PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The Parliamentary inquiry into the destruction of 46 000-year-old caves at the Juukan Gorge, in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, is expected to hear from the Puutu Kunti Kurama and Pinikura (PKKP) this week.

Mining giant Rio Tinto and the Western Australian government are also expected to give testimony.

The PKKP Aboriginal Corporation, in its submission to the inquiry, were critical that Rio had not protected the gorge, despite the PKKP, as well as anthropologists and archaeologists, providing the company with information on the significance of the Juukan rockshelters.

“Rio Tinto rebuffed repeated attempts at increasing communication with Traditional Owners and took a narrow, procedural approach to the relationship.

“We are extremely angry that, over an extended period, Rio Tinto did not act on our input nor the input of specialist archaeologists and anthropologists relating to the cultural importance of the Juukan Gorge rockshelters. The rockshelters are part of a sensitive and significant cultural landscape related to a particular ceremony and men’s rites,” the submission read.

“We are also angry that, once we raised the alarm bells in the months and weeks leading up to the disaster, Rio Tinto ignored our requests and concerns. In the days before the disaster Rio Tinto kept loading charges around Juukan 1 and Juukan 2 and then only took steps to avoid blast damage to sites over which they did not have legal authority to destroy.

“In addition to Rio Tinto’s refusal to avoid mining the rockshelters entirely, we believe that Rio Tinto could have done more to avoid the destruction of the rockshelters once our concerns were heard and the explosive holes had been drilled – as demonstrated by their ability to avoid damage to other sites during the same blast.”

The fallout from the blast has seen Rio CEO Jean-Sebastian Jacques, its iron-ore CEO Chris Salisbury, and its group executive of corporate relations, Simone Niven all tender their resignations.