The destruction of Juukan Gorge: lessons for planners and local governments

Abstract

ABSTRACT In May 2020, Rio Tinto, one of Australia’s largest mining companies, destroyed two rock shelters in the Hammersley Ranges in the Pilbara. Juukan Gorge, evidence of 46,000 years of continual human occupation through the last ice age, was destroyed in seconds. ‘The caves that Rio Tinto destroyed had a fundamental religious significance to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura Peoples (PKKP), for whom these places constituted a part of their identity and central place in their social fabric’ (Langton, [2020]. The destruction of the Juukan Gorge caves: A cultural property crime in moral terms. The Saturday Paper, 19–25 September 2020, No. 319). They can never be restored or replaced.