Adrian Burragubba and his family were taking four of his grandchildren to the Doongmabulla Springs to perform ceremony in August last year when they were interrupted by employees of the nearby Carmichael coalmine.
“Bravus employees spotted us on the road and turned around and followed us and drove up really fast and blocked our right to get into the springs,” he told NITV.
In late November Mr Burragubba filed a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission on behalf of the Nagana Yarrbayn Wangan & Jagalingou Cultural Custodians, alleging serious racial discrimination by Adani (now called Bravus Mining and Resources in Australia).
The complaint references Section 9 and Section 18c of the Commonwealth .
“We have endured years of discrimination and vilification from Adani, and we’re not putting up with this anymore,” Mr Burragubba said.
“Adani has been on notice about their conduct since our lawyers sent a concerns notice last year, and they refused to take action.
“Legal recourse is the only answer.”
The complaint is a representative action filed by Mr Burragubba on behalf of his family and clan, who are the Nagana Yarrbayn cultural custodians.
The complaint sets out the way Adani sought to “verbally and physically obstruct and prevent” Mr Burragubba and others from accessing the Doongmabulla Springs “in order to perform cultural rites and share cultural knowledge”.
The complaint also seeks to highlight the way “a decade long pattern of conduct” by Adani against Mr Burragubba, his family and clan, has culminated in what the complaint deems a “smear campaign” through Adani’s media statements and social media posts, through the commentary that it publishes, through the use of media outlets, and by allowing unfettered commentary to remain on and be added to its social media platforms.
did not answer NITV’s questions regarding the complaint, but did respond with the statement of 21 November 2024 already published on its website, saying it “wholly rejected the allegations made by Mr Burragubba”.
Over the past few years Bravus has made numerous posts to its social media accounts regarding Mr Burragubba’s son, Gurridyula (also known as Coedie McAvoy), his beliefs and Waddanangu (which means ‘the talking’ in the Wirdi language of the Wangan and Jagalingou people), the base traditional owners have set up on Country, near the mine.
On several of these posts, seen by NITV, comments attacking Gurridyula’s Aboriginality and containing other racist abuse have been left unmoderated at the time of this article being published.
The posts stand in contrast to Bravus’ approach when the mining company made a statement on social media about what it was doing to celebrate NAIDOC Week, which attracted racist comments.
In that case Bravus removed offensive comments and reminded followers of its social media policy, which asks people to refrain from posting offensive remarks and includes the right to remove racist content.
A spokesperson in a statement sent to NITV said, “[Bravus] have a right to defend our business and shine a light on the behaviour of Mr Burragubba.”
Mr Burragubba claims “it’s been decades and decades of this, putting up with racism.”
“And now this company comes along and they think that they can just treat us as people who don’t have any authority, saying that we’re not the rightful traditional owners, we’re not Aboriginal people.
“And just denigrating us, disparaging us in social media, Facebook posts, and also getting the media to write things about us and report things about us that just is trying to destroy our credibility.”
In the same statement the company suggests Mr Burragubba is an ally of “anti-fossil fuel groups”, saying he acts at their “behest”.
Mr Burragubba has been fighting for his Country for more than a decade because, to him, it means everything.
“It’s destroyed my life,” Mr Burragubba said in 2023.
“I was bankrupted. I couldn’t even rent a house.
“But everything I fought for was to go back to Country, where my son Coedie is, so our family can enjoy the Country of our ancestors.”
The complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission is the latest salvo in a long-running fight that has seen bitter rifts between family, changes to legislation, Native Title being extinguished and court case after court case.
Since the time Adani, a multinational company headed up by Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, proposed a massive coalmine on Wangan and Jagalingou Country in the Galliee Basin of Central Queensland it has caused division between Traditional Owners.
Some Traditional Owners wanted to do a deal with the mining company, others, including Mr Burragubba, were vehemently opposed.
In order to break ground, Adani needed an Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) with W&J people.
Between 2012 and March 2016, Traditional Owners met three times and voted against an ILUA.
But in May 2016 another meeting was convened in Maryborough, where a vote of 294 to one was recorded in favour of the land use agreement.
Members of the native title group who boycotted the Maryborough meeting claim it was stacked with people who didn’t have the right to vote and the agreement should never have been registered on the native title register.
But it was registered and has survived legal challenges since.
Then in 2017, won a federal court challenge that found an ILUA was only valid if it had unanimous support from all registered native title claimants, not just a simple majority – which the Adani ILUA didn’t.
The federal Coalition government, with the support of Labor, promptly amended the Native Title Act so only majority support from the claim group was needed for an ILUA.
And then in 2019, the Queensland Government extinguished native title over 1385 hectares of Wangan and Jagalingou Country which allowed the coalmine couldto go ahead, no matter if any traditional owners opposed it.
Since Bravus began exporting coal in late 2021, the company says the Carmichael Mine is producing in the order of 10 million tonnes per annum.
It is subject – like all mines – to stringent environmental conditions and there is no doubt that at least some Traditional Owners support it.
But there’s also no doubt that other Traditional Owners, like Mr Burragubba, still hurt.
“Aboriginal people, we belong to this Country,” he said.
“We don’t come from anywhere else.
“In our connection to this Country is the trees and the animals, the nature, the environment – these things mean things to us.
“We think about these things constantly … we think of these things all the time when we’re raising our children … when we take them on Country, we can name those things.
“And so the reason why we we’re doing these things is to give our people strength, dignity, self-respect, identity, who we are as a people, our integrity, our cultural integrity, and it’s being worn away gradually by all this racist hate and this racial vilification.”
The complaint seeks compensation, an apology, the removal of offending social media, a retraction of media statements, and anti-racism and cultural awareness training for Bravus’ directors, managers and employees.
“This company thinks it can impair our human rights, destroy our lands and waters and smash our culture, and then denigrate us in the eyes of the world,” Mr Burragubba said.
Speaking to NITV about the complaint, Mr Burragubba claims “it has been a decade of dishonest, deceptive and misleading conduct against us by Adani, designed to undermine our cultural authority and our right to speak for Country, and our standing as First Nations people. It’s time for that to stop and for Adani to admit it’s wrong.”
A spokesperson for Bravus said the company wholly rejects Mr Burragubba’s allegations and that Bravus had not received any notification from the Australian Human Rights Commission of a complaint.
Bravus’ parent company is facing legal action after the United States Securities and Exchange Commission issued a summons to Indian billionaire Gautam Adani, indicted on US bribery allegations related to a bombshell federal indictment against him, a court filing shows.
The commission is suing the head of the Adani Group and his nephew Sagar Adani, alleging they engaged in hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to help an Adani company while “falsely touting the company’s compliance with anti-bribery principles and laws in connection with a $US750 million ($A1.2 billion) bond offering”.
A spokesperson for the Adani Group said in a statement that the allegations made by the US Department of Justice and the US Securities and Exchange Commission against directors of Adani Green are “baseless and denied”.
“All possible legal recourse will be sought,” the spokesperson said.
“The Adani Group has always upheld and is steadfastly committed to maintaining the highest standards of governance, transparency and regulatory compliance across all jurisdictions of its operations.
“We assure our stakeholders, partners and employees that we are a law-abiding organisation, fully compliant with all laws.”
