Day 72 of Waddananggu.

Today Adani/Bravus has made a public statement. This is the rebuttal.

According to Archeo, the Wangan and Jagalingou service provider, Adani has had full knowledge of the site since 2018 and had failed to inform the applicants until right before mitigation in August 2021. Leaving no room to object and only given a short period of 9 days to mitigate thousands of artefacts and only concentrating the site to a small area.

Adani failed to informed all applicants that this site was being demolished, only a select few applicants were informed and given the opportunity to retrieve our ancestor’s possessions. Adani failed to understand the cultural and spiritual significance of that site containing stone arrangements and the stories that were told for thousands of years from that site being used as a teaching place.

Adani was given instructions from Archeo that the site must be excavated to 1.5m deep. Adani then proceeded to use a “soft wheeled” excavator to remove 60cm of topsoil. No professional archaeological dig was undertaken.

Adani dug up our old people’s possessions for a mine and dumped those piles of topsoil filled with artefacts in an area then told our people they can sort it out there.

Adani/Bravus strong armed our people into picking up their ancestor’s belongings because they’ve signed a Cultural Heritage Management Plan they cannot veto any works no matter how significant the site is.

Just like when Adani strong armed our people when all 500+ Wangan and Jagalingou people said No to Adani In Rockhampton 2014, Anthony Lynham gave Adani the mining lease before an Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) was signed.

Adani used that as leverage against our people by saying the Qld government had forcefully taken the mining lease. They then forced our people to sign an ILUA for three small blocks of property or the government will take that too and our people would have been left with no jobs and training.

No money, training or jobs have been given to the people that signed the ILUA since 2016.

The ILUA

The ILUA was not properly signed by 3 Native Title executives in 2016 and only signed by 1 which made the ILUA illegitimate and was brought to light in a 2019 federal court case but the judges were given instructions to disregard that finding as it was not ” relevant” to the court case.

A security for the 2016 Maryborough ILUA meeting working at the front door was given strict instructions to not let Adrian Burragubba in.

The 294 to 1 Maryborough ILUA vote was fabricated to make it seem as Adrian Burragubba was that “rogue” one. When in fact Adrian Burragubba along with over 200+ other Wangan and Jagalingou people boycotted the 2016 Maryborough meeting. We all agreed as one mob with 500+ people not to go back to Adani after we all said No in 2014.

We are not fossil fuel activists.

This is not a stunt.

We want our country back, and we will sit here until we force you to give it back.