GNED 500

Global Indigenous Example

It is said that you can judge a society by the way it treats its most vulnerable members. In the case of First Nations and Indigenous peoples around the world, it is clear that many societies, including Canada and Australia, do not treat them with any measure of equality, let alone equity.

Aboriginal communities on practically every continent are constantly having to struggle to keep their communities, lands, traditions, and ways of life alive. They are pitted against powerful private corporations with immense influence and resources. These corporations are in turn supported by local and state governments that depend on these companies’ financial support to win elections and maintain the status quo.

In Australia, Aboriginal communities have been fighting for years against one of the world’s most powerful mining corporations. This company wants access and control over these communities’ ancestral lands and waterways, to extract coal resources to sell on the international market. Rather than protecting the rights of its Aboriginal communities, the Australian government has supported the company’s efforts to gain control.

The proposed mine is owned and operated by the Adani group of companies, headed by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani. Adani wants to develop the Carmichael open-cut thermal coal mine in central Queensland’s Galilee Basin. The plan is to extract 10 million tons of coal per year (with approvals in place for future extraction of up to 50–60 million tons annually) for up to 60 years. This would make it Australia’s largest mine. This coal will be sold primarily to India. There, it will be burned to generate electricity. This electricity would then be sold to neighbouring Bangladesh and other South Asian countries to satisfy those nations’ rapidly increasing demand for coal-generated electrical power (Bravus Mining and Resources, 2021; see also: Environmental Law Australia, n.d.; Chandrasekhar, Williams, & Sengupta, 2019, para. 3).

The fight between local Aboriginal communities vs. Adani and the Australian and Queensland governments reads like the classic story of David and Goliath.

On one side are the Wangan and Jagalingou people. These communities have lived on their lands for thousands of years. Now the Australian government has granted these lands to Adani for exploitation. In the face of the immense power and privilege enjoyed by Adani, these Aboriginal communities are like David in the biblical story. The odds are against them.

On the other side is Adani. Like a veritable Goliath, it has spent huge sums of money to exert influence over local and federal politicians, and even local Aboriginal communities, in its quest to secure land title rights so it can proceed with this massive project (Robertson, 2017). The Carmichael mine would be the first of at least six mines to be constructed by Adani. Together, they would create a vast mining legacy in an environmentally sensitive area of Queensland. This area is home to myriad species of fauna and flora, and is the ancestral home to many Aboriginal groups (Moore, 2019).

The Wangan and Jagalingou Family Council represents two of the Aboriginal communities who oppose building the mine. On its web page, it describes the destructive impact the Adani Carmichael mine would have on their lands, waterways, communities, and cultures. The Council writes:

Our traditional lands are an interconnected and living whole; a vital cultural landscape. It is central to us as a People, and to the maintenance of our identity, laws and consequent rights.

If the Carmichael mine were to proceed it would tear the heart out of the land. The scale of this mine means it would have devastating impacts on our native title, ancestral lands and waters, our totemic plants and animals, and our environmental and cultural heritage. It would pollute and drain billions of litres of groundwater, and obliterate important springs systems. It would potentially wipe out threatened and endangered species. It would literally leave a huge black hole, monumental in proportions, where there were once our homelands. These effects are irreversible. Our land will be “disappeared”.

Nor would the direct impacts be limited to our lands – they would have cascading effects on the neighbouring lands and waters of other Traditional Owners and other landholders in the region. And the mine would cause damage to climate, with the burning of the coal unleashing a mass of carbon into the atmosphere and propelling dangerous global warming.

We could not in all conscience consent to such wholesale destruction. Nor could we allow such a project to contribute to the dire unfolding effects of climate change that pose such great risks to all peoples. (Wangan & Jagalingou Family Council, n.d.)

Environmental activists and various Aboriginal and other stakeholder groups have fought Adani at every turn, trying to overturn the company’s bid to begin mine operations. However, according to the Brisbane Times, after receiving approvals on a number of environmental assessment studies by the Australian government, the Adani mine is expected to begin operations in 2021 (Moore, 2020; see also: Babones, 2021).