Both the standard house owners of Juukan Gorge within the Pilbara and the mining large that destroyed it, Rio Tinto, are talking at an Indigenous mining convention.
Derek Flucker, a Quandamooka man from Stradbroke Island, chairs Aboriginal Enterprises in Mining, Energy and Exploration, which is holding its nationwide convention in Cairns this week.
Mr Flucker has been concerned within the mining business for extra 30 years and runs his personal firm, RBY Projects, which offers development, upkeep and rehabilitation companies to corporations together with Origin Energy and QGC/Shell.
“Aboriginal people can reap the most benefit out of it,” he stated.
“We’re always talking about getting people from overseas to fill the skill shortage when we got these people sitting in their backyard that that are starting to really take a foothold into these into these projects.
“Not many individuals hear about a number of the optimistic issues which might be occurring within the Aboriginal house and that is hopefully shining a optimistic gentle on that.”
Mr Flucker said one of the important issues on the agenda at the conference is getting traditional owners and mining companies together so that ways of protecting Aboriginal heritage sites can be properly discussed.
Traditional owners from Juukan Gorge in Western Australia, the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people, are speaking at the conference, as will representatives from mining giant Rio Tinto, which destroyed the important cultural site in 2020.
“We can hopefully keep away from that taking place once more sooner or later in order that we do not get websites destroyed,” Mr Flucker stated.
“It’s about how mining corporations and Aboriginal teams work collectively to make sure that the useful resource sector can ship what they should ship but in addition ensuring that the tradition and the heritage of Aboriginal individuals is protected.
“It’s really brought home to both the Indigenous people and also the mining companies that these are areas we need to be careful of and that we really need to not put resource interests over Aboriginal interests when it comes to this.
“If it was a non-Indigenous church that was being destroyed by a mining firm I’m certain there’d be a serious uproar throughout the entire of Australia.
“We’ve got businesses that deliver services, like water and coffees and all those sorts of things and you got fairly big businesses that do quite substantial amounts of work turning over millions and millions of dollars a year, running their own mining operations and we’ve got businesses that are at the smaller end.
“It’s about exhibiting the broader neighborhood that Aboriginal individuals are doing nicely on this house and we’re additionally making an attempt to assist these up and comers to search out alternatives to to get a foothold on this business.
“We see it as the biggest economic development opportunity in Australia for Aboriginal people.”
Source: www.perthnow.com.au
