Mining, indigeneity, alterity: or, mining Indigenous alterity?

Abstract

In this special issue on 'extraction', we think critically about two urgent and entangled questions, examining the political economy of mining and Indigenous interests in Australia, and the moral economy of Indigenous cultural difference within Cultural Studies and Anthropology. In settler colonial states such as Australia, Indigenous cultural difference is now routinely presented as commensurate with, rather than obstructive of, extractive industry activity. Meanwhile, the renewed interest in 'radical alterity' across these disciplines has seen a movement away from regarding authoritative claims about 'others' as morally suspectas only extracting from or mining Indigenous worlds for insights and academic prestige. The 'ontological turn', however, leads us to question the empirical status of the ontologies circulating through academic discussions. What happens when Indigenous people disappoint, in their embrace of environmentally destructive industries such as mining, for example? We argue that in cases where 'they' are not as different as 'we' might hope them to be, scholars should be concerned to foreground the potential role of colonial history and processes of domination in the production and reduction of ontological difference. Second, we call for critical assessment of the political, epistemological, and social effects of both academic and societal evaluations of difference. We conclude by urging for a scholarship that does not pick and choose between agreeable and less agreeable forms of cultural difference.

Accumulating Minerals and Dispossessing Indigenous Australians: Native Title Recognition as Settler‐Colonialism

“…Internationally, the mining industry has made much of its embrace of a new era of “agreement making” ushered in via the NTAA (Franks ). However, in Australia such agreements are mandated by law—native title law—not corporate goodwill, despite the exhortations of the mineral industry (Neale and Vincent ; Ritter ), a law that, O'Faircheallaigh (:163) reminds us, “creates an uneven paying field where native title parties are under duress to enter agreements and resource developers are not”. Negotiations where one party has no legislative option not to negotiate markedly increases the odds of a poor outcomes and places Indigenous Australians at a serious disadvantage when negotiating with mineral developers.…”

“…Prominent Aboriginal scholar, Marcia Langton (), claims that many Aboriginal communities have experienced significant economic benefit via the native title system, and in particular, the move to agreement making via the ILUA process. However, recent anthropological studies of mining areas offer a mixed picture, suggesting that disadvantage has “changed little” during the mining boom and the assumption that mining agreements reduce Indigenous socio‐economic disadvantage should be regarded somewhat sceptically (Neale and Vincent ; Ritter ).…”

Australia's national climate: learning to adapt?

“…At one level, Australians affirm Aboriginal peoples as 'the world's oldest living culture', a revived determinism that positions Aboriginal peoples as intrinsically adaptive and resilient and, therefore, a source of wisdom for all (Neale & Vincent, 2017). According to Elizabeth Povinelli (2011), endurance is a defining characteristic of the "late liberal" present in settler democracies such as Australia, bound up with the vexed role of indigeneity in national identity.…”

“…According to Elizabeth Povinelli (2011), endurance is a defining characteristic of the "late liberal" present in settler democracies such as Australia, bound up with the vexed role of indigeneity in national identity. At one level, Australians affirm Aboriginal peoples as 'the world's oldest living culture', a revived determinism that positions Aboriginal peoples as intrinsically adaptive and resilient and, therefore, a source of wisdom for all (Neale & Vincent, 2017). But at another level, positivity about Aboriginal peoples' endurance has clear limits, in that, while their perseverance is co-opted into legitimising narrations of the settler nation, the same perseverance is simultaneously undermined by continuing racialised governmentality.…”

Ethnicity and Democracy in the Eastern Himalayan Borderland: Constructing DemocracyM.ChettriAmsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2017. Pp.184, 8 illustrations, bibliog., index, €79.00 (Hc.), ISBN 978‐90‐8964‐886‐0.

“…All existents matter, but their very presence often depends significantly on the extent to which they matter to humans with the political and economic capital to foster or destroy them. This pragmatic point provides a check on recent enthusiasm regarding indigenous alterity and multinaturalisms, which can sometimes elide the precarity of lived difference (Neale and Vincent 2017). But if the book's ideals of equality resemble the liberal politics problematised by Povinelli elsewhere, they are nonetheless conditioned by an insistence on the absolute dependence of humans.…”