The details of a multimillion-dollar annual payment made by Rio Tinto to the Indigenous owners of Juukan Gorge will remain a secret after federal regulators accepted an argument from the foundation established to oversee the money that transparency would put a price on cultural heritage.

The Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura people established the Juukan Gorge Legacy Foundation with Rio in 2023 as part of an agreement to remedy the iron ore miner’s destruction of prized cultural heritage at the 46,000-year-old site in Western Australia’s Pilbara in May 2020.