Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto has admitted damaging ancient Aboriginal rock shelters in Australia’s remote Pilbara region — blasting near the 46,000-year-old heritage site to expand an iron ore mine.
Traditional owners said that the culturally significant cave in Juukan Gorge, Western Australia — one of the earliest known sites occupied by Aborigines in Australia — had been destroyed in a “devastating blow” to the community.
Explosives were detonated on Sunday near the site in line with state government approvals granted seven years ago, Rio Tinto said in a statement.
“In 2013, ministerial consent was granted to allow Rio Tinto to conduct activity at the Brockman 4 mine that would impact Juukan 1 and Juukan 2 rock shelters,” a company spokesperson said, adding that the company had liaised with the Aboriginal community.
“Rio Tinto has worked constructively together with the [Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura] people on a range of heritage matters under the agreement and has, where practicable, modified its operations to avoid heritage impacts and to protect places of cultural significance to the group,” the spokesperson said.
Just one year after the blasting was approved, an archaeological dig at one of the shelters uncovered the oldest known example of bone tools in Australia — a sharpened kangaroo bone dating back 28,000 years — and a 4,000-year-old hair plait believed to have been worn as a belt.
The 2014 excavations also found one of the oldest examples of a grinding stone ever found in Australia.
“There are less than a handful of known Aboriginal sites in Australia that are as old as this one,” Puutu Kunti Kurrama Land Committee chairman John Ashburton said.
“Our people are deeply troubled and saddened by the destruction of these rock shelters, and are grieving the loss of connection to our ancestors as well as our land,” Ashburton said.
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