Federal Court awards Yindjibarndi about $150 million
The Federal Court in Perth awarded yindjibarndi about $150 million on Tuesday after Justice Stephen Burley found Fortescue Metals Group mined on their land without an agreement and damaged cultural sites. He told a packed courtroom that the community’s economic loss was $100,000, while its cultural loss was $150 million.
The ruling leaves Fortescue facing a compensation bill far below the $1.8 billion Yindjibarndi Ngurra Aboriginal Corporation had sought, but far above the $5 million to $10.1 million figure the state and Fortescue said should apply. Burley said, “The evidence supports the conclusion that significant damage has been done to Yindjibarndi song lines and other areas of cultural heritage,” in Perth on Tuesday.
Perth judgment
Burley handed down the judgment after a court battle that began in 2022. Fortescue started mining at the hub in the Pilbara in 2013, and the Yindjibarndi people were granted exclusive native title over the compensation claim area in 2017. The company will have to pay the Aboriginal community about $150 million under the court’s ruling.
The evidence before the court also included the scale of the mine footprint. About 75 per cent of the Solomon Mine Hub’s 400 square kilometre footprint extends across the Yindjibarndi native title determination area. Yindjibarndi said more than 250 sites have been damaged or destroyed.
Yindjibarndi claim
Yindjibarndi said Fortescue mined on its land without an agreement and destroyed cultural sites. The claim it brought sought compensation for cultural damage, economic loss, destruction of sites and alleged social disharmony, with the total put at $1.8 billion.
Fortescue has previously said it was committed to seeing the matter settled and was prepared to pay compensation. Its founder, Andrew Forrest, is among the named people in the case, and the dispute now turns on the size of the payment ordered by the court rather than whether compensation will be paid at all.
Fortescue payment
The award gives the community a court-set figure after years of litigation over land use, cultural heritage and native title rights. For Yindjibarndi, the immediate result is a compensation order tied to damage the judge accepted had been done to song lines and other heritage areas.
For Fortescue, the ruling fixes the size of its liability in the Perth case and narrows the fight to payment rather than the existence of a debt. The company had already said it was prepared to pay compensation, and the judgment now sets the amount at about $150 million.
