Paper short abstract:

Division or conflict between miners and Aboriginal people in northern Australia is reflective of shifting patterns of agency, power and perspective across a range of players including the state. This paper explores engagements between communities and the inconsistent state and corporate sectors.

Paper long abstract:

Division and conflict between miners and Aboriginal people in northern Australia is reflective of shifting patterns of agency, power and perspective across a range of players including the state. In the post land-rights and post Mabo era, the visiting politicians in Australia's remote northern communities have been supplanted by company men. Safari suits have given way to high viz shirts as the state withdraws from its remote servicing interests and responsibilities in favour of and deference to corporate community benefits packaged up as social licence to mine.

Conflict between Aboriginal community values and mining is common and heavily shaped by the internal dynamics present within communities shaped by cultural obligation as well as broader socio-economic and political forces of the state or the corporate sector in its absence. In my view communities are increasingly exposed, accessible to and exploitable by mining companies given the multiple and often contradictory or absentee roles played by the state as sponsor, investor, and regulator.

I explore these processes drawing upon case materials from notable mining projects in Australia's Northern Territory. From state compelled national interest projects to corporate engagement and an ambivalent state, I conclude that the legacy experienced by most Aboriginal communities from their engagement with mining projects is largely negative based on the capacity of all parties to straddle the precarious divide between communal obligation and modes of economic "advancement" shaped by the corporate sector yet determined by the state.