On a windswept rise above the mighty Snowy River in the Australian Alps, two women are crouched over rocks encircling a large, flat granite stone, their hands placed reverently on the ground beside it. A crow rises in flight overhead and swoops directly towards them.

“That’s our ancestor,” one of the women, Michelle Francis, says.

It’s in the caw of the crow above that the Ngarigo, the Indigenous people of the Snowy Mountains, hear the voices of ancestors. Below them, the alpine soil hugs the earthly and ancient remains of Ngarigo men, women and children.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ngarigo women, Linda Sefian and Michelle Francis, kneel above the gravesite of a Ngarigo ancestor.

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Only two kilometres south of Jindabyne, perched on the edge of the dam, is a barren paddock devoid of much more than a few straggling weeds.

The ground seems desolate, but to the Ngarigo people it is full and resonant with ceremonies of life, birth and death.

“They reckon none of us are left,” Ngarigo elder Uncle John Casey says. “But at least 25% of this town are descendants of Ngarigo people. We have been fighting for years for recognition.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Overlooking the south-facing valley near Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains, where the proposed subdivision will be built.

At the end of 2018, the Snowy Monaro regional council approved subdivision and development on this paddock. The Ngarigo say it contains potential burial sites, and abuts another paddock containing several already well-documented graves.

“Most of the Ngarigo know about these places but we didn’t talk about them for fear of them being desecrated or destroyed,” Francis says.

“As children we would eavesdrop on the adult conversations about such things but we never talked because we didn’t want the white people to know where they were.”

When floodwater washed away a creek bed at nearby Rock Flat Creek in 1991, it exposed two individuals and some astoundingly precious funerary artefacts of the Ngarigo people. The burial was found to be at least 7,000 years old: the oldest recorded site in the region.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Michelle Francis, a Ngarigo elder and CEO of the Ngarigo nations Indigenous corporation.

Sydney-based Ngarigo woman Simone Davison says visiting the burial ground “brings me into connection with the place.”

“I feel terribly proud that is an ancestor of mine and that dirt up there has the same minerals in it that are in my blood,” Davidson says.

“It’s the essence of my country and it’s the essence of me.”

Before the subdivision was unanimously approved, the Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) wrote to the council noting that one known gravesite was within “close proximity to the development”.

The OEH recommended a full archaeological study and subsurface testing.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ngarigo man Uncle Angel John Gallard holds a possum skinning tool from one of the many unrecognised archaeological sites in the Australian Alps.

Dabyne Planning assisted the council in rezoning the land for subdivision. They engaged consultants, Ecological Australia, to conduct the necessary enquiries and met with five members of the Ngarigo community onsite in May last year.

Ngarigo-Yuin elder Iris White was present at that meeting and says she discussed the existence of the Ngarigo cemetery there.

“We weren’t satisfied with the advice we were given by the archaeologist and I was of the understanding that we would be given further advice,” White says.

But Dabyne’s principal, Ivan Pazlich, says his company conducted adequate testing on the subdivision area.

“OEH are not a regulatory planning body and therefore have no authority. They haven’t said the subdivision doesn’t follow the guidelines. I suggest you pick matters that are actually important. It is approved. Move on,” Pazlich says.

Snowy Monaro regional council could earn an estimated $2.2 million from the development.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jim Crocker of Jindabyne in the Snowy Mountains sits beside the waterhole where he used to catch fish and eels as a kid. The water hole is clogged with duckweed and algael blooms as Snowy Hydro syphons off the water from Cobbin Creek.

Seventy-year-old Jim Crocker’s ancestors were some of the first white settlers along the road that leads to the ski resort of Thredbo.

Crocker, a Vietnam vet with a dry sense of bush humour, was born and raised in Jindabyne, long before the old town was flooded.

Crocker stands by the Ngarigo grave and says that the knowledge of it was passed down to him by one of the original European settlers in the area, Mick Pendergast.

“All I am doing is passing it on,” Crocker says.

He says he originally thought the graves were the site of an old cattleman’s hut because the area “looked like a garden at that time”. But he later contacted National Parks and Wildlife Services when he realised they were the burial sites he’d been told about.

“They were doing rabbit eradication with rippers,” Crocker says, “and I thought these are going to be lost, and lost forever.”

In 2006 an archaeologist from the Australian National University studied the area and, according to Crocker, “he realised the significance of the site. He explained to me how they used to bury them and pointed out different graves that were there.”

But no further action was taken to preserve the burial sites.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A development application sign overlooking the valley where the proposed subdivision will be built.

“They told me they were going to carbon date them but I don’t know,” Crocker says. “Obviously nothing has been done.”

Access to the sites is restricted, as the land is jointly owned by a number of rural interests. Crocker says the sites are kept secret for another reason.

“They told me they didn’t want it publicised because people could go there and vandalise what’s left.”

Jindabyne is part of a major development push, with the NSW government’s recent announcement of the $2.4M “Go Jindabyne” masterplan to revitalise the town.

The plan aims to “make Jindabyne Australia’s premier alpine destination and a fantastic place to visit all year round.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Uncle Angel John Gallard.

It is estimated more than 1.3M people visit the Snowy Mountains each year and 35,000 people now live within the Snowy Monaro regional council borders.

The signs that welcome these visitors don’t mention Ngarigo people. They defer to the anodyne “Paying respect to the Traditional Owners”.

For Michelle Francis, who speaks of the “Ngarigo warriors” in their graves beside Cobbin Creek, the story of her people has been based on lies.

“They got it wrong,” she says. “It’s unacceptable. We are not extinct. This burial ground puts us back on the map. This area belongs to the people of the snow.”