The political ecology and political economy of the Indigenous land titling 'revolution' in Australia

Abstract

This paper begins with a brief grim history of indigenous continental dispossession and its colonial logic. I then present recent and more optimistic maps of re-possession, what I term an Indigenous land titling �revolution.� I also present some mapping of the contested values of various resources on indigenous lands. As the maps show, there is a clear tension between the frames of political economy and political ecology on how newly re-acquired lands and resources might be productively deployed. This is a tension between national growth (as measured by gross domestic product dependent on industrial extraction of minerals and commodity exports) and local and regional development for Indigenous land owners. This tension is based on a different focus on livelihoods and wellbeing and the potential for the commodification of the provision of environmental services. I use the frame of economic hybridity in an attempt to both elucidate and mediate this tension at local and regional levels, and the ecological economics framework to do similar work in national and global debates.