Despite ownership and native title interests in large areas of land and adjacent rivers and seas in northern Australia, Indigenous people remain marginal participants in the commercial economy. Historical and contemporary determinants of low levels and quality of economic participation remain intractable, and recent policy in northern development has done little to address Indigenous interests, except to reiterate perceptions of Indigenous lands and culture as barriers to orthodox development (NTG 2014; Australian Government 2015; Russell-Smith et al. 2019).
However, the most decisive barriers have been created or perpetuated by non-Indigenous society, including chronic under-investment in knowledge, physical infrastructure and resident human capital. Reliance on trickle-down economics, despite dependence on investment that requires returns predominantly to overseas or southern Australia interests, of associated with sourcing of most inputs from outside the region (Stoekl 2013; Gerritsen et al. 2019) means that opportunities for local people to capture real and enduring benefits from orthodox development are absent or very limited. They emerge slowly and uncertainly, if at all.
Present policy and practice perpetuates treatment of Indigenous landholders as passive recipients of development propositions from external interests, requiring them to make quick decisions based on limited information on specific projects without support to consider plausible alternatives.
In this presentation we consider the present state of the Indigenous estate, including the nature and condition of lands and natural resources, present uses and their socioeconomic and biophysical implications, and the economic development aspirations of landowners and their communities. We will focus on barriers and solutions through the lens of water as a natural and cultural resource.