Yindjibarndi people

The Yindjibarndi are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia. They form the majority of Aboriginal people around Roebourne (the Millstream area).^[1] Their traditional lands lie around the Fortescue River.^[2]

Yindjibarndi, with around 1000 speakers, has been called the most innovative descendant of then proto-Ngayarta language.^[3] It is mutually intelligible with Kurruma. Due to their displacement in the colonisation process, which forced them into Roebourne, many speakers are Ngarluma people who have adopted Yindjibarndi. Their spatial concepts regarding landscape of do not translate with any equivalent conceptual extension into English.^[4][5]

Yindjibarndi ancestral territory has been estimated to cover approximately 5,000 square miles (13,000 km²). It is located on the lower Hamersley Range plateau south of the Pialin at the junction of Portland Creek with the Fortescue River, east along a line formed by the edge of the scarp facing the eastern headwaters of Yule River; east along the Fortescue River to Marana Pool , about 10 miles west of Kudaidari . South to the clifflike north-facing scarp of the higher Hamersley Range plateau roughly along a line from Mount Elvira east-southeast to Mount George . The southern boundary is marked by the change from open porcupine grass country to the densely thicketed mulga country extending south.^[6]

Traditionally, until the arrival of Europeans, the Yindjibarndi lived along the middle sector of the valley through which the Fortescue River runs, and the nearby uplands. Beginning in the 1860s pastoralists established cattle stations on their homeland, and the Yindjibarndi were herded into settlements. Today most of them are congregated in and around the traditional Ngarluma territory whose centre is Roebourne.^[7]

The Yindjibardni people, alongside the Ngarluma people, are a party to the land access agreement for the Woodside-operated North West Shelf Venture,^[8] executed in 1998. Under the agreement, Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi people remain the traditional owner representatives for the North West Shelf Venture area, which includes the Karratha Gas Plant.^{[citation needed]} The 1998 agreement established the Ngarluma Yindjibarndi Foundation Ltd, which operates out of Roebourne.^[9]

The mining magnate Andrew Forrest, head of Fortescue Metals Group (FMG), which extracts ore at the Solomon iron ore hub on the Yindjibarndi's traditional land, waged a 14-year legal battle to assert the company's rights over use of the land. In 2017, the Federal Court of Australia recognised that the Yindjibarndi had exclusive native title rights over some 2,700 square kilometres (1,000 sq mi), and the court reaffirmed its decision in 2020 when FMG appealed to have the determination overturned.^[10] In 2022 the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (YAC) asked the Federal Court to rule on compensation, after attempts to negotiate an Indigenous land use agreement had stalled.^[11] As of 2023^[update] YAC continues its battle in the courts for compensation. They are seeking unpaid royalties of more than A$500 million, as well as damages that could amount to more hundreds of millions, for "loss of sacred sites and spiritual connection to the land". The claim was initially discussed at a meeting between FMG and YAC in March 2011. The Western Australian Government may also bear responsibility for allowing the mining to take place without the permission of the Yindjibarndi people. The lawyer acting for the YAC sees it as a landmark case, as it would be "the first case that sets down the benchmark for compensation to be paid under the Native Title Act by a miner".^[12]