Native Title Privatisation
Individualising the Communal, Globalising the Local
Governments the world over seek to destroy Indigenous communal ownership by privatising Land Rights and carving up customary lands for individual ownership (and sale).
American Indian Land Privatisation
We've seen it in the Americas, where the Dawes Act saw Indian reservations divided into small plots for individuals, who were then encouraged to sell their land to the public, while the government held the proceeds from the sale "in trust" (monies which were then "lost" by the government).
New Guinea Native Land Privatisation
We've seen it in New Guinea, where communities have been tricked into mortgaging their land, and even leasing their lands very cheaply to exploitative agribusinesses. The Australian government and the World Bank are constantly pressuring Papuan people to "register" and "mobilise" their land.
Australian Aboriginal Land Privatisation
Now we're seeing a move towards the same trends in Australia, where mining companies are funding "think tanks" to pursue the privatisation of "land rights" with the federal government. In 2005, Indigenous Affairs Minister Amanda Vanstone announced a new bill to make Land Rights more "workable", and provide "greater choice" for Aboriginal people. Shortly after that, Prime Minister Howard said he was "looking more towards private recognition" of land rights. The name of the game here is divide and conquer.
The goal is to destroy the Indigenous concept of communal ownership, which flies in the face of western "freedom". Freedom in this context really means the freedom of corporations and governments to appropriate lands and resources as cheaply as possible. Communal ownership makes this very difficult, as it is harder to pressure a community than it is to pressure an individual. "Equality" is tied up with these notions of "freedom", but this means equality of opportunity, rather than equality of condition. These opportunities exist only for individuals in this western world of "dog eat dog".
Move from Communal to Individualist Ethic
So calls for Aboriginal Land Rights are labelled as socialist troublemaking and replaced by calls for individual private ownership, while the desire to address Aboriginal social inequality is replaced by calls for "individual responsibility". This drive to replace the communal with the individual is an attempt to destroy the enduring traditional structure of Aboriginal families and nations once and for all. When this is gone, our people will be finished, and at last the Australian government will have the "finality" it stated as its goal for Aboriginal people back at the beginning of federation.
Failure of Native Title
It is widely proclaimed in the media that Native Title has not worked, as Aboriginal communities are still in poverty. These victim-blaming discourses are a stepping stone for proposals of private land and business ownership as a "way forward" for Indigenous people. The only problem with this argument is that Native Title has still never been properly recognised, so how can it be said to have failed? Most of the land the government has given back to Aboriginal people is desert in the Northern Territory and South Australia. And still no treaty has ever been signed, meaning that Aboriginal sovereignty is still in place and "Australia" itself is an illegal settlement.
No wonder the government is keen to "forget the past" and "move on". The last time Aboriginal lands were opened up for entrepreneurs with no accountability was during "settlement", and the ensuing genocide was horrific. We are now facing a new era of colonisation, with entrepreneurs circling like sharks as the government talks of carving up our land and giving it back to us individually, in the name of "opening up" our space to individual "operators and developers" as a "way forward" out of poverty. Propaganda (horror stories of community poverty and abuse) is used to justify the fast-tracking of this genocidal agenda, as we hasten towards the government's final solution.
