Qualla: Juukan Gorge https://qualla.com/juukan-gorge en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:26 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/q/e/g/r/juukan-gorge-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Juukan Gorge https://qualla.com/juukan-gorge Juukan Gorge: Introduction https://qualla.com/juukan-gorge/ Photo credit Виктор В, CC BY-SA 3.0. The gorge carries a man's name. Juukan was a Puutu Kunti Kurrama man, also called Tommy Ashburton, born at Jukarinya near Mount Brockman; his daughter gave this place its name. For tens of thousands of years before any of that, people sheltered in two caves here in the Hamersley Range - lit fires, shaped tools, plaited hair, buried their dead, and passed the country down, parent to child, across a span of time almost impossible to hold in the mind. This was the only known inland site in Australia with evidence of continuous human occupation through the last Ice Age and out the other side. On 24 May 2020, it was reduced to rubble in a planned mining blast. The people who had kept it for 46,000 years had begged for it to stop.

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Image: Виктор В | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/e/g/r/juukan-gorge-wp/qegr-juukan-gorge-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Juukan Gorge: Forty-Six Thousand Years of Belonging https://qualla.com/juukan-gorge/ Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. The depth of time at Juukan Gorge is hard to grasp. When archaeologists first studied the rock shelters in 2009, they dated occupation to at least 32,000 years - already among the oldest in the country. Rio Tinto received ministerial consent to mine the site in 2013. A salvage ar...

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Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/e/g/r/juukan-gorge-wp/qegr-juukan-gorge-forty-six-thousand-years-of-belonging.mp3 0:06 2 full Juukan Gorge: A Belt of Hair, a Living Bloodline https://qualla.com/juukan-gorge/ Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. Among everything the caves held, one find spoke most directly across the millennia. Archaeologists recovered a length of plaited human hair, part of a belt, woven from strands cut from the heads of several different people about 4,000 years ago. DNA testing of that hair did somet...

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Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/e/g/r/juukan-gorge-wp/qegr-juukan-gorge-a-belt-of-hair-a-living-bloodline.mp3 0:06 3 full Juukan Gorge: The Five Days https://qualla.com/juukan-gorge/ Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. The destruction was not an accident, and it was not a surprise to those who tried to prevent it. Rio Tinto had obtained ministerial consent to mine the site back in 2013, under Section 18 of Western Australia's Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972 - a law that, once permission was grante...

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Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/e/g/r/juukan-gorge-wp/qegr-juukan-gorge-the-five-days.mp3 0:06 4 full Juukan Gorge: Outrage, Resignations, and a Reckoning https://qualla.com/juukan-gorge/ Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. The blast detonated something far beyond the gorge. International outrage followed, and an Australian parliamentary inquiry titled its interim report with the only words that fit: Never Again. It called the destruction 'inexcusable,' laid bare how badly heritage law had failed th...

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Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/e/g/r/juukan-gorge-wp/qegr-juukan-gorge-outrage-resignations-and-a-reckoning.mp3 0:06 5 full Juukan Gorge: What Cannot Be Rebuilt https://qualla.com/juukan-gorge/ Photo credit Frank Vincentz, CC BY-SA 3.0. Only a portion of the western wall of one shelter still stands. To restore some sense of belonging to the country, plans are underway to build a full-size replica of the destroyed shelters on PKKP land - drawing on historic photographs, oral history, and imprints of the original ...

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Image: Frank Vincentz | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/q/e/g/r/juukan-gorge-wp/qegr-juukan-gorge-what-cannot-be-rebuilt.mp3 0:06 6 full