayed. Nothing could prepare them for this.”
The inquiry is due to hand down its final report on 9 December.
