Push to stop mining on sacred sites

RESOURCES

Nick Toscano

Key Indigenous land groups are appealing directly to shareholders for support in a campaign to halt mining activities on sacred sites, in a move set to spark strong resistance from the nation’s $300 billion resources industry.

The First Nations Heritage Protection Alliance, formed in the wake of Rio Tinto’s widely condemned blasting of two 46,000-year-old rock shelters in Western Australia, has thrown its support behind an activist shareholder push to give traditional owners more rights over ancestral land.

The alliance, which counts among its members the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, Cape York Land Council, Kimberley Land Council, National Native Title Council and prominent Indigenous academic Marcia Langton, is already backing a landmark shareholder resolution at mining giant BHP’s upcoming AGM. The resolution would force the miner to suspend all all activities that could impact heritage sites and remove restrictions that prevent traditional owners from publicly objecting to works on their ancestral land.

Alliance member and NSW Aboriginal Land Council chief executive James Christian said more resolutions were planned for other mining companies in the upcoming AGM season and investors deserve certainty that companies they put their money into would honour their ‘‘social contract’’ with indigenous groups.