Mining giant Rio Tinto stripped its $3.5 million CEO Monday after the company destroyed a 46,000-year Aboriginal legacy to expand an iron ore mine in Australia.
Anglo-Australian society blew up rocky shelters at Juukan Gorge in western Australia’s remote Pilbara region on 24 May, destroying one of the first sites occupied by Australia’s indigenous peoples.
Rio Tinto CEO Jean-Sébastien Jacques will lose 2.7 million pounds ($3.5 million) in functionality bonuses as a result of the incident, the company announced Monday following a high-level review.
Iron ore leader Chris Salisbury and company principal Simone Niven will also lose $792,000 and $687,000, respectively.
The board review revealed that Rio Tinto had received legal approval to blow up the sites, but in doing so it “met the internal criteria and rules that Rio Tinto had set itself.”
He concluded that “no basic cause or error” led directly to destruction, but “the result of a series of decisions, movements and omissions over a long period of time.”
Rio Tinto President Simon Thompson said there had been “many missed opportunities for nearly a decade” and that the company had renowned local communities and their heritage.
Mining giant Rio Tinto cut executive bonuses after company destroyed a 46,000-year Aboriginal inheritance at Juukan Gorge in Western Australia Photo: PKKP Aboriginal Corporation/Handout Document
“While the review provides a transparent framework for change, it is to tighten that this is the beginning of a process, not the end,” he said.
“We will put in place new vital measures and governance to make sure that we will not repeat what happened at Juukan Gorge.”
Thompson said the company would accept paints to repair as true with the Aboriginal communities of Pinikura and Puutu Kunti Kurrama (PKKP), which are the classic owners of the area.
Rio Tinto first defended its blasting in juukan Gorge as permitted by a 2013 agreement with the state government.
But the poignant protests of indigenous leaders, who said they had only been informed of the planned explosion when it had already passed to save it, led the corporation to apologize.
The cultural importance of the Juukan Gorge was demonstrated through an archaeological excavation carried out in one of the rocky shelters a year after Rio Tinto granted permission to operate in the area.
Excavations have exposed the oldest known example of bone equipment in Australia, a 28,000-year-old sharp kangaroo bone, and a braided hair belt that DNA tests connected with indigenous peoples still living in the area.
The State Government of Western Australia is recently reviewing legislation governing mining operations near Aboriginal heritage sites.