What do they want: HERITAGE SITES OR MINING SITES? Juukan Gorge

                       What do they want:  HERITAGE SITES OR MINING SITES?

On May 30, 2020, Australian journalist Calla Wahlquest, wrote in the Guardian Australia: "A 46,000-year-old Aboriginal heritage site destroyed by Rio Tinto this month is one of more than 463 mining sites that mining companies operating in  Western Australia have applied for permission to destroy or disturb since 2010."

"None of these applications have been refused." the article continued.

On Monday, October 5, 2020, I listened to an interview on Al Jazeera. That was when I learned of the disaster at Juukan Gorge. The place is about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the mining town of Tom Price. Juukan Gorge was a 46,000 year-old Aboriginal heritage site in Western Australia.There is a 4,000 year-old genetic link to the people who now own the site.

The mining company Rio Tinto came to Western Australia and the site "became one of more than 463 sites that mining companies operating in Western Australia have applied for permission to destroy or disturb since 2010." 

Australia's Senate is looking at how the site, Juukan Gorge cave, came to be destroyed, the processes that failed to protect it, the effects on Traditional Owners and the legislative changes required to prevent such incidents from recurring. 

Western Australia's state laws that approved the destruction of the site are being revised.     

What happened at Juukan was wrong, Calla Wahlquist wrote:"Rio Tinto was given permission to blast Juukan Gorge cave which provided a 4,000 year old link to present day traditional owners."

Rio Tinto blew up Juukan Gorge rock shelters to access higher volumes of high-grade ore.

But Rio Tinto's destruction of Aboriginal sites at Juukan Gorge has caused the people to "experience great spiritual, emotional and physical pain at the loss of the sites" the Puntu Kunti Kurrama Pinikura (PKKP) Aboriginal Corporation said in a submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the destruction of the Juukan Gorge rock shelters.

"The destruction of the site was incalculable" the PKKP spokesman said.

As a result of all that has taken place the chief executive of Rio Tinto will step down by March 31, 2021, the head of iron ore and the head of corporate relations will also leave. 

The action came after activists said investors "had not done enough in an earlier board-lead review into how the miner legally detonated rock shelters showing 46,000 years of human habitation at Juukan Gorge in western Australia against the wishes of traditional owners."

And in another article published September 21, 2020,  Calla  Wahlquist  writes "Rio Tinto is expected to destroy another 124 Aboriginal heritage sites at a new iron ore development less than 100 km away from the exploded rock shelters."

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