In this letter, we update the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on our efforts to say no to this destructive mine which would violate our rights to culture and to free, prior and informed consent. We also respond to Australia’s 16 April 2016 response to your letter of 29 February 2016, because much of Australia’s response mischaracterises facts and misstates international law.

In our 2 October 2015 submission to UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, we explained that our traditional country in central‐western Queensland, Australia, is threatened with devastation by the proposed Carmichael Mine which, if developed as proposed, would be among the largest coal mines in the world. The Carmichael Mine would tear the heart out of our country and devastate the places, animals, plants, and water‐bodies that are so essential to us and our culture. Our earlier submission explained that our culture is inseparable from the condition of our lands.

Our lands hold sacred places which are the source of our dreaming, our culture, and ourselves.

To read the update in full download this document

AN UPDATE ON OUR STRUGGLE

There have been many troubling developments concerning the approval of the Carmichael Mine since we last wrote to you. These include that:

1. The Australian government reapproved the mine despite acknowledging evidence that the mine would harm or possibly destroy the Doongmabulla Springs, our most sacred site;

2. The Queensland government passed legislation specifically aimed at preventing public participation in the decision whether to grant the groundwater licence that would allow Adani Mining to draw down the water upon which Doongmabulla Springs depends;

3. In April 2016, the Queensland government granted the remaining mining leases for the Carmichael Mine;

4. In August 2016, we lost our legal challenge to the April 2015 decision of the National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT) that the mining leases for the Carmichael Mine could be granted under Australia’s native title legislation, without regard to our decision not to consent to the project. We have appealed this decision;

5. Through a procedurally flawed process building on years of coercive and bad‐faith tactics, Adani Mining manufactured approval of a purported indigenous land use agreement (ILUA). If this purported ILUA is upheld against legal challenges we have initiated, it would violate our right to culture; and

6. The Australian government, Adani Mining, and the energy and mineral industry, continue to publicly denounce our leaders who are opposing the mine…

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Update on the situation of the Wangan and Jagalingou People’s opposition to the proposed Carmichael Coal Mine and comments on Australia’s response to the Special Rapporteur’s letter dated 1 April 2016