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Jull, Peter --- "Book Review - Resources, Nations and Indigenous Peoples: Case Studies from Australasia, Melanesia and Southeast Asia" [1997] IndigLawB 51; (1997) 4(2) Indigenous Law Bulletin 19


Book Review - Resources, Nations and Indigenous Peoples: Case Studies from Australasia, Melanesia and Southeast Asia

R Howitt, J Connell and P Hirsch (eds)

Oxford University Press, Melbourne. 1996

ISBN 0 19 553758 0

Reviewed by Peter Jull

International mining conglomerates like Broken Hill Proprietary Limited (BHP), which has interests in the Barren Lands of Northern Canada and in the Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea, and RTZ - CRA, which has diamond interests in Canada's Indigenous north, Scandinavia's Sami (Lapp) homeland, as well as in Argyle in Western Australia, share knowledge (or studied ignorance) to maximise corporate advantage. In contrast, Indigenous peoples, academics and researchers with similar interests, and indeed, governments, rarely do any such thing. But, with resources like email, internet, and fax, cheap international fares, and, in particular, pointed studies such as those collected in this book under review, they no longer have any excuse. Apparently, the impetus of profit and power to international operators to share such knowledge remains a lot stronger and more persistent than it does to those sometimes genteel, fussy, dogged honest toilers who often have knowledge in these matters which is critical to Indigenous people.

Reading this book, I kept thinking that the subtitle might have been 'Portraits in Powerlessness', or even 'Portraits in Hopelessness'. The introduction notes that

'As minorities in the political spaces created around them, as marginalised groups in the economies within which they have been incorporated, and as disempowered groups excluded from the dominant around them, indigenous peoples have often had little place in either the old or new politics of nationhood. For them the notion of the territorially defined nation is more likely to be a dangerous fiction than an "imagined community" because it is so often built on the denial and subjugation of their rights, cultures, aspirations and even their very presence' (p 1).

Indeed, perhaps the most significant achievement of the volume is the introduction (and de facto conclusion) by Howitt and his co-editors. Without that, one would be quickly lost in the lurid world of downtown Darwin's white-shoe brigade, outback fires, Maori fisheries, south-east Asian politico-cultural complexities, and local Aboriginal mining negotiations.

If I had a criticism, and I do not, it would be that sly double-talking double-dealing governments behind their walls of studies, national interest, and other obfuscation get too little attention. They tend to disappear into the background, and that is the real problem in this business. Unless and until social scientists and socially-conscious persons are prepared to go after them, know them, expose them, persuade or embarrass them, the 'new world order' of small-scale sustainable development admired by the editors will not happen. On the contrary, as this collection of studies shows, knowledge and new ideas may quickly pile up, more actors enter the fray, great visions come and go, governments change, but the basic dynamics remain unchanged and strategies remain unformulated.

In Canada, across the northern half of that country, long-term tenacious Indigenous political activism, backed by socially engaged experts of many kinds, has forced a general framework of institutions, regional agreements, and a political culture which might provide a working model of that new world order. Indigenous people in the BHP mine area, for example, in what was recently a blank on the maps between Great Slave Lake and the Arctic coast of Northern Canada, have benefited to a degree from such an approach. Agreements could have been better, but detailed land claims negotiations are not yet complete there and the Canadian government is proving slippery in the meantime (Fenge et al, 1996).

The editors note that such regional agreements developed in Northern Canada (which benefited in hindsight from earlier Alaskan models), set 'a nascent international standard' (p 18). The long brewing report of Canada's Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, released in November 1996, also recommends the reinforcement and extension of regional agreements for the whole country as a new basis for Indigenous policy, resource management, and self-government. Australian surveys, critiques, and discussions of Canadian experience in recent years have helped stimulate some of us contributing to the Canadian Royal Commission to think more deeply about these matters (see, notably, Richardson, Craig and Boer, 1995; Harris, 1995; Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), 1995; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), 1995). When we had been flailing away in the snows of Arctic Canada years ago, attacked from all sides for the creative muddle emerging as the first round of Indigenous-White regional political accommodations (or 'reconciliation', to use the Australian term), we had no such benefit of distance or objective overviews. These sorts of books were then unwritten.

The point is not only that we accumulate such knowledge-for instance, Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh's fine chapter on local Indigenous negotiations-but that we must also build the networks to make use of it. It is not good enough to let knowledge accumulate like great dusty cobwebs in an unused garage, a sort of parallel universe wondrous to contemplate if only someone would, or the theme for yet another conference for professional spectators. One after another of the remaining Indigenous minorities (which provide 90% or more of the world's cultural diversity, the editors tell us) are now faced with unceasing and massive pressure which they cannot possibly withstand without real help.

Nor have we cause to be smug in our 'first world' cafes and campuses. Marcus Lane and Athol Chase outline the contemporary difficulties of communities on Queensland's Cape York, as does O'Faircheallaigh, in dealing with modern industry and 'reformed' government. Sue Jackson deliciously reveals that even those in our fine new northern urban areas such as Darwin and Broome, building a new Australia on outdoor, recreation, tourist, and cultural values, are just as terra nullius - minded in their daily actions and bulldozings as anyone in times past. Lesley Head and Camilla Hughes show that where fire may be easy to start, and is now a much-admired white man's symbol of Aboriginal tradition, it is not easier to handle in our institutions than when fanned outside by hot northerlies. Jocelyn Davies and Elspeth Young take outback areas of South Australia and the Kimberley as case studies in regional problem-solving and signal the need for a circuit-breaker like regional agreements.

The New Zealand Indigenous fisheries, discussed by PA Memnon and RC Cullen, are almost unique in the book because they show something significant happening in a positive direction, however difficult the working out of the details. One hopes that Liberal Prime Minister Howard's recent discussions of Indigenous rights with the New Zealand Prime Minister and Cabinet impressed upon him that these subjects are by no means simply chic ideas of a trendy Labor government. On the contrary, they are universal problems, of lasting importance, and resistant to quick fixes. At the same time, they would benefit from some knowledgeable discussion. Torres Strait Islander leaders, and others such as Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner Mick Dodson, have been urging for several years that Australia's coastal Indigenous peoples sit down with others from overseas-South Pacific peoples, Sami, Inuit, North American Indians-to share ideas for dealing with common problems of coastal and marine environments, economies, rights, and management.

This book of studies is so diverse that everyone looking into it will find his or her own favourite bits. I especially enjoyed Kathy Robinson's talk of male and female in the ethos of mining communities, having lived in such places long before I thought of questioning their order of things as other than perfectly natural. (My major impression on arriving in Yellowknife as a teenager who had whiled away the boredom of childhood with British murder mysteries was that all those drums of sodium cyanide lying casually around, not to mention arsenic, showed remarkable trust in the goodness of human nature.)

However, for me, Danny Kennedy's chapter on the Kutubu oil project of Papua New Guinea (PNG) reaching out into the sea a little northeast from Torres Strait says it all. Despite the fact that the project is 'not only the first hydrocarbon export facility in PNG, but also the first among the South Pacific island nations', despite the fact that it has been 'billed as the world's first green oil project, by merit of a pipeline that doesn't leak', and finally, despite the fact that the project has employed 'professional environmentalists from the World Wildlife Fund to integrate conservation and development politics in the affected area' (pp 236-7), the Kutubu project is causing much anxiety among Torres Strait Islanders. Kennedy quotes a former Papua New Guinea provincial premier on large-scale developments: 'I think it's devil-upment. It destroys the people' (p 240).

In the Northern Hemisphere, it was hinterland and offshore oil development such as this in depressed or pre-industrial economies like Shetland, Greenland, Norwegian fishing coasts, Inuit Alaska, or Inuit Canada, more than any other factor, which catalysed public debate and mobilised Indigenous politics from the 1960s. It gave rise to program and policy reforms, court precedents, new institutions such as regional agreements, Indigenous-government environmental co-management, regional self-government, international Indigenous co-operation, and even constitutional amendments. What is remarkable in hindsight is that everywhere hinterland or offshore oil threatened, local populations not only organised quickly but were highly sceptical of the claims of government, industry and optimistic experts who promised great benefits. What began as concern with oil development impacts in these remote hunting communities led to the creation of joint strategic planning in the Inuit Circumpolar Conference and to the Inuit joining with other Arctic Indigenous umbrella groups, notably the Arctic Council with its two tiers of government (the United States of America, Russia, Canada and the Nordic countries, and second, Indigenous peoples of Arctic North America, Northern Europe, and Russia ('Hands across the ice', The Economist, 21 September 1996)).

There is now a great literature and no end of case studies on the shelf on which Torres Strait Islanders, Aborigines, and other peoples of Australasia, Melanesia, and Southeast Asia can draw. Let us hope that the thought-provoking juxtaposition of case studies and the insightful introduction of this book help us to produce action where it counts-in and among Indigenous organisations and communities. Hydrocarbon development and transport systems, Indigenous marine and coastal interests, and diamond mining should be three of the first priorities for Indigenous international collaboration.

References

ATSIC, 1995. ATSIC Regional Agreements Seminar, Cairns, 29-31 May 1995, Proceedings. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra.

Fenge T et al, 1996. Northern Perspectives (Special diamond mining issue), Vol 24, Nos 1-4, Fall/Winter 1996. Canadian Arctic Resources Committee, Ottawa.

Harris A (ed), 1995. A good idea waiting to happen: Regional Agreements in Australia. Proceedings from the Cairns Workshop, July 1994, Cape York Land Council, Cairns, Queensland.

HREOC, 1995. Indigenous Social Justice, Vol 1. Strategies and Recommendations, Submission to the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia on the Social Justice Package by Michael Dodson, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Canberra. [Vol 2, Regional Agreements, and Vol 3, Resource Materials].

Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP.), 1996a. People to People, Nation to Nation: Highlights from the Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Ottawa.

RCAP, 1996b. Chapter 2 'Treaties', Chapter 3 'Governance', Chapter 4 'Lands and Resources, Restructuring the Relationship', Volume 2 (published in two parts), Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Ottawa, pp 9-774.

Richardson BJ, Craig D and Boer B, 1995. Regional agreements for indigenous lands and cultures in Canada, Australian National University North Australia Research Unit, Darwin.


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