"Australian court fines company for unlawful work on Aboriginal sacred site", 5 March 2025.

An Australian court on Wednesday convicted and fined a company for conducting unlawful work for 13 years on an Aboriginal sacred site in northern Australia.

Swiss multinational Glencore, which is the owner of McArthur River Mine, was fined an amount of $31,500 after pleading guilty to unlawfully carrying out work at a sacred site without the appropriate formal certification, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

The mining company reportedly did not seek certification from the Northern Territory’s sacred sites authority, the Aboriginal Area Protection Authority (AAPA), for the installation of handrails at Barney Creek in 2017.

The site is part of a sacred Barramundi Dreaming site called Damangani.

AAPA’s lawyer, Jon Bortoli, also said that the mine conducted water monitoring between 2009 and 2022 without an authority certificate in the creek, which has been a registered sacred site for 20 years.

McArthur River Mine, in turn, apologized in a statement on Wednesday after the verdict.

“McArthur River Mine apologizes and regrets the concern this has caused to Indigenous traditional owners and custodians,” said the company.