Photo: Ric Davies
l Indigenous benefit-sharing in resource development – the Australian Native Title experience 79
Carrying out a flora survey on Irvine Island. Aboriginal traditional knowledge has been invaluable in assisting
with environmental studies.
empowerment apropos of resource development, leading to the tangible economic
returns described above. In the north west,
all of this occurred in a reasonably
predictable, effective and cost-effective
economical fashion, at least by the standards of Australia’s native title system.
Evidence remains mixed and ambiguous as
to whether the inward flow of monies arising out of these negotiations has resulted
in any improvement in the social or
economic well-being of the communities in
question (I expand on this in Ritter, 2009,
pp. 58-61).
However, it is also easy to overstate the
case for what occurred. At one level the
functioning of the NTA in general and the
future act system in particular was more
intended to ensure the orderly processing
of resource tenements than to preserve
indigenous rights. After the initial upheaval
associated with the NTA’s introduction, the
system settled reasonably quickly in to a
market-like system of exchange in which
developers would come and negotiate
timely permission in exchange for consideration for value. The eventual impact of
the NTA was not only the emancipation of
indigenous people to have significant
procedural rights, but a form of commoditisation. In effect, the NTA functioned to
give traditional rights a narrow pecuniary
value, creating what was in substance a
‘native title market’.
There are a number of lessons from
Australia’s future act and native title representative body system that could have
wider application.
• Determining traditional tenure can be an
extremely lengthy and complex process,
taking literally years.
• There is a tension between conserving
traditional structures and the provision of
complex procedural rights: the dynamic is
never straightforward, but it seems likely
that the internal functioning of Australia’s
indigenous societies was affected by the
procedural obligations of the NTA. Proce-