Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

156 Pitfalls and Pipelines: Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries
Most critically, this would mean shifting the burden of proof. It is totally
unacceptable that the onus is only on traditional owners to prove their
cultural connection—to prove their own cultural identity—in order to gain
recognition of their rights to land.
This is one issue that would need to be subject to a thorough review
before we could hope to see native title claims being resolved on just
terms. There are a range of other issues to be addressed as well—such
as the discriminatory status quo that has native title rights bowing down
to every other right in existence. This is an area of reform that we need
to push for and it is something that the National Native Title Council in
Australia is pushing very hard to achieve.
The government rightly recognizes that the native title system should
be seen as an avenue of economic development. Now we need to see
some policy and legal imagination that can close the gap between current
understandings of economic development and the traditional rights to
hunt, fish and gather. If we begin with the assumption that traditional
owners have the right to benefit from the exploitation of all natural
resources in their country, as the UN Declaration asserts, then indigenous
economic development will need to be seen in an entirely different light. It
would not simply be a matter of enhancing economic rights as they were
conceived two centuries ago. We would expect to see a range of options
in local settlements that specifically promote non-native title outcomes,
benefit-sharing agreements, effective consultations regarding land use,
joint environmental management regimes and sustainable development.
The Attorney-General has indicated his intention to work with Minister
Macklin 47 to explore how land ownership and management opportunities
can be more readily accessed as part of negotiated outcomes in the native
title system. Minister Macklin announced that a policy reform package
would be developed to look closely at comprehensive settlements together
with an Indigenous Economic Development Strategy. The government’s
native title reform agenda also signalled a shift from the litigation of the
past and this is something that we will be working on closely in order to
encourage the government to secure significant benefits for traditional
owners and their communities.
Unfortunately, part of that reform was about fast tracking land dealings,
and we are starting to see what that means now, as a Native Title
Amendment Bill for housing and public infrastructure on Aboriginal land
was introduced into Parliament in October 2009. We should not fast track
anything if it comes at the expense of the rights of traditional owners, in