A State of Over Excitement: (un)Sustainable Development in Remote Regions of Western Australia
Kado Muir, Aboriginal Heritage Consultants P/L
Aboriginal Australians developed an extensive and complex trading network based on the exchange of intellectual property as the primary commodity, while material goods were traded as a secondary commodity to qualify the primary exchange. This economy operated within the hunter gather mode of production for countless millennia.
There has never been any formal recognition of Aboriginal economic capacity beyond that of a laboring subservient role. There has never been any attempt by governments to recognize the value of assets in the form of intellectual property, land and/or natural resources held, owned or managed by Aboriginal people. The history of contact has been one of marginalization and dispossession, this colonial tradition of subjugation continues into the present with restrictions in legislation like the Native Title Act, to taking and using resources for personal domestic consumption, not economic development.
