“They didn’t tell us. They only gave us one option”: Agreement making between Indigenous peoples and private enterprise on Indigenous lands

Abstract

On 24 May 2020, Rio Tinto triggered detonations at a mine located on the Native Title land of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinkuru people (PKKP people) in Western Australia. The blast destroyed Juukan Gorge, a culturally and spiritually significant place to the PKKP people. To the PKKP people, the destruction came unexpectedly and as a devastating blow. The federal Parliamentary inquiry that followed provided insights into the negotiation and agreements between the PKKP people and Rio Tinto when these details are usually private and confidential. Utilising Inquiry data, this thesis examines the process of the negotiations and the content of the agreements. Using the method of juxtaposition, it examines the experiences of the PKKP people and those of Sámi Reindeer Herding Communities in Sweden of agreement making between Indigenous parties and private enterprises.

Through the lens of structure and agency, this thesis finds that despite legislative structures recognising Native Title holders’ procedural rights, whereas Sweden has no such legislation, agreement making acts as a means to assimilate Indigenous rights into the capitalist market. In this context, the experiences across both localities demonstrate the limitations of agreement making to protect Indigenous culture and cultural heritage.

This thesis questions whether such agreement making can facilitate the Free, Prior and Informed Consent of the Indigenous parties, given the constraining forces of legal, intuitional and socio-economic structures and power imbalances in agreement making on Indigenous agency. However, the case study also demonstrates the power of Indigenous agency on outcomes, through the determination of the PKKP people to bring the incident to light and advocate for changes to the conduct of private enterprise and policies and laws of Government.