Raelene Cooper and Murujuga. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
As Australia faces a gas crisis, Indigenous communities fear their millennial sacred sites will be collateral damage in the rush to buy new supplies.
Red landscape with water in the background in Murujuga, Western Australia. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
“The rocks have been here for hundreds of thousands of years.
A rock carving in Murujuga, Western Australia, shows a kangaroo, on red rock. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
“They are our story, our story, our dream stories.
A rock carving in Murujuga, Western Australia, shows a handprint, on red rock. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
“They represent the remarkable survival of our people.”
On the west coast of Australia, Raelene Cooper takes off her shoes before climbing a unique rock formation with her daughters.
It is an act learned from his ancestors, the Mardudhunera people, who have interpreted it for millennia.
“It’s the home of my mother, my grandparents, all of our old people who walked this place, many, many, many moons and evolutions ago,” he says.
“When we come here, this is the place to be.
“It is our place of healing, our spirituality, where we can connect [country] and in our village.
Raelene Cooper’s daughter climbs on rocks in Murujuga, Western Australia. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
“They tell us and show us our ways. They show us everything we need to know and we learn to pass on our knowledge to our young followers.”
Murujuga is the traditional name of this place where Mrs. Cooper belongs.
It means “protruding hip bone” and refers to the shape of the Burrup Peninsula in the Pilbara region of northern Western Australia.
Sunrise is a magical time in Murujuga.
Barefoot Raelene Cooper climbs rocks in Murujuga, Western Australia. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
As the golden light illuminates Mrs. Cooper’s ascent, ancient cave carvings of turtles are revealed that tell the story of the peninsula’s creation.
Rock art in Murujuga, showing a turtle. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
“They left [the carvings] here to tell the stories, ”Ms. Cooper says.
Rock art in Murujuga shows two turtles swimming in opposite directions. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
“The Fortescue River Turtle … went down the waterfall, couldn’t get back up the waterfall, so it went through Fortescue.
Rock art in Murujuga, depicting a turtle. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
“By the mouth of the Fortescue River, it reached Murujuga, through the Maitland area to the mouth of the Fortescue River, where fresh water and salt water meet.
“This is the story of creation.”
Murujuga is home to one of the world’s largest collections of rock carvings, believed to tell stories from more than 50,000 years ago.
It includes some of the earliest representations of the human face, which cannot be photographed, and has been nominated on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Raelene Cooper looks at the land her ancestors walked. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito) A petroglyph of a flat-tailed kangaroo at Ngajarli (Deep Gorge) in Murujuga (Burrup Peninsula). (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
Some traditional landowners fear these carvings may be threatened by the continued expansion of industry on the peninsula, and this week Ms Cooper presented her concerns to the United Nations in Geneva.
“The ngurra, our land, is our temple and our parliament,” he told the UN.
“Rock art archives our history. It is not written on a stone tablet, but sculpted in the ngurra, which contains our Dreaming stories and songs.”
Pluto rising
The Woodside gas plant seen through native plants. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
The Burrup Peninsula is also home to Australia’s largest oil and gas extraction plants.
Since the 1980s, Woodside has had a presence on the peninsula through the North West Shelf project, located near Karratha, which has produced liquefied gas for export.
The project was expanded in 2007 to include another processing facility, Pluto.
Woodside has received state and Commonwealth approval for an additional $ 16.5 billion expansion, known as the Scarborough Offshore Gas Project, which includes the expansion of the Pluto facility. called Pluto 2.
The gas mining industry already employs a third of the local population: more than 4,000 jobs.
Woodside said the expansion would create up to 3,200 more jobs during construction and about 600 ongoing functions across the country, and the company said it was committed to prioritizing the traditional employment of homeowners and custodians.
Pluto’s Woodside gas processing plant in WA is poised for an expansion. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito) Woodside gas plant in the industrial estate of the Burrup Peninsula. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
The company said it had consulted extensively with traditional owners, including “environmental monitoring, archaeological and ethnographic surveys and access to advice from independent experts.”
Over the decades, the relationship of Traditional Owners with the company has been complicated.
In 2002, traditional landowners agreed to waive three separate claims for native titles on the Burrup Peninsula and the Maitland area, after the WA government told them it intended to acquire the land for heavy industry.
In return, they received rights to non-industrial land, millions of dollars in compensation and investment in education, training and employment.
In 2006 the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation (MAC) was established.
“The corporation was set up around the time, where the native title had not yet been ordered in the Pilbara region,” said MAC CEO Peter Jefferies.
“So, at the time and place where it was incorporated and how it was incorporated, the corporation was formed to be able to manage the land and other assets on behalf of its members.”
To date, the 2002 agreement regulates the use of the heavy industry estate. The companies consult with the MAC on future plans, but do not need their approval for the works within the industrial zone.
The salt water of the Burrup peninsula. Raelene Cooper enters from the beach, where she communicates with her ancestors. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito) The ocean travels across the sand to the Burrup Peninsula, the country of Raelene Cooper. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito) Moss grows among the rocks in Murujuga. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito) A tree in Murujuga. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito) A stream through Ngajarli (Deep Gorge) to Murujuga (Burrup Peninsula). (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
Ms. Cooper was a member of the MAC for 10 years, until she resigned in February this year, in part because of a “gag clause” in the 2002 agreement, which she believed prevented traditional landlords from expressed their objections to industrial development in the area.
The clause stated that the contracting parties could not “present or cause any objection to be made to the urbanization proposals to be made on land” within the industrial estate.
A federal Senate investigation into the destruction of Juukan Caves last year described the “gag clauses” as “atrocious” and recommended that they be banned from industry at the Commonwealth, state and territory level.
Traditional homeowners are concerned about emissions from the Scarborough gas plant. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
Ms. Cooper says emissions from Woodside’s gas plants are already causing irreversible damage to her spiritual home.
“We are already visibly seeing with the naked eye the decay of our rock art,” he said.
“I came out with that [country] many, many times over the years with my family and we are visibly seeing the effects of emissions and air pollution. ”
Scarborough gas plant on the Dampier Peninsula. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
Woodside says there has been no peer-reviewed scientific evidence showing impacts on nearby rock art from industrial emissions.
Scarborough Gas Plant. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
But previous studies have been criticized for a number of issues, and the WA Department of the Environment has commissioned the Murujuga Rock Art Monitoring Project, a thorough investigation to see if emissions are accelerating the natural weathering of petroglyphs. .
Chimneys from the Pluto gas plant in Scarborough. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
The company told the ABC in a statement that it was also adopting technology to reduce the emission of nitrogen oxides (NOx) from its gas plant and supporting the continuous monitoring of Murujuga rock art.
Traditional landowners, such as Peter Jefferies, have re-weighed the importance of their land, culture and artifacts, and the economic prosperity of the region and its people.
“There has been a long consultation with the Woodside Aboriginal Corporation over the last two and a half years regarding the development of Scarborough,” Jefferies said.
“So a lot of work has been done with Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation to sit there and understand the potential risk or opportunities in terms of Scarborough.”
Ms Cooper has written to Australian Indigenous Minister Linda Burney and Water and Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek about her concerns about the impacts of the industry on rock art, but there is an appeal · limited.
Ms. Burney and Ms. Plibersek refused to be interviewed.
On the back of Mrs. Cooper’s mind appears the destruction of the 46,000-year-old caves at Juukan Gorge by mining giant Rio Tinto in 2020.
“This area here looks a lot like a slow-motion Juukan gorge,” he said.
She is not the only traditional owner deeply affected by what happened in Juukan Gorge.
Forest with a pill
In the Pilliga forest in northwestern New South Wales, Gomeroi woman Suellyn Tighe believes something is wrong.
Suellyn Tighe shows blooming berries in the Pilliga forest. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
“Nature is in a kind of flow: there are things that flourish.
A red in the forest of Pilliga. (ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
“Birds nest when they don’t usually nest
A rock with dry leaves …