'Devastated' Indigenous owners say Rio Tinto misled them ahead of Juukan Gorge blast
The traditional owners of Juukan Gorge have spoken of the “absolute hell” and “desperation” they went through in trying to stop their 46,000-year-old sacred site being destroyed by Rio Tinto in May and their ongoing “devastation” that the blast went ahead.
The Puutu Kunti Kuurama and Pinikura peoples said Rio gave them misleading information while they were trying to negotiate a halt to the blast, and in some cases gave them no information at all about what they were doing onsite.
The PKKP have released a video about the site, which includes footage of the extent of the devastation, filmed in September. Traditional owners are visibly distressed as they stand at the site where the two Juukan caves have been reduced to rubble.
“Myself, my family, our elders and our ancestors are in mourning at the desecration of our sacred site,” PKKP traditional owner Burchell Hayes told a federal parliamentary inquiry into the incident.
“The disaster has now left a gaping hole in our ability to pass on our heritage to our children and grandchildren.
“When I heard, I was driving to Port Hedland with two of my grandsons. It felt terrible as a grandfather that I was not able to preserve the heritage that was on loan to me.”
Rio Tinto kept loading explosives around the gorge, even after they had promised to delay the blast, and even as they were engaging in negotiations with the PKKP’s heritage team.
“The whole time we were under the impression they were trying to undertake mitigating actions to save the shelter or lessen the blast,” the PKKP Aboriginal Corporation’s (PKKPAC) chief executive, Carol Meredith, said.
But 40% of the blast holes drilled around the gorge, including those closest to the rock shelters, were loaded with explosives after Rio had agreed to delay blasting on 15 May.
The PKKP hired lawyers ready to lodge an injunction or an emergency appeal under federal heritage legislation, but they abandoned the plan after Rio Tinto told them the explosives could not be removed safely and had to be detonated.
Hearing that news was “the nail in the coffin”, Meredith said. “The elders realised there was going to be a blast. And then we prepared for the grieving.”
The company did remove some of the explosives from blast holes – at three sites it did not have legal permission to destroy – raising questions about whether Juukan Gorge could have been saved.
“Rio said it wasn’t safe to remove the ones behind the rock shelters, but they determined it was safe to remove the ones adjacent to those three additional sites,” Rick Davis, a legal adviser to the PKKP, said.
Rio Tinto told the inquiry in August it considered three options for the mine that would have avoided damage to the rock shelters, but chose a fourth to pursue an additional $134m in highgrade iron ore. Its CEO and two other executives have since resigned over the incident.
But the PKKP said Rio Tinto only ever presented them with one option – to explode the site.
“Rio certainly did not advise there were four options. That was only discovered when we heard it at this inquiry,” Meredith said.
“So there has been some shock at hearing that. There was only one option presented to the group, and that included blasting Juukan Gorge.”
The PKKP representatives also said Rio Tinto had known since at least 2013 that the caves were “of the highest significance”.
Heritage manager Heather Builth said Rio Tinto’s section 18 application – where resource companies are given legal permission by the WA government to destroy Aboriginal sites – had been “a farce” that omitted crucial information the company already knew about the significance of the site.
Builth also has concerns about the safety of the highly significant cultural materials salvaged from the caves, including a 4,000-year-old belt of plaited human hair that shows a direct genetic link to modern-day PKKP people.
“The objects are being held in a sea container that goes from 7C to 60C on a daily basis. We are really worried about their condition,” Builth said.
“We don’t have access [to them] because all of these items are stored on Rio Tinto property.”
While Rio Tinto has released a new access protocol in the last week, Builth said, the traditional owners haven’t been allowed onsite since 2014.
“We will recover what we can from the rubble of Juukan Gorge,” Burchell Hayes said. “We will do what we can to keep that anchor to our ancestors and as reminder of how fragile heritage is, at the hands of those who do not care about it as we do.”
It is the first time the PKKP have spoken publicly. Because of a “gag clause” in their agreement with Rio Tinto, they had to seek permission from the company to speak to the inquiry without repercussion.
“[The agreement] may have been the gold standard when it was signed but its flaws are very apparent. It wasn’t an equal partnership then and it isn’t now,” Meredith said.
“We are very much feeling that we are up against a huge machine,” she said.
She said the PKKP are seeking to change this “David and Goliath situation”.
“We are acutely aware we may have been contracted out of our statutory rights to freedom of speech.”
LNP senator Warren Entsch, the inquiry chair, replied: “They had you well and truly stitched up.”
Entsch said the inquiry still intends to travel to the Pilbara in November to sit down with elders and view the site firsthand.
They have been prevented from visiting by WA’s strict Covid-19 border closures. Entsch said he has written to the WA premier, Mark McGowan, three times seeking permission to travel.
The inquiry is due to hand down its final report on 9 December.