Indigenous Australians in Murujuga fight to preserve heritage sites

New projects in Western Australia would boost gas drilling and processing. The land's traditional owners say their heritage sites are under threat.

Standing at a sacred rock site, Clinton Walker called acknowledgment to her ancestors in the language of Ngarluma people.

In the early morning it was quiet except for his voice and the chirping of birds. Surrounded by mountains of rock carvings and arrangements denoting tens of thousands of years of continuous Aboriginal heritage, he could feel the land vibrating with the spirit of his ancestors.

But beneath it all was a low hum - the endless, inescapable buzz of industry across the peninsula.

“This place, you feel it. It's alive," he said. "But this mob is trying to kill it."

The Burrup Peninsula, on the northwest coast of Australia, is home to one million petroglyphs believed to be up to 50,000 years old, documenting extinct animals and including some of the oldest depictions of the human face.

The peninsula, called Murujuga by Aborigines, is also what the state government calls the "gateway to Australia's biggest oil and gas operations. A major liquefied natural gas project underway is expected to accelerate offshore drilling, and plants will be built to process it.

Some traditional guardians of the earth say that the projects threaten a place they hold deeply sacred.

ImageA petroglyph on the peninsula . Murujuga is home to one of the largest and oldest rock art collections in the world, including some of the earliest depictions of the human face.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

ImageA rock art sculpture of a kangaroo in Murujuga National Park. "Once the artwork is gone, we can't get it back," said Ms. Cooper, co-founder of the group Save Our Songlines.Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times

The fight to protect Murujuga is the latest in a series of high-profile controversies involving Indigenous heritage that have embroiled mining and resource companies and exposed the mechanics of what experts and Indigenous peoples describe as a deeply unequal relationship between the people who traditionally own the land and those who derive billions of dollars in profit from it.

"We have no voice for say no," said Mr. Walker, a traditional or indigenous landowner who works as a tour guide and teaches visitors about the importance of Murujuga. "Legally, we don't."

Australia's mining and resources industry has faced a toll since 2020, when mining giant Rio Tinto made blasting the archaeologically significant Juukan Gorge caves in Western Australia without the consent of the traditional owners, but with the approval of the state government.

The resulting global outcry "brought attention to something that was business as usual," said National Native Title chief Kado Muir Council.