The Australian federal government is facing a lawsuit over damage done to Aboriginal land by the decades-old mining project that sparked the Yirrkala Bark Petitions.
Gumatj clan leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu on Saturday said that he and his people were taking legal action against the commonwealth, seeking compensation for the loss of native title over the minerals exploited by mine operator Nabalco and its successor, Rio Tinto, as well as the destruction of key dreaming sites.
The suit is expected to use the historic precedent set by the Timber Creek judgment by the High Court in March, which ruled on monetary compensation for loss of native title.
“They’ve come to Gove peninsula without asking properly of the landowners of the place,” Yunupingu told a crowd at the Garma Festival of Traditional Cultures in northeast Arnhem Land.
“They have all come, getting the OK from the PM and the government of the country, to come all the way and start digging and insulting the country,” Yunupingu said.
He accused the two companies of having “ripped some land unmercifully.”
“They have damaged our country without seeking advice to us and they have damaged a lot of dreamings — dreamings that were important to Aboriginal people,” he said.
The companies failed to ask the local people where they could and could not go on the Gove peninsula in northeast Arnhem Land, Yunupingu said.
Traditional owners have received royalties from the mine, a fraction of the total revenue drawn from the site. They have recently opened their own mine and training center, Gulkula Mining, of which Yunupingu is chair.
Prospecting for what would become the bauxite mine and refinery began in the 1950s, and Yolngu traditional owners were strongly opposed.
Leases were granted and excised without consultation of the people of Yirrkala, and the now historic Yirrkala bark petitions were delivered to the federal government in 1963. Yunupingu, whose father was then Gumatj clan leader, helped draft the petitions.
However, the mine went ahead, with the Gove agreement signed five years later between the commonwealth and Nabalco.
Traditional owners took the mine to court in 1971, the first-ever native title litigation, but lost, with the judge citing the doctrine of terra nullius in his judgement.
The loss sparked the establishment of the Woodward Royal Commission, and Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act.
PRECEDENT
The case flagged by Yunupingu on Saturday will rest on the precedent set by this year’s Timber Creek decision from the High Court, which awarded more than A$2.5 million (US$1.7 million) in compensation to native title holders over dozens of acts by the Northen Territory government between 1980 and 1996, which were later found to have “impaired or extinguished” native title rights and interests.
More than half the amount was to compensate for “cultural loss.”
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
Scientists yesterday announced a milestone in neurobiological research with the mapping of the entire brain of an adult fruit fly, a feat that might provide insight into the brains of other organisms and even people. The research detailed more than 50 million connections between more than 139,000 neurons — brain nerve cells — in the insect, a species whose scientific name is Drosophila melanogaster and is often used in neurobiological studies. The research sought to decipher how brains are wired and the signals underlying healthy brain functions. It could also pave the way for mapping the brains of other species. “You might
PROTESTS: A crowd near Congress waved placards that read: ‘How can we have freedom without education?’ and: ‘No peace for the government’ Argentine President Javier Milei has made good on threats to veto proposed increases to university funding, with the measure made official early yesterday after a day of major student-led protests. Thousands of people joined the demonstration on Wednesday in defense of the country’s public university system — the second large-scale protest in six months on the issue. The law, which would have guaranteed funding for universities, was criticized by Milei, a self-professed “anarcho-capitalist” who came to power vowing to take a figurative chainsaw to public spending to tame chronically high inflation and eliminate the deficit. A huge crowd packed a square outside Congress
RSS