Two Indigenous Australian activists are fighting to save 40,000-year-old sacred rock art in Western Australia from pollution and plans for a major gas project.
The 2020 destruction of Aboriginal rock shelters in the Juukan Gorge by mining company Rio Tinto shocked the world, sparking condemnations, resignations, investigations and promised reforms.
Now First Nations women Raelene Cooper and Josie Alec are warning the same thing could be happening “in slow motion” in Murujuga, some 1,300 kilometers north of Perth.
Alec and Cooper are hoping to garner global support by traveling to Geneva from Australia’s remote Pilbara region this week to brief the United Nations on their concerns – particularly as gas giant Woodside’s Scarborough project moves forward.
Cooper told AFP that the deterioration is already visible in the Murujuga rock art, which is sacred to the land’s indigenous guardians and contains their traditional lore.
Alec said that due to industrial pollution, “rock art will disappear. We will have no rock art to show the world.”
Woodside’s A$16 billion (US$11 billion) Scarborough Gas Project would involve 13 wells off the coast of Western Australia to develop a vast undersea resource.
The company forecasts that at full capacity, Scarborough will produce eight million tonnes of liquefied natural gas annually – prompting a backlash from environmental groups over its potential for carbon emissions.
Last month, the Australian Conservation Fund brought a legal action against the Scarborough project, claiming it would cause emissions large enough to damage the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef.
Cooper and Alec point out that Murujuga was also nominated for the World Heritage List, in part because of the cultural value of its estimated one million petroglyphs, or rock carvings.
Destroying the rock art, Alec said, “will destroy our stories. And it kills a very large part of who we are.”
“We’re already seeing the deterioration visible… the patina on the rock carvings themselves is peeling off and the carvings are beginning to wear out,” Cooper said.
Save Our Songlines, a campaign created by both women, connects the destruction of art with the pollution caused by industrial production on the resource-rich Burrup Peninsula.
– “Time is running out” –
Chemicals like nitrous oxide settle on art, the campaign says, making it susceptible to decomposition when rain falls.
Woodside said in a statement that “peer-reviewed research has shown no impact on burrup rock art from emissions associated with Woodside’s operations.”
But Save Our Songlines points to a 2021 study by the University of Western Australia, which concluded that “at current recorded acid levels, rock patina and associated art will degrade and disappear over time”.
Woodside dismissed this study as it “contained no original research and consequently (it) does not improve or expand on existing science”.
But Alec and Cooper say they can see Murujuga, the land they have vowed to protect and cherish, transform before their eyes – from rock art to the disappearance of plants and animals.
“Something’s wrong,” Alec said.
“And there’s only one explanation for that, and that’s the chemicals, the mining, the gas, the oil… they’re causing destruction.”
The two hope speaking with the UN Expert Mechanism on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights, which provides expertise to the Human Rights Council, will result in Australia’s industry and government being held accountable.
They want First Nations stewards to be better consulted about new industries on their land – and point out that women have been marginalized in the permitting process.
They have also called for Murujuga to be inscribed on the World Heritage List next year, an acknowledgment that would give more leverage to argue for the region’s protection.
“The time is now, we’re already out of time,” Alec said.
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