The company asked for traditional owners’ views on issues including its push to strengthen partnerships,modernise land-use agreements and improve “cultural competency” across the organisation.
The results of the survey,released by Rio on Thursday,showed most groups gave very high or the highest scores when asked to rank what they thought about the company’s pledges. However,opinions differed on questions of how well Rio was progressing with their implementation so far,and the extent to which traditional owners had been consulted.
While Rio’s commitment to modernising agreements was broadly welcomed,some cautioned that the “proof will be in the pudding”.
“The commitment is admirable,” one said. “The proof will be in the breadth of the modernisation.”
Another group ranked the miner’s progress in improving agreements so far with the lowest possible score.
“We believe Rio Tinto is still doing the bare minimum required to recover its reputation,” it said.
Rio Tinto’s blasting of the 46,000-year-old Juukan Gorge rock shelters in May last year left the land’s traditional owners devastated,sparked a global outcry and plunged the miner into crisis,eventually leading to the resignations of chief executive Jean-Sebastien Jacques and two of his deputies. Rio chairman Simon Thompsonwill step down in coming months.