What do we know? Learnings from the destruction at Juukan Gorge
published this on 28th of July 2021
What do we know? Learnings from the destruction at Juukan Gorge
I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land that I wrote this piece on, the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation and their elders past & present. I extend this respect to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and the Pinikura peoples whose land and cultural site was desecrated by Rio Tinto at Juukan Gorge as well as all First Nations people reading this piece.
I am a non-Indigenous Australian woman of British heritage, currently completing my Bachelor of Arts, majoring in (Western) Philosophy and Indigenous Studies. Central to my research is the understanding that Indigenous Australian cultures are sidelined in dominant Anglo-Australian conceptualisations of nationhood and national values. I believe that the current structure of Western society places limited value on spirituality or connection to earth. Instead, it focuses on science and economics as ways to measure knowledge, success and value. While many will contest this, I do not believe this is an innate feature of Western society but will require a shift in mindset to overcome.
“Knowledge is power”. This is a quote I have heard over and over throughout my life. It has been thrown around me so much that, for a long time, I didn’t truly consider what it even meant. For many years I accepted that knowledge referred to facts and information that were ‘objective’, and why wouldn’t I? Is this not what the systems that structure Australians lives – the education, political and economic systems – lead us to believe? Is this not what ‘powerful people’ want us to believe?
In October 2020, the Australian Financial Review published a list of the 10 most powerful people in Australia in 2020, with Scott Morrison featuring at #1. Following him were seven other politicians including the treasurer and two health ministers, the CEO of Commonwealth Bank and the Governor of the Reserve Bank. Everyone on this list is white and only one of these people is a woman. To accompany the list, the Australian Financial Review also published a list of the 10 most culturally powerful people in Australia in 2020. By contrast, six of these people are women, two of whom are First Nations women.
To me, this publication reinforces the idea that the knowledge that breeds power is captured by Western science and economics. This knowledge is categorised as ‘objective’ and universal, but unsurprisingly, white men are the keepers of this ‘knowledge’. Conversely, anything ‘cultural’ is subjective and must be marked as so. Where knowledge is cultural, it can be relegated to a lesser knowledge of lesser value. Maybe it is not even considered knowledge at all, just ideas and opinions that tell fictional stories and provide entertainment.
Considering these notions of knowledge and power, as well as the links between them, is important. They shape the decisions made by the government and big businesses, and have profound impacts on the lives of all Australians with consequences that over-privilege some and under-privilege others. Notions of knowledge and power help to describe how governments and large businesses undervalue cultural knowledge, especially compared to economics, science or other ‘objective truths’. As an extension, it describes how Indigenous knowledges are positioned as secondary to economic gain in Western frameworks, which ultimately enables the destruction of Indigenous lands and life.
Image source https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-55250137
The destruction of Juukan Gorge by Rio Tinto in May 2020 was a seminal case in terms of the consequences for the perpetrators. Rio Tinto, one of the biggest players in Australia’s largest industry, was seemingly held to account for their blasting of this culturally significant site. The event has also had an apparent impact on settler-Australia at large, with widespread reporting on the event and much commentary, both domestically and abroad.
After undergoing legal proceedings in late 2020, eight recommendations were handed down to Rio Tinto by the courts. Rio Tinto was ordered to compensate the Traditional Custodians of the gorge – the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and the Pinikura peoples – by reconstructing the site, commiting to a permanent moratorium in the area, removing all gag clauses or restrictions on Traditional Owner rights and negotiating a restitution package. Rio Tinto also suffered further consequences in the fall-out. Public pressure resulted in casualties to their executive team, with the board driven to sack Chief Executive Officer, Jean-Sebastian Jacques, and two other senior Australian executives. This is the one of the most public and comprehensive investigations into the desecration of a sacred site, Rio Tinto being the only large mining company to have sacked its CEO for reasons that relate to the cultural violence in Australia.
In isolated economic terms, these outcomes appear significant; they are consequences that Australian courts deemed appropriate to the scale of the loss. However, these consequences – at least as they are reported on – do not outline the loss suffered by Puutu Kunti Kurrama and the Pinikura peoples. Instead, they outline what the dominant, Anglo-Australian culture perceive the loss suffered by Puutu Kunti Kurrama and the Pinikura peoples to be. That is, Australia’s eurocentric legal system and predominantly non-Indigenous reporters, have defined for the broader population what the loss is.
When journalists describe the loss at Juukan Gorge, they describe what Rio Tinto destroyed; stone and wooden tools providing evidence of grinding and bone technologies as well as a belt of plaited hair that is more than 40,000 years old with DNA evidence linking it to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and the Pinikura peoples. These artefacts, as well as the 7,000 in total that have been removed from the caves, are, of course, extremely significant. However, their cultural value gives a depth of significance that extends far beyond the evidence that they provide.
The information being delivered to the mainstream, non-Indigenous audience through the media depicts cultural significance as something mythical and elusive, reducing the value of culturally significant sites to their archeological significance. It assumes that non-Indigenous Australians are naturally so different from Indigenous Australians in terms of what they perceive as valuable; that non-Indigenous Australians could never understand the notion of cultural value to Indigenous people and only understand dates and figures. In my own life, I’ve seen the profound impact that art, music, sport, religion and family tradition has on many of the lives of my non-Indigenous friends and family. The value of culturally significant Indigenous sites, however, are rarely examined by Anglo-Australia through this lens. In this context, numerical value is the preferred, not the absolute definition of value.
The destruction of Juukan Gorge has been reported on as an individual event, as one of many isolated instances where sacred sites are destroyed so as to achieve (non-Indigenous) corporate or government objectives. In this way, at risk, sacred sites that have been reported on since, have been described as the potential to be “the next Juukan Gorge” – another catastrophic event that is not viewed or described as endemic of the same structures that underpin settler-colonial Australia.
Nothing again will be like the destruction of Juukan Gorge, for the impact that it has had on Puutu Kunti Kurrama and the Pinikura peoples is distinct and unique. Yet the destruction of all sacred sites – at the hands of individuals, corporations and government alike – are bound together in terms of what they communicate. The destruction of sacred sites are expressions of the lack of respect and lack of understanding that the vast population of non-Indigenous Australians have of Indigenous Australian cultures.
It’s important for all Australians to respect and understand what it is for a site to be culturally significant. As a nation, we need to stop reducing the value of cultural sites to figures and science, and create space for a cultural significance which runs deeper. Individually, non-Indigenous Australians can look to First Nations peoples, rather than the government, corporations or Western education systems, to understand the value of culture, whilst recognising that First Nations peoples and bodies may be bound by Western legal frameworks or cultural obligations in terms of what they can share. When talking, reading, and sharing is not an option, we can build knowledge in our quiet moments, when we sit and consider what is really of value. Culture is knowledge and knowledge is power, so if this nation allows itself to know and embrace the power of culture, I believe there will one day be change.
Read more information about what we, as a nation, can learn about Juukan Gorge here.
