ABSTRACT
Chapter 5 examines how the Wangan and Jagalingou Family Council claimed FPIC to oppose the Carmichael Mine Project in central Queensland. The Family Council is a traditional owner’s group within the Wangan and Jagalingou that claimed FPIC as an international human right alongside its engagement with Australian legal processes. To do so, the Family Council performatively enacts as Indigenous peoples, subjects of international legal discourse. From the state’s perspective, the Family Council’s invocation of FPIC appears more like direct political action than the invocation of rights formally enshrined in national law. The FPIC claims have become part of a larger movement against the Carmichael mine, which, at this time, may not be developed. However, the struggle to claim FPIC involves a struggle over the subjectivity of the claimants that state actors contest. It ends by suggesting that because the state does not recognize those rights as law, a supra-national authority that requires states to uphold the rights of Indigenous peoples could be viewed as a beneficial step.
