LẦN ĐẦU TÒA PHÁN QUYẾT VUA MỎ ANDREW FORREST PHẢI BỒI THƯỜNG 150 TRIỆU CHO THỔ DÂN CHỦ ĐẤT MÀ CÔNG TY KHAI THÁC MỎ ĐÃ ĐÀO ĐẤT MÀ KHÔNG HỀ CÓ PHÉP CỦA SỞ HỮU CHỦ./-Mt68

"A composite image of Andrew Forrest (left) and Michael Woodley situated at a Fortescue mine in WA. (AAP/ABC News)" 

A composite image of Andrew Forrest (left) and Michael Woodley situated at a Fortescue mine in WA. (AAP/ABC News)Traditional owners from Western Australia's remote north have been awarded $150.1 million in compensation after mining magnate Andrew Forrest's company dug up hundreds of millions of tonnes of iron ore from their lands without their permission.

It is the biggest native title payout ever awarded in Australia and the culmination of an almost two-decades-long legal battle between the Yindjibarndi people and Mr Forrest's Fortescue mining company.

But elders have expressed their disappointment with the decision, with one describing the payout as "peanuts" compared to the billions that Fortescue has made from its lucrative Solomon Hub mines built on Yindjibarndi land.

The four huge open-pit mines were built without the agreement of the traditional owners and have generated tens of billions of dollars in revenue for the company since production began in 2013, with billions more expected before the mine is set to close in the mid-2040s.

The Yindjibarndi group had sought $1.8 billion for the loss of their cultural connection to the land, economic loss and the destruction of cultural sites.

But Fortescue argued $8.1 million would suffice.

In front of a courtroom packed with Yindjibarndi people and their supporters, Federal Court Justice Stephen Burley said the Yindjibarndi had a "deep and visceral connection" to their land that affected all aspects of their lives.

Justice Burley found Fortescue liable for both cultural loss, valued at $150 million, and $150,000 for economic loss.

Payout 'peanuts'

The amount is almost three times greater than the previous biggest court-mandated compensation payout to native title owners, awarded to the Gudanji, Yanyuwa, and Yanyuwa-Marra peoples in February, after Glencore's McArthur River mine was built on their country in the Northern Territory.

Michael Woodley, who has spearheaded the Yindjibarndi's fight for more than two decades as the YNAC's chief executive, sat in the front row of the tightly packed courtroom together with his wife Lorraine and four of their young granddaughters.

The mood in the court was sombre as Justice Burley read out his summary judgment, the quiet punctuated only by the occasional muffled cries and gurgles of Mr Woodley’s newest grandchild.

Outside the court, Yindjibarndi elders Judith Coppin and Wendy Hubert expressed their deep disappointment.

"Peanuts" was Ms Hubert's assessment, while Ms Coppin said many elders had died before the verdict was delivered, more than two decades after Fortescue first began clearing their land and the Yindjibarndi began their fight for recognition.

"Our family, half of our family is gone," she said.

"We've been fighting for 20 years, and we've only got a little bit of elders left now."

A vivid and colourful painting by Ms Coppin and a group of other Yindjibarndi artists adorned the wall of the court where Justice Burley read his summary, a gift from the artists following the 2017 native title determination.

No taxpayer bill

The state government had been expected to foot part of the compensation bill for granting Fortescue permission to mine the Yindjibarndi land but, unlike in the McArthur River case that awarded $54 million in damages against the NT government, WA taxpayers will not be asked to pick up the tab.

Only a summary of Justice Stephen Burley's decision was read out in the Perth courtroom — the full judgement is suppressed to protect commercially sensitive information.

The claim eventuated after the Yindjibarndi Ngurra Aboriginal Corporation (YNAC) was in 2017 recognised as the exclusive native title owners of a 2,700-kilometre tract of land in WA's mineral-rich Pilbara.

But by this time, Fortescue had already built its sprawling Solomon Hub operations on the land, after getting permission from both the government and a different local Aboriginal representative group it had backed

Justice Burley noted the 240 sacred sites inside the Solomon Hub mining area that had become inaccessible to the Yindjibarndi people, 124 of which had been "completely destroyed" by the mining operations.

He said moving evidence had been given to the court by a series of Yindjibarndi elders, who told of how their "spirit or will is destroyed when they see harm done to their country as a result of the mining".

'We'll fight it'

After the verdict, Mr Woodley said he was disappointed with the economic loss component of the compensation and hinted at a possible appeal.

"We don't get this far and stop. So we'll review it, we'll fight it. We've been fighting all our lives, right?" he said.

However, he said the awarding of $150 million was a "win for First Nations people" after the ongoing trauma of seeing mining on their land.

In a statement, a Fortescue spokesperson said Andrew Forrest cared "deeply about all First Nations people" and the company "accepts that the Yindjibarndi People are entitled to compensation".