Brown is currently touring the region on board Sea Shepherd vessel Steve Irwin with a plethora of guests, with Brown meeting with the Goolarabooloo people and native title joint claimants the Jabirr Jabirr people.

Jabirr Jabirr elder Rita Augustine has published an open letter to Brown, in which she describes a meeting with Brown as a massive disappointment.

“Dr Brown, it is hard for us to understand why you think it is necessary for you to speak on our behalf, about our country, our culture, and our futures,” reads the letter published on news.com.au reads.

“The only thing we need saving from, is people who disrespect our decisions and want to see our people locked up in a wilderness and treated as museum pieces.”

She said the decision to allow the development at James Price Point was not made lightly, and it was sadly obvious the $1.5 billion in investment into the community would not be achieved without the support of the private sector.

“If we can use the $1.5 billion in benefits that have been negotiated as part of the Browse LNG Precinct Agreement to save our people's lives, will that not be a good thing? We are not money-hungry people. This money is not going into our back pocket,” Augustine wrote.

“It will be used to implement suicide awareness programs, training and counselling for families, education and employment opportunities, better health and housing. ls that too much to ask for?”

Head of indigenous organisation Waardi Limited Warren Greatorex said a meeting with Brown proved disappointing.

"It seems he is more interested in whales and marine life than the future of local indigenous people or our culture," he was quoted in The Australian as saying.

"He preferred to talk about saving the whales from extinction but did not seem to care that the suicide rate among our young people in the Kimberley is an epidemic."

He also lashed out at Brown for allegedly not securing the permission of the native people to visit the site.

Brown said Greatorax’s account was a distortion.

"That's misrepresenting absolutely the concern I had and the expressing of shame in the way Australia has treated Aboriginal people and the disadvantage that's there," he said.

"What I couldn't get from Warren was support for the moral position that $1.3 billion from the exploitation of this gas should go to the indigenous people without the gas factory being placed across their land."

Comment is being sought from Brown.

This article first appeared in ILN's sister publication EnergyNewsBulletin.net.