Loading

The committee, which operates under the Indigenous land-use agreement between Adani’s Australian unit Bravus and the Clermont Belyando native title applicants, appoints traditional owners to be involved in and supervise cultural heritage works on the site.

“All cultural heritage works at Bravus Mining and Resources’ Carmichael Mine are managed according to the legally binding agreements in place between our company and the Clermont Belyando Native Title applicant group (formerly known as the Wangan and Jagalingou),” a Bravus spokesperson said.

In 2016, the Wangan and Jagalingou people voted 294 to one in favour of the Carmichael project’s land-use agreement.

Since then, five traditional owners, including Ms Turbane, launched a Federal Court case arguing the process of checking whether the traditional owners who voted on the agreement had legitimate native title claims “lacked rigour”, but their appeal was dismissed in 2019.

Loading

Ms Turbane said she was “deeply distressed” about Adani’s proposed clearance works, which she believes could begin as early as Monday and involve transferring the artefacts to Red Hill. She said she had been supplied with limited information about the plans, and claimed she had been stonewalled by Adani and the cultural heritage committee tasked with protecting the site. “That’s our birthright ... we have a right to know what’s going on,” she said. “They [Adani] don’t care about our language, our dreaming, our spiritual connection to the land.”

Efforts to contact members of the cultural heritage committee last week were unsuccessful.

Ms Turbane’s application comes amid a renewed focus on ties between the nation’s big mining companies and First Nations traditional owners, and the treatment of heritage sites across the industry. A 16-month federal inquiry launched in the aftermath of Rio Tinto’s destruction of Western Australia’s 46,000-year-old Juukan Gorge rock shelters has identified “serious deficiencies” in all states’ and territories’ Indigenous cultural heritage protections, and last week called on the federal government to legislate a national framework of new minimum standards.

The proposed new laws would give the Commonwealth the power to override decisions made under state-based frameworks, and empower traditional owners to enforce the Commonwealth protections through civil legal action.

The Adani project has been the front line of a years-long battle between the coal mining industry and Australians fighting to halt any further expansion of the production of the carbon-intensive fossil fuel.

The Carmichael mine is opposed by many high-profile campaigns over coal’s significant contribution to global warming, the mine’s potential environmental damage and concerns it will spur more fossil-fuel mining in the Galilee Basin.

However, the project is backed as an important jobs-creator by both Queensland’s government and the federal Nationals party, particularly among MPs that hold Central Queensland coal seats that will be crucial to the Morrison government in the next federal election.

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.