Indigenous Rights, Mining Corporations, and the Australian State

Abstract

This chapter examines the relationship between indigenous people, mining corporations, and the state in liberal democratic, rich and minerals export dependent Australia. I begin by briefly describing indigenous societies at first contact and then trace the devastation of the hunter-gatherer economy as state and settler colonization expanded. Today, indigenous people are an encapsulated and marginalized minority in a settler-majority society. It is only in the last 30 years that progressive laws and judicial findings have seen considerable tracts of marginal land returned to indigenous ownership. However, land rights and native title laws provide no recognition of indigenous rights in commercially valuable resources, including minerals.

I would like to thank Michael Dillon, Melinda Hinkson, Benedict Scambary and Susie Russell for comments on an earlier version of this chapter. Belinda Oliver drew the three maps that initially appeared in Scambary (2007) and have been modified for publication here by Gillian Cosgrove. This work has benefited enormously from the generous comments provided by all participants at the two UNRISD workshops in Geneva, and especially from conveners Terence Gomez and Suzana Sawyer.