MELBOURNE -- The land now known as Australia is an invaded, colonized place. When the invaders arrived, they settled on the basis of the legal fiction of terra nullius, or land belonging to no one, despite the existence of more than 500 clans or nations of Traditional Owner groups.

Digging up this land is the cornerstone of Australia's modern economy. The rocks we've sold to China have seen us avoid recession for 29 years. And while our run of economic growth has ended, we're ever more dependent on blowing up, digging out and putting our land on ships to make steel for buildings in faraway places.

Australia's determination to ignore its Indigenous people and their heritage in favor of economic exploitation was made evident in May, when news broke that mining giant Rio Tinto had deliberately destroyed the Juukan Gorge Caves, a cultural site of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura Traditional Owner (PKKP) people of Western Australia.

And yet, on Australia's National Sorry Day -- which remembers the mistreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people who were forcibly removed from their families and communities -- Rio Tinto went ahead with its plans.

Because of the weak protections offered by the outdated Aboriginal Heritage Act of 1972 (WA), Rio Tinto's destruction of the site was, in fact, lawful.