Introduction

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION On the 28th of August 1979 diamonds were located in gravel samples collected in the East Kimberley region of northern Western Australia (see Map 1). Geologists had obtained this sample from the dry riverbed of Smoke Creek on the Lissadell Pastoral Station. Some months later the source of the diamonds was identified as a major diamond-bearing lamproite pipe in the Blatchford Escarpment, in the southern end of the Ragged Range, later named AK1 (Argyle Kimberlite No. 1) (Plate 1).1 This discovery was to lead to the development of the Argyle Diamond Mine (see Map 2).2 Plate 1: Barramundi Gap before Mining Photograph Courtesy Argyle The local Gija, Malngin, Miriwoong (Miriuwung) and Worla (Woolah or Wularr) people have long-standing connections to this part of the East 1 The location of the mine has also been variously described as in the “eastern end of the Matsu Range” (Department of Mines Western Australia 1986:37) and in the “southern Blatchford Escarpment” (Palmer and Williams 1990:5). 2 The mine takes its name from the Argyle Pastoral Lease, created in 1886, and Lake Argyle, which borders the Argyle mining lease area in the northeast. Lake Argyle was created in 1972 with the damming of the Ord River and the subsequent inundation of the Argyle pastoral lease. 1 INSERT MAP 1 Map 1: The Kimberley 2 INSERT MAP 2 Map 2: Argyle Mine Lease 3 Kimberley.3 The site where the diamond-bearing lamproite pipe occurs is called Gelganyem by Miriwoong speakers, Kilkayi by Gija speakers, and more generally ‘Barramundi Gap’ by local Aboriginal people. Barramundi Gap is of significance to the local Aboriginal people and especially to Aboriginal women because it is one of the numerous resting places of the female Barramundi creative Dreaming being.4 It is the place where some Dreamtime Women attempted to capture the Barramundi with a spinifex fishing trap.5 Indeed, as we shall see, as plans to begin mining in this area unfolded the assertion by local Aboriginal people that Barramundi Gap is a site of great cultural significance to them was not challenged by the geologists who discovered the Argyle diamond pipe or by other mining personnel. The geologists who made the AK1 discovery were working for the Ashton Joint Venture (hereafter AJV). This venture was created in 1976 when the Kalumburu Joint Venture6 parties entered into a joint venture partnership with CRA Exploration (hereafter CRAE), a subsidiary of the trans-national mining company CRA Ltd. (hereafter CRA), which was later to become Rio Tinto. At the time of the diamond deposit’s discovery, and until 2001, the Argyle mine continued to be a joint venture operation while the mine and the entity that operated it came to be known as `Argyle.’ Following this convention, I will refer to the mine and the entity operating it as ‘Argyle’ throughout this thesis, except where the precise corporate structure of CRAE, the Ashton Joint Venture, or other companies associated with the mine are being discussed. 3 See Elkin (1932:297, 1933a: 436); Capell and Elkin (1937:217); Turner and Green (1987); Kaberry (1937a: 91- 94, 1939); Palmer and Williams (1980, 1990); Lee J (1998:58). The way that these identity labels are spelt varies. I am following the spellings that are used by local Aboriginal language centres except where a name has been spelt in a particular way such as for the Miriuwung Gajerrong native title claim. 4 Kofod (pers comm 2003) says that the gender of the word for Barramundi is feminine in the Gija language and masculine in the Miriwoong language although both groups recognise that this particular Barramundi is a female. 5 See Ross (1987:41, Plate 12) for a photograph of Aboriginal women in Halls Creek using this method to gather fish. 6 The Kalumburu Joint Venture was formed in 1972 to explore above the 19o in the Kimberley region. The partners were Tanganyika Holdings Ltd, A.O. (Australia) Pty Ltd, Northern Mining Corporation N.L., Jennings Mining Ltd, Sibeka Societe D’Enterprise et D’Investisements SA. They each held a 20% interest. The KJV is 4 Local Aboriginal people challenged the proposed mining in and around the area of Barramundi Gap. Various sympathetic groups, including non- Aboriginal local community workers and members of the newly formed Kimberley-wide, grass-roots Aboriginal organization and political lobby group, the Kimberley Land Council (hereafter KLC), supported their efforts. Nonetheless, in 1980, following a series of negotiations, legal challenges and political lobbying, two representatives of CRAE and CRA signed an agreement with five Aboriginal people from East Kimberley Aboriginal groups connected to the diamond bearing area.7 This agreement became known variously as the Glen Hill Agreement, the Argyle Agreement, and more commonly the Good Neighbour Agreement (see Appendix 1) and was reproduced in the Argyle Participation Agreement 2004 in Schedule 4). In creating this agreement, CRA was acting within its policy framework of being a ‘Good Neighbour.’ For CRA, this framework was not about land rights, or compensation, or a mining royalty or royalty equivalent for local Aboriginal people. Instead, CRA understood the agreement as a gesture of ‘everyday courtesy’ and ‘good neighbourliness.’ Nonetheless, the agreement provided for a range of benefits to flow to local Aboriginal people and for their opposition to the planned diamond mine to be withdrawn, thus removing one of the potential obstacles to the development of the mine. The Good Neighbour Agreement was not a public document, although some of the terms of the agreement were announced through a media release.8 Moreover, the signing of the agreement occurred during a very contentious period in the history of relations between Aboriginal people and the government of Western Australia and before the company had secured any regulatory discussed in more detail in Chapter 5. 7 The term ‘traditional owners’ has entered everyday discourse concerning Aboriginal people, native title claims and their standing in relation to many other political realities. The term ‘traditional owners’ was once restricted to those Aborigines that met the legal and technical requirements of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act (1976) S3 (1). Today, however, ‘traditional owners’ has become synonymous with a more generalised and unspecified sense of those Aborigines who belong to certain places and have the right to speak for those places based on their own laws and customs. Because of this slippage into everyday discourse, and an absence of any other more defined term, there has emerged a need to define ‘traditional owners’ on a case-by-case basis. 8 Rennie (1980), CRA Company Secretary, provided a detailed press release the day after the signing of the Good Neighbour Agreement. The press release stated that the company acknowledged that the mining would impact on areas of “interest to the custodians” (1980:1). It also stated that “[t]he Custodians expressed the desire to avoid a dispute at Argyle such as had occurred at Noonkanbah” (1980:1). The press release outlined 5 permissions from relevant State or Federal Government Departments that would authorise mining and the sale of diamonds. As well, the Aboriginal people who signed the agreement received little assistance in these negotiations.9 Throughout 1979 and the first half of the 1980s there had been intense conflict regarding Aboriginal land rights, resource development and the protection of Aboriginal heritage sites in the context of resource development in the Kimberley, most particularly oil exploration at Noonkanbah Station in the Fitzroy Valley region of the Central Kimberley.10 The so-called ‘Nookanbah dispute’ had begun when local Aborigines opposed the proposed drilling programme by the oil exploration company AMAX at “Pea Hill” (P Hill), Umpampurru, a place of enormous spiritual significance to them located on Noonkanbah Station. The dispute elicited a response from the Western Australian State Government that was couched in terms of Aborigines impeding regional resource development and thus blocking economic progress for the State and nation (for example see Australian Mining Industry Council [AMIC] 1981; see also Figure 1). The dispute escalated when Aborigines from throughout the Kimberley travelled to Noonkanbah to join a protest camp and blockade aimed at preventing Amax from conducting their exploration activities. The Noonkanbah protesters had the support of the Trades and Labor Council (WA) and associated unions who imposed work bans on the movement of exploration related equipment. The Western Australian State Government intervened by providing a police escorted convoy of drilling equipment to the site so that the exploration could begin. Pea Hill was drilled but no oil was found, an outcome that the late senior Gija man, Jack Brittain, some of the details of the capital works that were to be undertaken, but no total financial value was given. 9 CRA provided the funds to engage a lawyer for the Aborigines for the couple of days while they were in Perth finalising the negotiations for the agreement. This would become a major criticism of CRA’s negotiation process. 10 ‘Noonkanbah’ has been the subject of academic comment, for example Howitt (1981a: 58-72 and 2001:223- 237); Vincent (1983); and Wyatt (1992:11-12) while Hawke and Gallagher prepared a book providing a comprehensive treatment of the events that became ‘Noonkanbah’ (1989). 6 attributed to local Aboriginal maparn, or ‘witch doctors,’ using their powers to remove the Dreamtime Goanna’s fat [the oil] from the location and therefore thwart the oil company’s programme.11 However, the State had effectively demonstrated both their will and their capacity to support resource development activities against Aboriginal peoples’ efforts to protect their sacred sites. Figure 1: Indicative Headlines of ‘Noonkanbah Dispute’ (late 1970s and early 1980s) The events of Noonkanbah were to have a far-reaching impact at the State and Federal levels of political debate regarding indigenous rights as well as on debates within the industrial and resource sectors of Australia.

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