Pearls and Irritations

The increasing global demand for rare earth elements (REE) is driven by clean energy technologies. The electric vehicle in particular, is a strong driving force. The un-ceded sovereign lands of hundreds of First Nations – now colonised and called Australia – hold at least four per cent of the world’s rare earth element reserves.

Australia is positioned to capitalise on this growing market, and the lands of my ancestors, the Meintangk, Bunganditj, Portawutj peoples in the southeast of the state of South Australia are covered with exploration licences, enabling miners to explore in country from Keith to Mt Gambier. The Koppamurra Project being developed by Australian Rare Earths Ltd. has scoped sites in SA and western Victoria, its exploration leases covering more than a third of the South-East.

Australian Rare Earths Ltd has already excavated a test pit at Koppamurra, with a plan to apply for a mining lease in 2025; it anticipates production of dysprosium, terbium, neodymium and praseodymium ores by their extraction from a shallow clay layer which extends across a broad area. While Ausmon Resources Limited recently lodged an Exploration Program for Environmental Protection and Rehabilitation with the South Australian Department of Exploration and Mining.

As an Elder of the region proposed for exploration I have not been advised of these developments.

While the new green economy is one plan for addressing climate change, we have to ask: at what cost to our natural world? Strip mining for REE will destroy our country – for humans and for all our natural-world relations.

Strip mining could destroy the existing vegetation, completely alter the soil and potentially destroy existing aquifers. Rare earth mining will leave gashes on the land; we will no longer hear the sound of birds and water sites with fish and other aquatic species will disappear.

Rare earth mining will devastate and change the land forever. Mineral treatments produce mountains of toxic waste, with high risk of environmental and health hazards. High value land will no longer be grazed by native species, let alone cattle and sheep, and the food bowl reputation of the region will be damaged, a dilemma for a state which boasts of its food and water security options for the future.

Water, a finite resource, essential for life, could be lost to a landscape which prior to colonisation was known as the great wetlands of the south. And our Aboriginal history, law and culture would be completely compromised by a new ecocide – following the genocide of our ancestors.

Make no mistake: the large scale operations of the REEs industry transforms landscapes. The REE mining process would be the source of contaminants, such asradionucleides, other toxic metals and dust. Strip mining in this karst-landscape region could cause the land to sink or cave in. Leakage of toxic fluids could cause surface and ground water contamination and consequent devastating effects on the environment.

Establishing the extensive mining sites which would be required by large-scale extraction of REE requires deforestation, the loss of wildlife habitats, and inevitable damage to biodiversity. The removal of our red-gum and other woodlands, which have been cultivated by us in the South-East for millennia, will expose the land to heat and storm winds at a time when we should be protecting them at all costs: the value of the standing woodlands of the South-East is incalculable, encompassing the benefits derived from carbon storage and the environmental services of shelter and habitat they provide. The potential release of toxic chemicals from mine sites and mineral treatment into the environment and thus our food chain is alarming.

First Nations continue to care for our country. The obligation we carry to care for country is foremost in my mind. Australian law is weak and offers few remedies that support us in our efforts to fulfil our obligations.

This is while the wealth generated by mining is not shared equitably. Even where mining companies and First Nations have negotiated native title land use agreements, Aboriginal Peoples remain highly disadvantaged. Australia’s Critical Minerals Strategy (2023− 2030) outlines the government’s vision to create critical mineral supply chains and build sovereign capability in mining and processing. While the strategy states an intent to establish “genuine partnerships” and “share benefits” with First Nations communities, no detail is provided as to how this will be achieved. There is no mention of First Nations’ desires to care for and protect country. Currently First Nations capacity to independently negotiate is not resourced, other than through limited and weak processes under the Native Title Act.

The Australian settler-colonial laws of Native Title recognise those who pass the native title hurdle as having certain rights in relation to the determined native titled lands. But Native Title is a weak limited form of recognition which has minimal capacity to protect the environment from destruction. The native title right to negotiate does not extend to upholding consent or to withholding consent and saying ‘no!’. The power and force of capital investment in mining trumps Aboriginal ways of being in relationship to country, water and sea. This is evident across native title jurisprudence.

There are no strategies in Australia’s critical minerals landscape to support First Nations negotiations. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) requires that free, prior and informed consent is a minimum standard to be applied in all negotiations, including those with First Nations regarding rare earths exploitation.

First Nations peoples have been ignored throughout the history of colonial Australia, notwithstanding its unlawful terra nullius foundation. Obtaining the free prior and informed consent of First Nations Peoples has always been ignored.

We remain sovereign First Nations, -we have never formally ceded our territories, nor is there any intention of doing so in the future.

But colonialism remains fixed, dominant and ongoing and it can manufacture any consent it requires. Genocide has occurred here and we await more to come – in the face of an ecocide of country, a future we must avoid at all costs.

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