The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx

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The Extractive Industries and Society

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Original article

Securing territory for mining when Traditional Owners say ‘No’: The
exceptional case of Wangan and Jagalingou in Australia
Kristen Lyons
School of Social Science, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane, Qld, 4072, Australia

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Australian Governments have strongly supported Indian-owned industrial conglomerate Adani Enterprises to
Adani build its proposed Carmichael Mine, including via the sustained pursuit of control over Indigenous homelands to
Australia ‘open up’ a new coal frontier in Queensland’s Galilee Basin. This demonstrates a legacy of disavowing Indigenous
Extractivism rights in the interests of securing territory for extractivist development. In asserting their right to oppose the
Indigenous rights
destruction of their ancestral homelands by Adani’s proposed Carmichael Mine, Wangan and Jagalingou
Territory
Traditional Owners’ have encountered again the reality of a settler colonial state that has sidelined and silenced
Wangan and Jagalingou
their rights and interests. Drawing from a research partnership with Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners
Family Council, this paper traces state formation to secure territory, alongside Traditional Owners’ resistance
upon this territorialisation of their homelands. Those Traditional Owners of Wangan and Jagalingou country
who oppose Adani’s proposed Carmichael Mine have exposed the coercive and manipulative roles of the con-
temporary settler colonial state, and in so doing, have disrupted state intervention to enable Adani’s proposed
Carmichael Mine.

1. Introduction politics in legacies of domination that still sideline Indigenous interests

Mine prospecting and extractivist development has extended its
reach in the Asia-Pacific region in recent decades, delivering profound
impacts for local communities, especially Indigenous peoples (Ballard
and Banks, 2003; Allen, 2017). Capitalist extractive development drives
social, cultural, psychological and environmental upheaval for In-
digenous communities, including, in many cases, irreversible destruc-
tion of Indigenous homelands (see for example O’Faircheallaigh, 2013;
Crook and Short, 2014). In contemporary settler colonial states, this
injustice is enabled by colonial legacies that provide a legal and poli-
tical basis for ongoing Indigenous dispossession from homelands
(Strelein, 2005; Echo Hawk, 2010; Gilbert, 2015).
Turning to Australia – an island continent historically dependent on
mineral development, and where extractivism has delivered significant
structural disadvantage for Indigenous peoples (Langton and Mazel,
2008; O’Faircheallaigh, 2011) – colonial history exemplifies capital
accumulation by dispossession. The colonial project to secure land,
territory and natural resources rendered a violent history of frontier
massacres and Indigenous dispossession in Australia (Crook and Short,
2014; Echo Hawk, 2010). This colonial legacy reverberates up to today
(Strelein, 2005) through encounters between the state and Indigenous
peoples, giving life to old colonial fictions – including the doctrines of
discovery and terra nullius – which ground contemporary law and
and rights.
Australia’s extractivist colonial history established the basis for the
commodification and trade in ‘natural resources’, with recent growth
accentuated during the minerals and energy boom of the 2000s
(Howlett et al., 2011; Gilbert, 2015). With one of the world’s largest
reserves of coal, Australia is the world’s second largest coal exporter,
valued at an estimated $56.5 billion in 2017 (Pearse et al., 2014; World
Coal, 2018). As a mineral dependent state, Australia relies upon the
extractive industries and their investors (Bebbington et al., 2008). Yet
declining coal industry growth has led to a drop in national coal exports
(Altman, 2009; Buckley and Nicholas, 2017). Coal industry decline
points to the global energy transition – from fossil fuels to renewables –
that is well underway, alongside growing international agreement, and
ratified through the UNFCCC, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from
the burning of coal (Healy and Barry, 2017).
Despite the international and market industry trends, the colonial
settler state, global corporate capital, media and other elite interests in
Australia have converged to support on-going coal extractivism. This
paper documents the confluence of these interests in territorialising
Indigenous land for coal extractivism, including by bringing to life a
number of colonial fictions to sideline Traditional Owners’ rights – in-
cluding their right to free prior and informed consent (Hanna and
Vanclay, 2013) – whose resistance is grounded in adherence to their

E-mail address: Kristen.lyons@uq.edu.au.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2018.11.007
Received 24 April 2018; Received in revised form 13 November 2018; Accepted 21 November 2018
2214-790X/ © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Please cite this article as: Lyons, K., The Extractive Industries and Society, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2018.11.007
K. Lyons
pre-colonial laws and cultural sovereignty.
In doing so, this paper reports on the case of Adani’s Carmichael
Mine, a controversial open cut coal mine that is proposed for Central
Queensland, in Australia. The Carmichael Mine, if developed, would be
one of the world’s largest open cut coal mines, ‘opening up’ a region
known as the Galilee Basin, regarded as Australia’s largest untapped
coal reserve – the continents’ new coal frontier. Adani’s proposed
Carmichael Mine has garnered strong community opposition – in-
cluding on the basis of its impacts to local groundwater and endemic
species, it’s over-inflated claims related to employment opportunities,
and its direct and indirect threats to Australia’s World Heritage listed
Great Barrier Reef. Adani has also fueled conflict and divided
Indigenous Australians, whose homelands would be directly impacted
by the mine – and in some cases, have already been impacted – by
related rail and port infrastructure (Ritter, 2018). Reflecting this con-
troversy, Adani was a key issue in the 2017 Queensland State election,
and the Queensland Labor Government shifted its position mid-way
through its election campaign – to veto almost $1 billion (Aust) in
Federal Government funding1 previously earmarked for infrastructure
to support the mine’s development – to quell electoral backlash.2
This paper draws its analysis from a research collaboration3 with
Traditional Owners from Wangan and Jagalingou nations in Central
Queensland – the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family
Council (WJTOC) – who have sustained, over many years, opposition to
Adani’s Carmichael Mine on their homelands. In opposing Adani, this
group of Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners is engaged in a
remarkable battle. The significance of their battle lies in the context of
Australia’s native title regime which denies Indigenous peoples’ right to
veto a proposed development on customary lands, the foundation of
free, prior and informed consent (Howard-Wagner and Maguire, 2010;
O’Faircheallaigh, 2016). Yet these Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional
Owners are pursuing this right, made profoundly tangible through their
campaign: ‘Adani, No Means No’. They are also pursuing these rights
within a regime that is inherently coercive, including by enabling
government and the proponents they back to threaten extinguishment
of native title and compulsory acquisition of their rights in their land,
while putting Traditional Owners under duress to approve mining de-
velopments or risk losing any compensation.
This creates profound uncertainty for all Traditional Owners, in-
cluding Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners. The native title
regime also determines that in circumstances where Traditional Owners
fail to reach, or refuse to enter into, agreement with mining companies,
they are denied royalties (Gregoire, 2018). Simply put, to pursue their
right to oppose a mine on their homelands, Traditional Owners must
forfeit any financial compensation, even if the mine then proceeds.
Given this political and legal context, there are few cases of sustained
opposition to mining by Indigenous people4 such as that demonstrated
1 able Adani, the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family
This loan is proposed to be provided by the Federal Government’s Northern
Australia Infrastructure Fund (NAIF).
2
Community members across Queensland disrupted events during the elec-
tion campaign, including confronting Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk at a Labor
Party campaign event in an outer Brisbane suburb, by joining the stage with a
‘Stop Adani’ banner (Brisbane Times, 2017).
3
This research is funded by the University of Queensland’s Global Change
Institute’s Flagship program, ‘We are the people from that land: Centring
Indigenous peoples’ rights in the transition to a sustainable, low carbon future’
(2016-2018). This project includes a transdisciplinary team of researchers from
the University of Queensland, in partnership with the Wangan and Jagalingou
Traditional Owners Family Council and Australian Lawyers for Human Rights.
https://gci.uq.edu.au/we-are-people-land.
4
This paper acknowledges there has been a long history of Indigenous peo-
ples’ resistance to mining projects on their country in Australia (see Hawke and
Gallagher, 1989; Cleary, 2017). Similarly, Indigenous communities are often at
the forefront of alternative energy developments, reclaiming the ‘green
economy for brown people’ (LaDuke, 2008) to centre the rights and interests of
2
The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
by the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council.5
Continuing to say no – as described in this paper – is exceptional.
The Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council
resistance provides a unique case to examine encounters between the
settler colonial state and Indigenous people. While there is a well es-
tablished body of work that interrogates this engagement in the context
of extractivist development, there is limited literature that interrogates
state formation during encounters when Traditional Owners say no –
over the long term – to mining. In this context, the contribution of this
paper is twofold. Firstly, it provides an account that bares witness to the
campaign of Traditional Owners of Wangan and Jagalingou country in
defending their right to say no to mining, through a research approach
that centres their rights and interests, and is therefore situated in
broader moves to decolonise knowledge in settler-colonial settings (see
Moreton-Robinson, 2017). Secondly, it generates new insights into
encounters between Indigenous people and state actors in the context of
this assertion.
To do this, the paper begins with an introduction to the research
methodology, and provides some background to the Wangan and
Jagalingou Traditional Owners who oppose Adani’s proposed
Carmichael Mine on their homelands. It then situates the Wangan and
Jagalingou case in the context of territorial struggles for access and
control of natural resources, and encounters between Indigenous, co-
lonial settler states and the private sector. The paper then traces the
Australian colonial settler state’s commitment to ‘open up’ the Galilee
Basin in Central Queensland. It demonstrates the transference of state
interests from the Galilee Basin, in general, to singling out Adani
Mining Pty Ltd, in particular, as enabler for state extractivist devel-
opmentalism. With Adani singled out as custodian for Australia’s coal
future, this paper scrutinises settler colonial state formation to secure
control of Wangan and Jagalingou homelands as the basis for the
Carmichael Mine project to proceed.
Despite the legacies of violent frontier colonialism upon which the
contemporary settler colonial state has formed – with outcomes that
disavow Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners’ rights to oppose
Adani’s proposed Carmichael Mine on their homelands – the future of
the mine remains uncertain. The Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional
Owners Family Council continue to assert their right to oppose mining
on their homelands as part of their defense of country and culture, and
are pursuing this through an on-going legal program and political
campaign. This, combined with Adani’s failure to secure financial close
for its mine project, alongside strong international support for the
Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council campaign –
including solidarity with Indigenous leaders from Standing Rock Sioux
and Chickaloon Village Traditional Council in Turtle Island6 – re-
presents a resurgence of original sovereign rights over settler colonial
state formation. Where this will end in terms of advancing Indigenous
rights in Australia is yet to be determined. Regardless of that outcome,
by exposing the overt actions of State and Federal governments to en-
Council have unsettled the colonial settler state in its service to the
extractive industries.
2. Methodology: positioning the research
Adani Mining Pty Ltd’s proposed project – including coal mine, rail
(footnote continued)
Indigenous people as part of energy transition.
5
A notable exception in Australia includes Traditional Owner opposition to
the proposed LNG gas process plant at James Price Point in north-west
Australia.
6
This solidarity was asserted at an event co hosted by the Wangan and
Jagalingou Traditional Owners Council and the University of Queensland’s
Human Rights Consortium (see https://gci.uq.edu.au/uq-human-rights-
consortium-events).
K. Lyons
and port infrastructure – if it were to go ahead, would run from the
north Queensland coast at the Adani Abbott Point Terminal (which the
company acquired in 2011), through central Western Queensland via a
proposed North Galilee Basin Rail Project, to the coal mine that would
be situated in the Northern Galilee Basin. This horizontally integrated
project would cross the homelands of four different Aboriginal nations.
While Adani has reached land use agreements as the basis for works to
proceed with Indigenous nations – within the context of a native title
regime that is recognised as favouring mining interests (see for example
Corbett and O’Faircheallaigh, 2006) – in the process it has driven
conflict to divide Indigenous communities. This is not unique to In-
digenous peoples that will be – or have already been – affected by
Adani’s proposed mine development project; it is part and parcel of
encounters between state, mining companies and Indigenous peoples
(Bebbington et al., 2008; Echo Hawk, 2010). The research from which
this paper draws acknowledges such conflict is a salient feature of
mining and extractivist projects. Tensions frequently play out within
and amongst Indigenous groups, especially related to controversial
projects, and mining companies often take a lead in driving this con-
flict. The case of Indigenous peoples in the context of Adani’s proposed
Carmichael Mine project is no different.
At the site where Adani’s Carmichael Mine would be located –
Wangan and Jagalingou ancestral lands – conflict is visceral, with
Indigenous peoples split between protection of country and sacred
places, and the lure of economic development and employment op-
portunities.7 Adani’s highly contested Indigenous Land Use Agreement
(ILUA) with Wangan and Jagalingou people demonstrates this conflict.
The first ILUA Adani proposed to Wangan and Jagalingou
Traditional Owners was voted down at a 2012 authorisation meeting. In
2014, Adani provided a revised document, which was again rejected by
the traditional owner claim group at an authorisation meeting. The
Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council describe a
‘self-determined’ meeting held in March 2016 – one they organised
without involvement of Adani – as also confirming, for a third time,
they were resolute in rejecting any offer from Adani in exchange for the
extinguishment of their native title rights. However, and as indictor of
Adani’s heavy hand, alongside the State Governments’ central role in
constructing Indigenous consent for the Carmichael Mine to proceed, in
late 2015 the Coordinator General and Adani initiated a further attempt
to settle a land use agreement. This was obtained at a meeting in April
2016. Yet this meeting outcome stands in contrast to three separate
meetings held earlier, and a subsequent meeting held in December
2017, again without the involvement of the mining company (Wagner,
2017).8 Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council
spokesperson, Adrian Burragubba, has described this as a “sham
agreement”, manufactured only through the relentless bullying from
the Queensland Government and Adani. This Agreement has been the
subject of legal challenge through the National Native Title Tribunal
and the Federal Court.9 It is now under appeal to the full bench of the
7
Adani’s Indigenous Participation Plan purports to deliver $250 million in
benefits to Indigenous people over the coming 30 years. Such claims, however,
are highly contested, with analysis by Murray Meaton (2017) concluding the
Plan represents one of the worst deals for Traditional Owners in Australia’s
history, and well below industry standards (see also Robertson, 2017b). Mea-
ton’s analysis was also submitted as Affidavit as part of the Delia Kemppi &
Others v Adani Mining Pty Ltd & Others, 2018 case.
8
Investigations have revealed that some attendees received undisclosed
payments of sitting fees to attend this meeting (Robertson, 2017a).
9 lection included observations at Wangan and Jagalingou Family
Opponents to the proposed mine assert this meeting where agreement was
reached, was attended by large numbers of individuals who were not members
of the native title group or able to authorise the Adani ILUA, and who had never
previously identified as Wangan and Jagalingou, and therefore had no right to
vote (Wagner, 2017). Adani has also been criticized for failing to explain the
details of the agreement; or allow independent analysis of the costs and benefits
of the deal; and failed to identify the area – some 2750 hectares – that would be
3
The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
Federal Court.
There is a growing literature that examines the conflicts and ten-
sions that so often define encounters between extractive industries and
Indigenous people, including the coercive power of state corporate al-
liances, as is the case related to Indigenous peoples’ encounters with
Adani. Within this literature, dominant approaches often align with the
economic opportunities afforded by mining, and the ‘right’ to partici-
pate in mining (Ballard and Banks, 2003; Bebbington et al., 2008). In
contrast, relatively little work engages with Indigenous people who
assert their right to say no to extractivist forms of development on their
homelands – as mandated through the concept of free, prior and in-
formed consent, outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the
Rights of Indigenous People and the International Labour Organisation
Convention 169 – including encounters with the colonial settler state in
the context of their assertion of this right (Bebbington et al., 2008;
Hanna and Vanclay, 2013). This paper is therefore positioned to con-
tribute to the nascent literature that documents Indigenous rights and
resistance struggles in the context of extractivist development. In so
doing, and in parallel with Kirsch (2006), this paper asserts that the
human rights and social justice issues that underpin resource extra-
ctivism present the exigent circumstances for “more activist forms of
scholarly engagement” (in Bebbington et al., 2008, p. 902). Its ap-
proach – grounded in a research collaboration with Traditional Owners
asserting their right to say no to extractivist development – renders
visible an Indigenous struggle of national and international sig-
nificance. It posits that the conflict garnered as a consequence of
Adani’s proposed mine on Wangan and Jagalingou homelands has
sparked a creative moment for Indigenous rights in Australia (see also
Bebbington et al., 2008). Where this will end for Traditional Owners of
Wangan and Jagalingou country, Adani, and Australia’s Indigenous
rights agenda, is yet to be determined. In this context, these is an
opening for researchers to adopt an ethics of engagement (Ballard and
Banks, 2003) to remake our understandings of mining and Indigenous
peoples, and to capture this moment in history as it is playing out. This
paper aims, in some way, to contribute to this agenda.
To do this, the research project upon which this paper draws is
grounded in a collaboration with the Wangan and Jagalingou
Traditional Owners Family Council, who have played an active and
leading role throughout the entire project lifecycle, including original
project development, research and fieldwork design. The approach of
this research was informed by a participatory action agenda, including
recognition of the value of both community engagement, and control,
over research processes and outcomes (Dudgeon et al., 2017). The
formation of this research partnership has established the basis for re-
cognizing Wangan and Jagalingou Indigenous collaborators as active
co-researchers, and in so doing, demarcates from extractivist colonial
traditions that assert experts as outsiders (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999). In
practice, this collaborative de-colonial approach involved development
of a research protocol that set out core principles to guide the pro-
duction, ownership, data management and storage, alongside commu-
nication of knowledges and reporting arising from this project. This
project has obtained Human Research Ethics approval through the
University of Queensland (#2017000084), and research has followed
all protocols and processes required by the terms of this approval, in-
cluding the Guidelines for Ethical Research in Australian Indigenous
Studies (AIATSIS, 2012).
The research methods for data collected and reported upon in this
paper include both primary and secondary methods, and data was
collected over 18 months between 2017 and 2018. Primary data col-
Council meetings, informal gatherings, actions and local community
events where Wangan and Jagalingou participated. It also included
(footnote continued)
subject to native title extinguishment.
K. Lyons
informal and unstructured interviews with around 30 women and men
Council members during a trip to Central Queensland in July 2017. A
series of in-depth interviews were also conducted with five Wangan and
Jagalingou Family Council representatives between September and
December 2017.10 An international symposium was also held in July
2018, in which the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family
Council struggle was placed in the context of Indigenous human rights
action and a dialogue amongst First Nations people. Where consent was
granted, interviews were recorded and later transcribed. These were
analysed and key themes identified.
In terms of secondary data, this paper has drawn from Adani’s an-
nual reports and company publications, including its website, alongside
media reporting on Indigenous people in relation to Adani’s proposed
mine, and selected court transcripts. It draws upon material published
since 2015, when the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners
Family Council launched their public campaign against Adani.
Secondary data sources also include the Wangan and Jagalingou
Traditional Owners Family Council websites, Hansard records and
Senate Inquiry submissions related to the Native Title Amendments
(2017) and the Northern Australia Infrastructure Fund (2017).
3. Wangan & Jagalingou Homelands
Adani’s coal tenements and mining leases are on part of the 30,000
square kilometres of land in Central Queensland that is included in the
Wangan and Jagalingou native title claim – lodged in 2004. Adani’s
Carmichael mine – if it were to go ahead – would be built on Wangan
and Jagalingou homelands. Traditional Owners of Wangan and
Jagalingou country have been custodians of this land for “untold
thousands of years”, and their Yuree – or law – is the bee, or Kub-bah, in
Wiirdi traditional language (Burragubba, 2018, p. i). Wangan and Ja-
galingou continue to exercise customary laws and practices on their
lands, including in the area of Adani’s proposed Carmichael Mine
(Burragubba, 2018). On this basis, Wangan and Jagalingou people –
and like Indigenous peoples around the world – have “unique and ir-
replaceable cultures … that contribute valuable and irreplaceable di-
versity to the human family” (Echo Hawk, 2010, p. 168). If Adani’s
proposed Carmichael Mine were to go ahead, it would destroy Wangan
and Jagalingou ancestral homelands, including the Doongmabulla
Springs – their most sacred site – from which the Rainbow Serpent, or
Mundunjudra, travelled to shape the land (Burragubba, pers. corr.
2017).
Adani requires a 2750-hectare area over which native title rights
must be ‘surrendered’ to provide access to land required for ‘critical
infrastructure’ for its mine operations, including an airstrip, workers’
village, washing plant, power plant and rail terminus. They require an
Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) to obtain control of this land
unencumbered by native title rights, or are required to press the state to
forcibly acquire it. A recent court outcome (Delia Kemppi & Others v
Adani Mining Pty Ltd & Others, 2018) that upheld the registration of
Adani’s Indigenous Land Use Agreement has now left it open for the
Queensland Government to extinguish native title over this surrender
area, and issue freehold title to Adani. This decision, however, is being
appealed to the full bench of the Federal High Court. The threat of land
title transfer, and along with five other violations of the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, has formed the
basis of a submission by the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional
Owners Family Council to the United Nations Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) under the urgent action
under the early warning and early action procedure.
It is also of significance to note that the Wangan and Jagalingou
10
The majority of interviews were conducted by two members of the
University of Queensland research team (Kristen Lyons and Morgan Brigg), with
the occasional interview led by just one member of the research team.
4
The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
Traditional Owners Family Council are the only Traditional Owners of
four groups from the Carmichael Mine project, the Northern Galilee
Basin Rail Project, to the Abbott Point coal port, to say no – on four
occasions, at authorisation meetings of the Native Title Claim Group –
to an Indigenous Land Use Agreement with Adani. In so doing, the
Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council have as-
serted sustained opposition to the proposed mine via exercising their
right – provided within the provision of FPIC – to have a say in whether,
and how, development on their homelands should proceed (Branco and
Cox, 2015; Hanna and Vanclay, 2013; Lyons et al., 2017). They do this
on the basis of deep connection, drawn from many millennia of owning
and managing their country, thereby asserting their inherent rights to
chart a self-determined path for a sustainable future (Burragubba,
2018). Their defiant resistance struggle includes a complex legal cam-
paign which has gained national and international recognition, along-
side a high profile public and political campaign.
4. Struggles for territory, and access and control of natural
resources
The boom – and contraction – of the coal industry has occurred at
the same time as privatization, globalization and financialisation have
reconfigured processes for securing territories. The coal industry – and
the formation of new territories for coal extraction – have each been
transformed by these processes. Australia’s extractivist industries, in
particular, have been shaped by these processes, including transforming
nation state ownership and control over resources (see also Sassen,
2014; Allen, 2017). Sassen (2013) describes these shifts as rupturing
national sovereign territory and giving rise to new territorial struggles,
and with consequences that intensify human rights and justice issues.
For resource rich states, including Australia, territorial struggles are
characterised by the convergence of the state and mining corporations,
alongside finance capital and other private interests. Bebbington et al.
(2008) has described resource states as privileging extractive private
sector actors in advance of it’s own citizens, especially in the context of
attempts to harness mining corporations to ‘open up’ new resource
extractive territories. For settler colonial states, state-corporate led ex-
traction extends the long arc of violent extractivist frontiers and re-
source colonialism that has dispossessed indigenous people, at the same
as transforming ecologies and societies (Parson and Ray, 2016).
Rather than disappearing, settler colonial states are being re-
configured to enable foreign capital to advance state extractivist im-
peratives. By establishing the conditions for global corporate capitalism
to drive extractivist developmentalism, the state is instrumental in
shaping how territorialisation unfolds. As Howlett et al. (2011) and
Kirsch (2014) describe, settler colonial states occupy interventionist
and coercive roles in the global market economy, especially in regard to
the extractive industries. It is the push and pull of state actors to es-
tablish new territories of extraction that forms the focus of this paper.
By drawing attention to the activities of state actors, I expose the key
functions of the state in relation to Indigenous peoples in struggles over
territories, including its attempts to secure control over Wangan and
Jagalingou homelands.
The role of settler colonial states in struggles over territory have
been widely documented, including encounters between states, mining
interests and Indigenous peoples. Ballard and Banks (2003), for ex-
ample, have reported on the central role of government in enabling the
mining and resources sectors. Similarly, Valladares and Boelens (2017)
and Van Teijlingen (2016) describe the nation state as advocating
‘mining for national development’, with outcomes that open national
borders to foreign mining interests. Shafer (1994) also identified state
activities as explicitly tied to the leading export sector, including the
extractive industries. The convergence of public and private actors and
interests is also documented globally as driving extractivist develop-
ment (Ballard and Banks, 2003). Sassen (2013) identifies the executive
branch of governments, in particular, as aligned with global corporate
K. Lyons
capital, including extractives. The state imperative of capital accumu-
lation by dispossession has also been widely documented as inflicting
structural and slow violence upon Indigenous peoples, who are fre-
quently sidelined as impediments to development (see for example
Gordon, 2006; Bargh, 2007; Nixon, 2011).
In reference to Australia, Short (2010) describes the settler colonial
states’ territorialisation as supplanting peoples, traditional customs and
laws that preceded it. On this basis, Short (2010, p. 62) contends
“Australia is … a series of continuing genocides”. In Australia, and si-
milar elsewhere, colonial territorial governance has extended over pre-
existing governance structures, including the traditional laws and cus-
toms of Indigenous peoples (Short, 2010; Crook and Short, 2014). This
imperative is underpinned by a series of colonial fictions that enable
Indigenous dispossession. Native American Attorney Walter Echo Hawk
(2010) has described Australia has having sustained an outlandish set of
such legal fictions; given root in a new world – by old world powers – as
part of the on-going scramble for territory.
Amongst these colonial fictions includes the doctrine of discovery, a
worldview divined from Pope Alexander VI’s Papal Bulls (1493). The
Papal Bulls authorised European explorers to lay claim to native lands
they ‘discovered’, setting the groundwork for a colonial fiction that
Indigenous peoples bared no legal rights. This fiction has served at least
two purposes of immediate relevance to the analysis presented in this
paper. Firstly, it has provided a foundation to establish a socio-legal and
policy framework whereby Indigenous peoples’ “right of occupancy …
can be extinguished at the pleasure of the government” (Echo Hawk,
2010, p. 172). Secondly, it established a worldview to morally justify
land theft on the basis of colonial domination over traditional law and
custom. Wangan and Jagalingou’s contemporary encounters with the
settler colonial state – as detailed below – demonstrate the legacy of this
doctrine.
The contemporary relevance of the doctrine of discovery is paired
with the doctrine of terra nullius, establishing a fiction of domination
that permeates the lives of Indigenous peoples up to today. In the his-
toric Mabo decision, the High Court rejected the colonial fiction that
Australia was uninhabited – terra nullius – and determined Indigenous
people hold rights under their own laws and customs (Strelein, 2005).
The Native Title Act represents the legal framework that implements
these rights. However, as Strelein (2005) lucidly explains, while Mabo
signaled a rejection of the concept of terra nullius, it did not reject the
doctrine. Specifically, the High Court failed to reclassify Australia as
having been conquered – it held the fiction of ‘settlement’ – thereby
retaining Australian sovereignty. The outcome of this includes the
subordination of Indigenous laws and customs, and the privileging of
the interests of both the crown and mining companies, conditions ex-
acerbated via Native Title Amendments enacted by the Howard Gov-
ernment in 1996 (Strelein, 2005).
It is these, along with other conditions of Australia’s Native Title
Act, that led the United Nations Monitoring Committee on the
Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination to describe it as ra-
cially discriminatory, and as failing to ensure the informed consent of
Indigenous people (Crook and Short, 2014; Coyne, 2017). Similarly,
Australia’s first Indigenous senior counsel, and Wangan and Jagalingou
Traditional Owner, Tony McAvoy, has called out the system for “em-
bedding racism”, and as contravening the United Nations Declaration
on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Gregoire, 2018; Smee, 2018b).
5. Adani mining Pty Ltd’s poor track record
The Indian-based industrial conglomerate, Adani Enterprises,
lodged its Initial Advice Statement to the Queensland Government for
its ‘Carmichael coal mine and rail project’ in 2010, including a proposed
greenfield coal mine, with both open-cut and underground mining, as
well as mine processing facilities and a railway line (Adani Mining Pty
Ltd, 2010). Adani purchased coal tenements in the Galilee Basin in
Central Queensland – from Australian energy company, Linc Energy –
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for Aust $680 million, and with an estimated 7.8 billion tonnes of coal
reserves, in 2011 (Bloomberg, 2018). Over the following years – and
under its Australian subsidiary, Adani Mining Pty Ltd – it developed a
‘pit to port’ project; referring to its proposed coal mine, rail and port
infrastructure, to ensure the transport and gateway for coal exports,
respectively, from the Galilee Basin. Despite significant down-scaling
from its original proposal, the project, if it were to go ahead – is de-
scribed as one of the world’s largest thermal coal mines, and backed by
the largest single investment by an Indian company into Australia
(Proactive Investors, 2010; De Gabriele et al., 2017).
Standing in contrast to the scale of operations Adani is attempting to
establish in Australia, global coal demand is in decline, market condi-
tions that raise significant questions about the economic viability of the
mine. While world coal prices rose from around $US50/tonne to
$US130/tonne between 2005 and 2011, rapid reductions in the use of
coal-fired power in Europe and North America, combined with a de-
cline in Chinese coal consumption, has driven a steady decline in coal
prices (Quiggin, 2017). Despite prices recovering considerably since
2016 – driven primarily by Chinese Government policy – nearly 3000 of
its coal mines have closed, and the China National Coal Association
anticipated a further 1000 mines would close in 2017, thereby driving a
further downwards trend in coal demand (Invest in China, 2017).
There are other concerns about the viability of Adani Mining Pty
Ltd’s proposed Australian project. The company claimed it would de-
liver 10,000 jobs for regional Queensland; a figure regularly cited by
State and Federal Government representatives as the basis for their
support of the mine. Yet this figure was revealed – through a trial
against Adani heard in the Queensland Land Court – as closer to 1460
jobs (Environmental Law Australia, n.d.). During this trial, Adani’s own
economic expert described the Environmental Impact Assessment as
deficient, including likely over-estimating the employment and eco-
nomic contributions of the mine.11 The business and employment op-
portunities for Indigenous people are also over-inflated; and its offer of
just 0.2 percent of total revenue to Traditional Owners – as part of its
Indigenous Land Use Agreement – has been described as far below in-
dustry benchmarks (Meaton, 2017).
More broadly, Adani Enterprises and its Executive have a very poor
global track record, with the company recognised as responsible for
environmental damages and human rights abuses at its project sites
around the world (Long, 2017a). For example, Adani Mining Pty Ltd’s
Chief Executive Officer, Jeyakumar Janakaraj, previously served as
director of operations at the KCM copper mine in Zambia; a company
found guilty of serious environmental breaches (Willacy, 2016). Simi-
larly, India’s former Environment Minister, Jairam Ramesh, has de-
scribed the Adani Groups’ track record in India as very poor, and as
breaching many environmental clearances, as well as causing wide
scale destruction of mangroves, creeks and coastal ecosystems (Long,
2017b). While the Australian Federal Environment Department re-
quested an environmental history of both the company and its CEO as
part of its assessment of the proposed Carmichael coal mine and rail
project, Adani neglected to provide these details. The Federal Govern-
ment did not pursue this omission, leaving the impact assessment
process lacking imperative background information related to the
company and its executives’ conduct. Environmental Justice Australia
(n.d.) called out the government for inadequately scrutinizing Adani’s
proposed Australian operations. Such negligence was particularly ser-
ious given the companies’ poor global track record, combined with the
high level impact and risks associated with its proposed Carmichael
mega Mine project.
Most recently, Adani have also been embroiled in cases and claims
about business impropriety. They are presently resisting Indian autho-
rities who are seeking to access its business records as part of an
11
Adani Mining Pty Ltd v Land Services of Coast and Country Inc & Ors
[2015] QLC 48 (15 December 2015).
K. Lyons
investigation into an alleged $4bn fraud by power companies (India TV
News Desk, 2018).
Turning to its proposed operations in Australia, Adani has attracted
strong criticism on environmental grounds. The impacts of the proposed
mine on groundwater – including for the Doongmabulla Springs
Complex; a site of cultural significance to Wangan and Jagalingou
Traditional Owners – as well as biodiversity, contributions to climate
change and subsequent damage to the Great Barrier Reef World
Heritage Area, have each been the basis for a series of court cases
(Environmental Law Australia, n.d.). Adani has also been found in
breach of environmental conditions at its Abbot Point coal terminal,
after it released coal laden storm water pollution into adjacent wetlands
at a level eight times greater than that permissible by its license. A
Freedom of Information request by the Mackay Conservation Group
released documents that confirmed this was an intentional action, and
fully known by State Government at the time. It was also revealed that
Adani sought to keep this information out of the public domain on the
basis it might exacerbate "ongoing public vitriol" towards its proposed
Australian operations (Slezak, 2017c). Despite the seriousness of this
environmental breach, at the time the State Government issued Adani
an Aust $12,000 fin.; a sum environment groups have called out as
disproportionate when compared to the $250 million annual turnover
the company generates from the port (Rebgetz, 2017). Currently, the
Queensland Government are prosecuting Adani, alleging it illegally
released coal-laden water near the Great Barrier Reef. In this case, the
maximum penalty is Aust $2.7million if Adani is found guilty (Horn,
2018).
6. ‘Opening up’ Australia’s new coal frontier
Despite contraction in the coal industry, and alongside the global
energy transition underway to de-carbonize the economy, Australian
governments demonstrate a long-term commitment to establish Central
Queensland’s Galilee Basin and extend coal-fired power into the future.
This paper now traces settler colonial state maneuvers to establish the
Galilee Basin in Central Queensland as Australia’s new coal frontier,
before turning to consider its positioning of Adani as the key enabler of
this new frontier of resource extractivism.
As Australia’s largest untapped coal deposit, the Galilee Basin is
coveted as vital to expanding national resource revenues. The Galilee
Basin covers an area of 247,000 square kilometres of Central Western
Queensland. It is championed by State and Federal Governments, and
along the mining lobby, as set to become the largest coal producing
region in Queensland, and one of the largest coal basins in the world.
Tied to these claims, various government strategies, funding initiatives,
tax breaks and other activities have established to support the private
sector to ‘open up’ the region. State-based activities to enable the pri-
vate industry was emphatically captured in the ‘Galilee Basin
Development Strategy’; a Queensland Government strategy released by
then conservative government – Liberal National Party (LNP) – Premier
Newman and Deputy Premier Seeney in 2013 (The Queensland Cabinet
and Ministerial Directory, 2013). This Strategy set out to discount the
royalties paid by mining companies, streamline land acquisition, and
fast track planning approvals. The legacy of this strategy remains with
the current Labor Government, who offered a highly controversial
‘royalty deal’ for Adani, the details of which remain protected by an
opaque ‘transparency policy framework’ (Slezak, 2017a). The Galilee
Basin Development Strategy encouraged “first movers” – a euphemism
for mining companies – to “play a vital role in opening up the basin for
their own projects and opening up the basin for other miners as well”
(Newman, 2013). In so doing, the Queensland Government’s strategy
championed private sector entrepreneurs as the leaders in establishing
Australia’s new coal frontier, and paving the way for others in the in-
dustry to follow.
The then Premier Newman described this Strategy as positioning the
States’ resources sector as “one of the four pillars of the Queensland
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The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
economy”12; the structural bedrock of the future Queensland economy.
Lending further support to its State Government strategy for the region,
in 2014 the Newman Government designated an area covering over
100,000 ha, and encompassing nearly all of the Wangan and Jagalingou
homelands, as the ‘Galilee Basin State Development Area’ (SDA) (The
Coordinator General, n.d). As part of this designation, the Queensland
Government proposed infrastructure development and expansion, in-
cluding railways, to connect coal mines in remote central western
Queensland with international markets.
More broadly, elected representatives at both State and Federal le-
vels have brandished their unequivocal support for coal – including for
‘opening up’ the Galilee Basin; with declarations that coal is ‘good for
humanity’, and part of an energy mix that will assist Australia to play its
part in addressing global ‘energy poverty’ (Hudson, 2016; Long,
2017b). Furthermore, in 2018, then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull
affirmed his support for the Carmichael Mine, and called out opposition
as having a “shocking, and chilling affect on jobs and investment”
(Chaku, 2018). As a further indication of Federal Government’s en-
dorsement of coal mining, in 2017 then Federal Treasurer and now
Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, provoked Parliament and the public by
bringing a lump of coal13 into Parliament House, and using it as a prop
to lambast the Labor Opposition; “Don’t be afraid … It's coal, it was dug
up by men and women who work and live in the electorates of those
who sit opposite" (Murphy, 2017).
7. Colonial settler state backs Adani
Behind State and Federal Government political and jurisdictional
actions to open up the Galilee Basin, at least nine so-called mega mine
proposals have been slated for the region (Duus, 2012). These are at
various stages, with Adani the first – and only – to achieve nearly all
approvals for commencement of works. While Adani has secured ap-
provals, many of these have been the subject of legal cases, and the
Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council are chal-
lenging the recently upheld Indigenous Land Use Agreement in a Fed-
eral Court appeal. That the many legal challenges have been overcome
by Adani is not a measure of the lack of merit of the cases, so much as
confirming that the system is designed to expedite mining over In-
digenous peoples’ rights. In relation to the litigation the Wangan and
Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council have led, in particular,
international lawyer Noni Austin has explained their limited success on
grounds that “Australian law allows private companies and the gov-
ernment to override the Wangan and Jagalingou's rights in their an-
cestral lands” (Austin, 2018). Indeed, the State and Federal govern-
ments’ strong support for Adani has been acknowledged as tied to the
industrial giant’s ability to secure all its legal approvals (Stockwell,
2017).
Adani – and in advance of other companies with mining proposals
for the basin – has been effective in persuading the Government to lend
it support. As unequivocally captured by United Nations Special
Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Vicki Tauli-Corpuz,
2018, this “skewed power structure (enables) private companies to
wield significant influence over States and ensure that regulations,
policies and investment agreements are tailored to promote the prof-
itability of their business.” (2018, p. 9). Part of Adani’s appeal is tied to
the opportunities afforded by its vertical integration. Demonstrating
12
The then Liberal National Queensland Government identified the four
pillars of the Queensland economy as construction, agriculture, resources and
tourism.
13
In a palpable display of the convergence of state and mining industry in-
terests, the lump of coal was provided to the Treasurer by the Australian
Minerals Council; an industry association that represents some of the biggest
companies operating in Australia, and which makes regular political donations,
as well as making payment to attend fundraisers as a strategy to secure access to
members of parliament (Karp, 2018).
K. Lyons
their capacity to integrate across the whole coal supply chain, Adani
acquired the Abbot Point coal terminal port from the Queensland
Government in 2011 (Mukherjee, 2016); this was followed by the
purchase of Moray Downs cattle property in 2012 – a third of which sits
over Adani’s coal deposit (Wilson, 2012); it gained approvals in 2014 to
construct a 300 km rail line to connect the mine to the port; and it owns
a series of coal-fire plants in India. This concentration of ownership
across mine infrastructure and territory is championed by Adani as
enabling project development from ‘pit to port to power point’:14 and
establishing the key infrastructure to support subsequent mining com-
panies to move into the region.
With Adani singled out, the settler colonial state has established
policy settings, and expedited approvals, to leverage in the interests of
Adani, and in so doing, sidelined, and at times explicitly ignored, those
Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners who oppose the mine.
Demonstrating this, in 2016 the Queensland Minister for State
Development and Natural Resources and Mines, Anthony Lynham, de-
signated the Adani Carmichael Mine project – including the proposed
mine and related infrastructure – as ‘critical infrastructure’15 and a
‘prescribed project’. Denoting the project special status granted the
Coordinator General extraordinary powers to fast track remaining ap-
provals required for the mines’ go ahead, as well as curtailing com-
munity input and consultation in decision making related to the project.
This, combined with the ‘Galilee Basin Development Strategy’, provided
a fast track for compulsory land acquisition. The significance of this re-
designation of territory cannot be overstated. In the face of the Wangan
and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council’s sustained oppo-
sition, the settler colonial state established a statutory mandate for
compulsory acquisition of land and subsequent extinguishment of na-
tive title. Simply put, Traditional Owner dissent – and the issuing of
mining leases to Adani despite the formal objections of the Wangan and
Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council that were, at the time, in
the midst of a legal appeal – was rendered irrelevant by a political play
that prioritised the pursuit of coal extraction and state GDP. In the
absence of ‘agreement’ between Traditional Owners and Adani, com-
pulsory land acquisition and state-imposed mining entitlements were
established as the basis for the mine to proceed (Willacy and
Lavoipierre, 2015).
There have been many other state maneuvers to cement Adani’s
future in the Galilee Basin, while at the same time disavowing
Traditional Owner opposition. Amongst these, and in the same year,
Minister Lynham expedited mining lease approvals. This was despite his
earlier written confirmation to Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional
Owners that he intended to await the legal outcome of their Judicial
Review of the decision of the Native Title Tribunal. The Labor
Government’s Premier Palaszczuk took personal ownership for this
decision, and heralded the achievement as moving the mine’s realiza-
tion one step closer.
More broadly, in 2016 the State Government granted environmental
authority, despite a series of legal appeals that exposed the impacts of
the mine on groundwater and biodiversity, the burning of coal for cli-
mate change, alongside the non-economic viability of the mine
(Environmental Law Australia, n.d.). The government also created
special exemptions for Adani’s water license, including granting un-
limited water access, by re-writing the State Water Act during the same
year (Environmental Law Australia, n.d.).
14
Adani has claimed that most of the coal from its Carmichael Mine would be
destined for India for use in power generation, conditions they describe as
supporting electrification projects that will lift millions of people out of poverty,
and as part of a broader suite of Indian-based business initiatives to “build a
happy nation” (Adani, n.d.).
15
State Development and Public Works Organisation Act 1971 (Qld) has been
used just five times in the last ten years to denote ‘critical infrastructure’ status
to projects, and never before related to a private commercial development
(Environmental Law Australia, n.d).
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All the while, the Queensland Government – and despite a number
of requests – refused to meet with Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional
Owners opposed to the construction of Adani’s Carmichael mine on
their homelands. Youth spokesperson Murrawah Johnson decried the
Queensland Government in an address to Wangan and Jagalingou
supporters outside Parliament House who had gathered to oppose na-
tive title extinguishment (20 August 2018): “In the five years we have
been fighting with Adani, the state government has not met with us”.
Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners and their country are
Adani’s sacrifice zone; they are both immediately and directly under
threat if the mine was to proceed (see also Bullard, 1993; Lerner, 2000).
On this basis, Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family
Council spokesperson, Adrian Burragubba has made clear (20 August
2018); “the Premier cannot continue to refuse to meet the Traditional
Owners of this country where the world’s largest coal mine would be
built”. Yet the Queensland Government – via its refusal to engage with
those who oppose Adani – appears set upon silencing dissent, by ren-
dering invisible the voice of the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional
Owners Family Council and favoring only those who have, under
duress, supported the mine (Robinson, 2017). In so doing, the State
Government has overtly downplayed the conflict that has arisen within
the membership of Wangan and Jagalingou nations as a direct result of
Adani’s proposed mine, and its unscrupulous tactics to secure an
‘agreement’, presenting the voices of resistance as a mere disaffected
‘minority’.
Political intervention in support of Adani at the State level has also
been matched Federally. In 2015, for example, then Resources, Energy
and Northern Australia Federal Minster, Josh Frydenburg,16 cham-
pioned a “strong moral case” for Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine on
the basis of the millions of lives that could be saved worldwide
(Milman, 2015). Around a similar time, previous Prime Minster Tony
Abbott (from the Liberal National Party Coalition) described activists
opposed to Adani as deliberately using the court system to ‘sabotage’
the mine and attack the coal industry (Clarke, 2015). This was backed
by a national media campaign that amplified concerns ‘activists’ were
using ‘lawfare’ to slow down the mine approval process. Wangan and
Jagalingou Family Council spokesperson, Adrian Burragubba, and
alongside Wangan and Jagalingou Family Council Campaign Manager,
Anthony Esposito, were each singled out as offenders in The Australian,
in articles published 24 October 2016. The mineral resources sector
escalated these concerns, with the CEO of the Queensland Resources
Council, Michael Roche, calling upon the government to intervene
(Macey, 2015). In response, then Attorney General George Brandis re-
quested to revoke parts of the Environmental Protection and Biodi-
versity Conservation (EPBC) Act to curtail opposition to development
projects, and this was followed by changes to limit foreign funding for
activist groups and charities.
The Federal Government also committed financial support for the
Adani Mining project; funds that Adani described as contingent on the
mine proceeding (Smee, 2018a). The Northern Australia Infrastructure
Fund (NAIF) – established by the Federal Government to provide funds
to infrastructure projects in Northern Australia – provided provisional
approval for an Aust $900 million loan to Adani for construction of its
rail line from the Galilee Basin to the Adani Abbot Point Terminal.17
The NAIF provided no public terms for engagement with Indigenous
people related to its funding allocation, including with those
16
As of 24 August, 2018, a leadership spill within the conservative Liberal
National Party (LNP) led to the appointment of Scott Morrison as Australia’s
Prime Minister, and Josh Frydenburg as deputy Prime Minister. Each of these
members of Parliament have both expressed, over a number of years, strong
support for Adani’s proposed Carmichael Mine.
17
As stated earlier, only when the NAIF loan became a key issue during the
Queensland State Election in 2017, did Queensland Labor commit to a veto over
the NAIF loan.
K. Lyons
immediately affected by Adani’s proposed mine project – a fact that the
Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council called out
in their submission to the Senate Inquiry into the NAIF (Wangan and
Jagalingou, 2017). The failure to involve Indigenous people in deci-
sions that profoundly affect their lives, consistent with their rights as
described under international laws and conventions, demonstrates the
subjugation of the interests of Wangan and Jagalingou people, along-
side all other Traditional Owners, including those affected by Adani’s
proposed mine project (see also Bowness and Hudson, 2014). The NAIF
has also been criticized for its poor oversight, alongside potential
conflicts of interest, with Transparency International Australia asserting
its “investment decision-making lacks transparency” (Karp, 2018). The
NAIF’s intended financial support for Adani, championed by the Federal
Minister for Resources and Northern Development, Senator Matt Ca-
navan, is also out of step with many other financial institutions, in-
cluding the many major global banks, and along with three out of the
four main Australian banks, ruling out financing the project. Most re-
cently, five major Korean lenders have ruled out funding Adani’s Car-
michael mine (Smee, 2018c), with KDB Infrastructure Investments
Asset Management Co confirming in a letter to the Wangan and Jaga-
lingou Traditional Owners Family Council they "have no intention to
participate by all means, financial or other support or services, in the
development of the Carmichael mine … We deeply conform [to] the
responsibility of financial investors and have well understood the im-
portance and concerns for the development of the Carmichael mine on
the W&J's ancestral lands" (Robertson, 2018a). Most Australians, too,
believe funding Adani through the NAIF would not be a good use of
public money; a position that drove the Queensland Labor Government
to announce it would veto the loan (Slezak, 2017b).
Despite strong and sustained public opposition to Adani’s proposed
Carmichael mine, at a meeting with billionaire Gautam Adani on a visit
to India, then Prime Minister Turnbull made an undertaking to secure
the future of the Carmichael mine, including by expediting amendments
to the Native Title Act. With reference to a decision by the Full Court of
the Federal Court18 - the outcome of which determined that certain
agreements could not be registered unless signed by all members of the
applicant – Prime Minister Turnbull assured Mr Adani: “a recent native
title case in the federal court, which has thrown an obstacle in the way
of the project, would be overcome when parliament resumes in May”
(Safi and Chan, 2017). With Adani’s Indigenous agreement signed by
seven out of the 12 applicants, the McGlade decision – as it is referred to
– effectively upheld provisions of the Native Title Act and invalidated
Adani’s deal with Wangan and Jagalingou people.19
The Federal Government responded almost immediately, as did the
five non-signatories of the Adani ILUA, who proceeded to the Federal
Court for an order to strike out the agreement. Less than two weeks
after the McGlade decision it introduced the Native Title Amendment
(Indigenous Land Use Agreements Bill, 2017) to amend the Native Title
Act (1993). And within just one day, this was tabled in Parliament. At
the same time, the Federal Attorney General, Senator George Brandis,
intervened directly in the Federal Court proceeding to delay the order
while the Government acted to change the legislation.
A key amendment in the Bill included the retrospective validation of
agreements that might otherwise be rendered invalid by the McGlade
decision. Justification for expedited legislative amendment was sup-
ported by government and industry claims that ‘hundreds of agree-
ments’ were under threat of being invalidated, thereby jeopardizing the
future of the mining industry. Such alarms were tempered by lawyer for
the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council, Colin
18
The McGlade vs Native Title Registrar decision on 2 February 2017, related
to the Noongar people in Western Australia.
19
In June 2017, Adani lost its majority support (7 out of 12 applicants) when
one Wangan and Jagalingou Representative withdrew his signature, leaving
just 6 named applicants on the agreement (Robertson, 2017a).
8
The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
Hardie, who explained that only a few agreements would be affected by
the decision, including the agreement with Adani (Robertson, 2017c).
Regardless of these facts, a number of elected parliamentarians were
outspoken in backing the rushed Amendments to secure Adani’s
agreement, including National Party MP George Christensen: “I spoke
to the Attorney‐General … to urge immediate action be taken on
changing the Native Title Act, so that Adani will not be impacted as
they work towards developing” the Carmichael Mine (Sferruzzi, 2017).
The Government provided little opportunity for consultation as part
of the Amendment process, including limited options for dialogue with
Indigenous people – and specifically those directly impacted by the
amendments, including the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners
Family Council. While a Senate Committee inquiry – forced in response
to backlash from the expedited process, alongside the significance of
proposed Amendments – provided an opportunity for submissions, this
remained a highly constrained process. Communities were granted just
two weeks to make submissions, and only on the basis of their capacity
to mobilize resources to secure legal advice to interpret the complex
proposed changes. Nor did making a submission to the Senate inquiry
equate to meaningful consultation, or ensure it would have a baring on
the outcome, especially given the weight of interests advocating for a
decision favourable for Adani (Wagner, 2017). In effect, the processes
underpinning amendments to the Native Title Act, and passed in June
2017, were defined by efforts to close down dialogue, thereby ren-
dering invisible opposition to the proposed Amendments and the sig-
nificant impacts they would have.
8. Conclusions: state/indigenous encounters to mine new
territories
Through sustained opposition to Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine,
the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council are
engaged in an exceptional battle in defense of their culture and
homelands. This paper bares witness to this sustained struggle, in-
cluding Traditional Owners’ unrelenting assertion of the right to say no
to extractivist development on their country. These Traditional Owners
are strong custodians of their homelands and clan estates and continue
to exercise customary laws and practices on these lands. This is the
same land Adani proposes to build one of the world’s largest coal mines,
and have been substantially enabled by the settler colonial state in this
pursuit. In this context, conflict and coercion has come to define en-
counters between Indigenous peoples, the settler colonial state and
Adani. This paper has exposed the push and pull of settler colonial state
actors, in particular, within this conflict ridden space.
Building from a collaboration with the Wangan and Jagalingou
Traditional Owners Family Council, this research is positioned to enable
the recording of their exceptional campaign to stop destructive extra-
ctivist development on their homelands, including their encounters
with the settler colonial state in taking this position. Given the mag-
nitude of human rights, social justice and environmental issues and
concerns that has trailed Adani in its conduct both internationally, and
in Australia, this collaborative approach intentionally centres
Indigenous rights and interests as the starting point. This Indigenous
rights’ centred approach includes recognition of Wangan and
Jagalingou nations’ right to free, prior and informed consent, as es-
tablished in international laws.
Starting from this premise, this paper has exposed the convergence
of public and private interests as part of securing territory – including
the homelands of Wangan and Jagalingou people – to ‘open up’
Australia’s new coal frontier. This neoliberalisation of resource extra-
ctivism demonstrates the settler colonial states’ sustained commitment
to mining for national development (see Valladares and Boelens, 2017;
Van Teijlingen, 2016). Through an analysis of the politics and policies
to establish Central Queensland’s Galilee Basin for resource extractivist
development, this paper has revealed the state’s explicit interventionist
and coercive roles as enabler for the resources sector. This narrative of
K. Lyons
‘opening up’ the Galilee Basin – including specifically Wangan and
Jagalingou homelands – is also grounded in a legacy of the rapacious
doctrine of discovery, that extends the fiction that settler colonial states
can penetrate into ‘new’ territories, and in so doing, conquer and con-
trol both nature, and natural resources.
The selection of Adani as the settler colonial state’s ‘fixer’ – and
‘custodian’ of Australia’s coal future – has explicitly defined Indigenous
encounters with the state. Faced with the Wangan and Jagalingou
Traditional Owners Family Council’s stance – grounded in their inter-
nationally recognised right to free, prior and informed consent, and
articulated in their Adani: No Means No campaign – the State and
Federal Governments have deployed political and legal strategies that
have actively undermined Indigenous rights. This undermining is ren-
dered bare, in particular, in the struggle to secure the territory required
for the Carmichael mine’s vital infrastructure, the 2,750-hectare sur-
render area that is required unencumbered by native title. The activities
of the Queensland Government in the pursuit of multiple meetings until
a manufactured agreement was reached between Adani and a group
who hold ‘or may hold’ Wangan and Jagalingou native title claim, re-
presents a clear example of state intervention to advance Adani’s cause.
The Federal Government’s overt expediting of the Native Title
Amendments to protect this Indigenous Land Use Agreement represents
a further example of state intervention. So too, was the Federal
Government’s pledge of almost Aust $1 billion to fund Adani’s vital rail
infrastructure. Each of these activities, in combination, alongside efforts
to shape the narrative – and by default, public understandings – of
Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine, demonstrates state formation to
sideline the interests of the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners
Family Council. Moral claims that coal is ‘good for humanity’ and that
exporting Carmichael coal will address ‘global energy poverty’ also side
steps the very real threats the mine poses for Traditional Owners, as
repeatedly articulated by the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional
Owners Family Council across national and international fora.
Similarly, positioning members of Wangan and Jagalingou nations who
oppose the Carmichael mine as simply an anti-developmentalist min-
ority side-lines the very real and rights-based opposition that persists.
Yet the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council
have not only experienced the sidelining of their rights and interests,
they have also been rendered invisible by the Government – until re-
cently – and media interests. The Queensland Government’s long-
standing failure to acknowledge the Wangan and Jagalingou
Traditional Owners Family Council’s opposition to the mine and what it
represents; despite leading legal challenges that have spanned over four
years across state and federal courts, and alongside four separate
meetings in which Wangan and Jagalingou people rejected an agree-
ment with Adani, demonstrates this occlusion. The Premier’s failure
over more than three and a half years to respond to requests to meet
representatives of the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners
Family Council also signifies the states’ failure to recognise, or respect,
the law and customs upon which Wangan and Jagalingou peoples
maintain their connection to country. At the same time, the Coordinator
General pro-actively sort out members of the Applicant who were
prepared to overturn the Wangan and Jagalingou claim groups’ deci-
sion to reject a deal with Adani.
This attitude is out of step with emerging developments under new
international norms, as described in the United Nations Declaration on
the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Governments are required to engage
and grapple with the real concerns of the Indigenous applicants who are
entitled to a dialogue that demonstrates they have not only been heard,
but also received serious consideration of their specific, and real con-
cerns. Instead, the Queensland Government has refused all entreaties
from those entitled under their own laws and customs to reject Adani’s
Carmichael Mine, and have actively opposed all claims made by the
Applicants in the Federal and Supreme Court cases.
Disregarding pre-existing Indigenous governance structures is part
of the genocidal forces that reverberate in Australia up to this day
9
The Extractive Industries and Society xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx
(Short, 2010). The subordination of Indigenous laws and customs – as
evident as part of settler colonial state encounters with Wangan and
Jagalingou people – breathes life into colonial legacies of discovery and
terra nullius doctrines, that remain imprinted across the political and
legal system (see Echo Hawk, 2010). These colonial fictions extend slow
violence across the Wangan and Jagalingou nations; by establishing the
conditions for Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine to proceed, and en-
trenching conflict and division within and across families and beyond to
other First Nations.
Silencing dissent is also evidenced in the ways the settler colonial
state expedited and constrained various consultation processes, thereby
closing down opportunities for Indigenous people – and including
Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners’ opposed to Adani’s pro-
posed mine – to engage in decision making that has enormous baring on
the future of their territories, and the sustainability and viability of
their land and waters and their culture. The designation of the Galilee
Basin as a ‘State Development Priority Area’, and the Adani mine pro-
ject as ‘critical infrastructure’, can each been seen as strategies to close
down options for dialogue with Indigenous people, including those
most affected by such re-designation of territory. Similarly, the con-
strained consultation processes related to both the NAIF funding for
Adani’s railway infrastructure, and the Native Title Amendments to
secure Adani’s ‘agreement’ with Traditional Owners, have each been
called out as disenfranchising Indigenous people, and as inconsistent
with consultation and engagement principles outlined by the United
Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.
Tracing the encounters between the settler colonial state and
Indigenous people, however, also reveals the effectiveness of the
Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Councils’ sustained
opposition to mining on their homelands. The Queensland and Federal
governments can each be seen as having deployed activities in response
to Wangan and Jagalingou’s enduring resistance so as to secure the
territory for Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine. This can be understood
as the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council
disrupting territorialising processes (see Sassen, 2013), including in-
tercepting the convergence of public and private interests. This re-
presents a significant insurgence by Traditional Owners into Australian
jurisdictional and political fora that remain constrained by the legacies
of colonial fictions. That the Queensland Government has yet to ex-
tinguish native title on the ‘surrender area’ required for Adani’s mine
project – despite having the legal ability to do so – is evidence of this
affect. The recent acknowledgement of contestation amongst Tradi-
tional Owners in relation to Adani’s ILUA at the state Labor conference,
alongside the Labor Governments’ stated commitment to withhold ex-
tinguishment of native title until Adani is able to secure full finance for
its mine project, is further evidence of the Wangan and Jagalingou
Traditional Owners Family Council’s effect (Robertson, 2018b). What
this resurgence of rights and political engagement will mean for the
future of Adani’s proposed Carmichael Mine, ‘opening up’ the Galilee
Basin and Indigenous peoples’ rights in Australia, remains unclear.
What is clear, however, is the unbreakable resolve of these Traditional
Owners of Wangan and Jagalingou Country to defend their ancestral
homelands against violent extractivism.
Acknowledgements
I acknowledge the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners
Council, including their leadership and collaboration in the research
upon which this paper is based. I pay deep tribute to their long standing
protection of their ancestral homelands, including via their sustained
campaign against Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine, and more
broadly, their leadership in advancing Indigenous rights based ap-
proaches as a response to the challenge of climate change. I thank
Anthony Esposito, Adviser with Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional
Owners Council, for providing feedback on this manuscript, alongside
three anonymous reviewers who each provided careful and considered
K. Lyons
feedback. I also thank Morgan Brigg and John Quiggin, co-investigators
on this research project, for their generosity and insights. The research
project upon which this article is based is funded through the Global
Change Institute’s Flagship Program at The University of Queensland.
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