Traditional owners from Western Australia’s remote north have been awarded $150.1 million in compensation after mining magnate Andrew Forrest’s company dug up hundreds of millions of tonnes of iron ore from their lands without their permission.

It is the biggest native title pay-out ever awarded in Australian history and culminates an almost two-decades-long legal battle between the Yindjibarndi people and Mr Forrest’s Fortescue mining company.

Fortescue, or FMG as it was known at the time, built its lucrative Solomon Hub mines on Yindjibarndi land, despite not being able to reach an agreement with traditional owners.

The mines have generated tens of billions of dollars in revenue for the company since production began in 2013, with much more expected before the mine is set to close in the mid-2040s.

The Yindjibarndi group had sought $1.8 billion for the loss of cultural connection to the land, economic loss and the destruction of cultural sites.

But Fortescue argued the compensation should not be more than $8.1 million.

In front of a court room packed with Yindjibarndi people and their supporters, Federal Court Justice Stephen Burley said the Yindjibarndi had a “deep and visceral connection” to their land that affected all aspects of their lives.

Justice Burley found Fortescue liable for both cultural loss, valued at $150 million, and $150,000 in economic loss.

The amount is almost three times greater than the previous biggest court-mandated compensation payout to native title owners, awarded to the Gudanji, Yanyuwa, and Yanyuwa-Marra peoples in February, after Glencore’s McArthur River mine was built on their country in the Northern Territory.

The mood in the court was sombre as Justice Burley read out his summary judgement, with Yindjibarndi representatives appearing disappointed they had not achieved close to the $1.8 billion they had sought.

Only a summary of Justice Stephen Burley’s decision was read out in the Perth courtroom — the full judgement is suppressed to protect commercially sensitive information.

The claim eventuated after the Yindjibarndi Ngurra Aboriginal Corporation (YNAC) was in 2017 recognised as the exclusive native title owners of a 2,700 kilometre tract of land in WA’s mineral-rich Pilbara.

But by this time, Fortescue had already built its sprawling Solomon Hub operations on the land, after getting permission from both the government and a different local Aboriginal representative group.

Michael Woodley, who has spearheaded the Yindjibarndi’s fight for more than two decades as the YNAC’s chief executive, sat in the front row of the tightly packed courtroom together with three of his young granddaughters.