From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Thursday, October seventeen. Australia will donate tanks worth almost two hundred and fifty million dollars to Ukraine. The move is a response to the emergence of an alliance between Russia and North Korea, and it follows a controversial decision by the government to bury usable helicopters instead of sending
them to Ukraine. Anthony Alberanese's four point three million dollar house purchase hasn't gone down well with some of his labor colleagues. They're pushing for a shakeup of the party's housing policies ahead of the election to show voters they're taking the housing crisis seriously. That exclusive is live right now at the Australian dot Com dot a U. A billion dollar gold mine and a sacred stoore, worry about
a beautiful native bee. Those are the elements of a raging controversy that's drawn in Environment Minister Tenure Plibisek and two groups of Aboriginal elders with opposing views. Today the high stakes and delicate politics of the dreaming, there's a bee native to Australia. The blue banded bee, which is so pretty it looks like it can't possibly be real. It has turquoise and black stripes across its bottom, golden fur on top, and a pair of gleaming fairy wings.
Blue banded bees are solitary creatures and they burrow into flowers and then buzz to shake the pollen loose. The blue banded bee is not imaginary, it's very real. But is it part of the dreaming of the Warradjuri people, whose lands stretch across a vast slice of central New South Wales. That's the question at the heart of a
raging political drama. Environment Minister Tanya Plebisek in August rejected a proposal for a one billion dollar gold mine, accepting an application by a group of Warrajuri elders who said there'd be irreversible damage to Aboriginal cultural heritage if the mine goes ahead. Critically, they're objecting to the mining company Regius Resources creating a tailings dam that it needs to
store the waste products created by the mine. They say the dam would destroy the headwaters of the Blobular River. What they said was a site of traditional pre initiation ceremonies where the dreaming story about the blue banded bee was shared.
Visex found that that was a significant story and a story that made that catchment area of the river very important to our people.
Page Taylor is The Australian's Indigenous Affairs editor, and.
Of course this has caused a huge controversy because the Orange Land Council, which is the main representative body for that area, really disputes that story. They don't think it's real.
The dreaming. That's the creation stories passed down through generations of Aboriginal Australians. It's part of a rich, interconnected spirituality that encompasses animals, plants, the soil below and the constellations above.
This lineage of storytelling has been disrupted since seventeen eighty eight by the consequences of white settlement, from the devastation of smallpox to Fronti violence and family separation, and that's left uncertainty about establishing exactly who holds the cultural knowledge. Accepted the bee dreaming claim from the elders who call
themselves the Warajuri Traditional Owners. Central West Aboriginal Corporation REGIS says they found no mention of the Blue Banded b dreaming until twenty twenty two when it was invoked by opponents of their mind. And here's where it becomes interesting, also saying the dreaming story is a myth. Are Warajuri
elders associated with the Orange Local Aboriginal Land Council. That's a body created under land rights legislation to represent the interests of Aboriginal people and to manage traditional heritage sites. It all comes at a moment of exquisite sensitivity for the resources sector and the government.
This all goes back to when Rio Tinto blew up the ancient caves at juk and Gorge.
Mining giant Rio Tinto has fronted a parliamentary inquiry this morning over the destruction of a forty six thousand year old indigenous site in wa is Pilber region.
That was an international scandal and it's really brought attention to the fact that there are very important sites, and there are very important places that may not necessarily have a rare or endangered animal living there. It's an awareness of Aboriginal spiritual and cultural tradition that I think mining companies especially are now trying very hard to be conscious of and we saw in this case that Regis Resources. The company commissioned several reports and some of them were
very comprehensive. One of their consultants was asked specifically to look for what's described as intangible heritage, and that's when it's not an artifact, it's not a stone tool, it's a belief system.
Since Regis's application for this tailings dam was rejected, you and other journalists have been really trying to dig back through the reasoning of the Environment Minister in making this decision. What have you discovered about the process that took place.
It hasn't been that easy to be candid, because the Minister was saying from the beginning that there were things that were told to her in confidence. Now that we have the published reasons, we can see that the bee dreaming is very central to her thinking. And we can also see that there's a massive cyber over that because it's a story that only emerged very recently and the main representative body doesn't think it's true.
Tenia pliverseex says she's not actually rejecting this mind, she's just telling them they have to adjust their proposal a little bit.
There is nothing to stop the project going ahead. What I expect is that the tailings dam should be built in another location. The project proponent has chosen the cheapest and easiest location. The cheapest and easiest location has unacceptable impacts on cultural heritage.
The mining company says there are no viable alternatives for the tailings dam. Complicating things is the fact that the Orange Aboriginal Land Council's position on the mine has changed.
They initially opposed the mine. They had someone working for them who prepared reports that made them very concerned about how the mine would affect culture and heritage. They say to us that when that person left, they wanted to do their own reports. They wanted to just re examine and revisit what they thought they knew, and they became convinced that the site, that catchment area where the mine
is proposed is not sacred. There are very important stories to the wragerie in the region, and some of their elders are the keepers of those stories, but the Blue Banded b is not one, and they say none of those stories crossover the catchment area where the mine was proposed.
Do you get the sense page that what we're seeing here is a government who is perhaps a little bit traumatized by Dug and Gorge and is being super cautious, erring on the side of the possibility that this might be real rather than wanting to dig into it too much, because saying no is easier than saying yes.
That's such an interesting question. When you read Miss Plebisc's reasons, she sounds like she was very convinced by the evidence of an unnamed elder about the significance of the bee and the bee dreaming. What we don't understand is why the evidence of six people from the orange Land Council, including five people who identify as Braderie, and we now know one of them is the very senior cultural authority kneel Ingral, was disregarded. In short, the minister's explanation is
that not all people know all stories. That is why she's sided with the dissident group effectively in this case. She has talked about wanting to be more sensitive to Indigenous culture and claims of Indigenous cultural heritage since Gorge, I think that's a really forught area. Sometimes in government, who do you listen to.
Coming up the legacy of another bitter dispute over sacred stories page When I first got into journalism. In the mid nineteen nineties. There was this raging controversy about the Heindmarsh Island Bridge, a proposal in South Australia to build a bridge to an island, which some local developers wanted to do. It attracted opposition from some Indigenous people who said that it would disturb sacred practices.
The Narrjerry women tried to block construction of the bridge, arguing it would interfere with secret women's business. A Royal commission found that claims to be fabricated. For years, the state government supported the ruling, but has now acknowledged a two thousand and one Federal court finding that the claims of secret women's business weren't made up.
Home mosh Iron was such a difficult debate. It was about whether or not there was secret women's business at that site. That debate went on for years and the Australians Chris Kenny reported on that in quite a revelatory way. So in that case, in the simplest terms, there was an established Indigenous group that was talking about the women's business and how important that was, and there was a dissident group that was casting doubt on those claims it's
the opposite. At Blaney, it's the established group, the one with statutory authority. They have the elected body. They're saying this bee dreaming story isn't real, and it's the dissident group that has had the ear of the minister. They're saying it is real and it's reason enough to stop the mind.
A central figure from that controversy has popped up in this story. Writing in The Australian Today.
Philip Clark's and anthropologists for so many years experience. He was commissioned by Regis to do a very thorough audit of what's in the records, and he did find some totemic animals and some dreaming stories, some stories about creation ancestors, nothing that would impact that site. But doctor Clark didn't find a story about blue bee dreaming in his inquiries, and when he was asked about it, he says, in my opinion, this is highly unlikely, since there's no record
of any Worraderi group having such tautemic ancestor. Doctor Clark talks about totemic animals in some of his writings, and they tend to be animals that are useful. For example, he's actually quite doubtful about species of bee that does not produce collectible honey becoming part of the tradition and part of Rajeri dreaming.
Paige Taylor is The Australian's Indigenous Affairs editor. You can read all her forensic reporting on this controversy right now at the Australian dot com dot au