Resources giant Fortescue has been ordered to pay an aboriginal group a record $150.1 million in compensation for mining without agreement and destroying cultural sites, but the recipients say it was not nearly enough.
Billionaire mining magnate Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest’s Fortescue Metal Group began operating its Solomon Hub iron ore mines in Western Australia’s mineral-rich Pilbara region in the early 2010s after being given approval by the state government and a different local indigenous group.
But Fortescue did not get permission from the Yindjibarndi people, who were given exclusive native title rights in 2017 by the Federal Court in 2017, sparking a legal battle that ended in Perth on Tuesday when the Yindjibarndi Ngurra Aboriginal Corporation (YNAC) was awarded $150 million for cultural loss and $100,000 for economic loss.
The native title payout is the largest in Australian history, and well in excess of the $54 million awarded to three different groups in the Northern Territory in February, but left the indigenous group disappointed, as they had demanded $1.8 billion. Fortescue wanted to pay $8.1 million.
YNAC CEO Michael Woodley hinted at an appeal of the economic loss component, while Wendy Hubert described the amount awarded by Federal Court Justice Stephen Burley as “peanuts”.
Another Yindjibarndi woman, Judith Coppin, said the amount awarded was not nearly enough, NITV reported.
“They take tonnes and tonnes of things from our land and what do we get? Nothing,” she said.
“What do we get out of it? Nothing, not even a bloody brand new house.
“They need to look at us, they need to come out there and look what they did to us. Half of our family is gone, we’ve been fighting for 20 years.”
A Fortescue spokesman said: “Dr Andrew Forrest and Fortescue care deeply about all First Nations people, including the Yindjibarndi community.
“Fortescue accepts that the Yindjibarndi People are entitled to compensation. The Company has agreed to and pays financial compensation under all of its other seven native title agreements.”
In his judgement Justice Burley noted 240 “sacred sites” had been made inaccessible by the mines, and 124 of those had been “completely destroyed”, and used the land’s freehold value to calculate the economic loss rather than the value able to be extracted by Fortescue, which could be in excess of $100 billion.
Header image: Judith Coppin (ABC News).
The post Aboriginal group unhappy about record $150M payout from mining giant: ‘Peanuts’ first appeared on The Noticer.
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