The Indigenous traditional owners of land in north-western Australia have been awarded a record A$150.1 million ($108.3m; £79.9m) payout after a court ruled one of the country’s most well-known billionaires mined their land without permission.
The verdict amounts to the biggest native title payout ever awarded in Australia, and concludes a protracted legal battle between the Yindjibarndi people and Andrew Forrest’s mining company Fortescue.
Since 2013, Fortescue’s mines have generated tens of billions of dollars in revenue by extracting iron ore from Yindjibarndi land in remote north Western Australia.
The Yindjibarndi group had sought A$1.8bn compensation.
That figure, they argued, would constitute 1% of the production value profit of the mines, as well as compensation for the loss of around 250 cultural sites and cultural connection to the land.
Acknowledging that the Yindjibarndi had a “deep and visceral connection” to their land which affected all aspects of their lives, Federal Court Justice Stephen Burley on Tuesday found Fortescue liable for economic loss valued at A$150,000 and cultural loss valued at A$150m.
Burley characterised the latter “as compensation for loss or diminution of traditional attachment to the land or connection to country and for loss of rights to gain spiritual sustenance from the land”.
The claim against Fortescue was first lodged in 2017, after a court awarded the Yindjibarndi Ngurra Aboriginal Corporation (YNAC) exclusive native title rights over a 2,700-sq km area in the mineral-rich Pilbara region.
At that time, Fortescue had already spent several years establishing its lucrative Solomon Hub mines on the land, with permission from both the government and a local Aboriginal representative group, but not from YNAC.
Failure to negotiate a land use agreement between YNAC and Fortescue led to the almost 20-year legal battle which culminated on Tuesday.
While the historic payout is almost three times the amount of the next biggest court-mandated compensation payout to native title owners in Australia, however, some elders expressed disappointment at the figure.
Speaking outside the court on Tuesday, Yindjibarndi elder Wendy Hubert described the payout as “peanuts” compared to the Fortescue’s immense earnings over the years, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Those earnings for the mining company are expected to continue for at least another decade, before the mine is set to close in the mid-2040s.