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The executive leader of the mining giant among those who were expelled after shareholders rebelled against the destruction of former indigenous sites in Western Australia.
By Livia Albeck-Ripka
DARWIN, Australia – The caves, sunk at the back of a desert gorge, had delivered a treasure trove of artifacts that traced the long history of other Aboriginal people in Australia: a 28,000-year-old kangaroo bone cut into a leaf; a 4,000-year-old human hair braid that would have been used as a belt.
Beneath the caverns were millions of high-quality iron ore, in a land where mining is queen.
In May, mineral giant Rio Tinto blew up the caves to access the riches below, but on Friday it became clear that Australia’s toughest export industry had faced a force that may not explode: the global motion for racial justice.
The company announced that its executive leader, Jean-Sebastien Jacques, would resign after a shareholder for the destruction of prehistoric shelters in Juukan Gorge, which are sacred to two Australian Aboriginal groups.
Two other senior executives, Chris Salisbury and Simone Niven, will also leave the company, which is located in Britain and Australia. The three executives saw some of their 2020 bonds anchored last month, however, shareholders, arguing that the move was not holding Americans accountable, called for tougher penalties.
It was a rare admission that the mining industry, which has long supported the Australian economy, at the expense of classical landowners, had gone too far.
“What happened in Juukan was wrong,” Rio Tinto President Simon Thompson said Friday, adding that the company would never support the demolition of vital cultural sites.
Rio Tinto destroyed the caves in the Pilbara Desert in Western Australia with approval, but opposed the objections of two peoples with deep ties to them, Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura.
The caves were among the maximum cultural and archaeological sites of the country, indicating the uninterrupted presence of a human room for more than 45,000 years.
Indigenous rights activists said Rio Tinto’s decision, after months of tension from investors, politicians, environmental teams and indigenous leaders, is “a milestone in Australia’s resource history. “
“In the past, Aboriginal people had no one to depend on in a vandalism case like this,” said Noel Pearson, an Australian Aboriginal lawyer and territorial rights activist.
Rio Tinto, the world’s largest mining company, is a component of its portfolio. Australia, which last week entered its first recession in 3 decades, is turning to Rio Tinto and other leaders of the country’s mineral export giant in its attempt to revive its activity. economy amid the coronavirus pandemic.
At the same time, however, Black Lives Matter protests spread around the world have encouraged indigenous rights defenders to challenge Australia’s myth that racism is a major challenge in the country.
Activists say classic culture and heritage have been the subject of the mining industry for too long and point out with specific anger that Rio Tinto destroyed the rocky refuges of National Reconciliation Week in an effort to heal relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians.
The company has been sweeping the caves due to replaced and structurally racist legislation that prioritizes business interests over classic owners, said Kristen Lyons, a sociologist at the University of Queensland, whose studies focus on mining and indigenous rights.
Rio Tinto’s resignations, while a step in the right direction, do nothing to “address the deep inequality of who has rights to decision-making,” Professor Lyons added.
Activists and indigenous leaders made a similar note, saying that while Rio Tinto’s resolution is unprecedented for a company of this size, it is far from compensating for the loss of unrecoverable sites due to mining. Such losses have occurred in Australia and around the world for decades without much consequence.
Similar battles are being fought against Rio Tinto through the San Carlos Apache tribe in Arizona, which fought for its classic lands from mining, and on bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea, where the mining giant’s operations have left water and poisoned fields.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Jamie Lowe, executive director of the National Council of Native Titles in Australia. “A more systemic change is desired,” he added, suggesting that the entire board of directors of the company be investigated.
He and others said Rio Tinto’s internal investigations into the destruction of caves had been slow and insufficient. Federal research to the extent rio tinto knew the importance of sites before exploiting them was suspended indefinitely due to coronavirus restrictions.
Mr. Pearson, the Aboriginal lawyer, said that while mining corporations had a long way to go in terms of responsibility, he hoped that the dismissal of a chief executive would lead to the responsibility of those who broke cultural treasures.
“Many other sites have destroyed the wisdom of the public in the past, yet this is what I think is turning the future,” he said.
The two indigenous teams that had fought against the destruction of the caves made the lesson clear.
In a statement released Friday, Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation, which manages their classic lands, said that “we cannot and will not allow this kind of devastation to happen again. “
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