Pitfalls and Pipelines - Philippine Indigenous Peoples Links

324 Pitfalls and Pipelines: Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industries
Australia—Problems of Implementation of FPIC 24
By Brian Wyatt, National Native Title Council
“It’s good that we’ve come to an agreement, but also sad that
many of our old people are no longer around to see this. The most
important part is that companies have started to recognize the
importance of working with our Elders.” 25
Critical to indigenous economic and cultural sustainability is the
relationship between indigenous communities and the extractive
industries. Australia’s place in the global economy has been forged by the
resource industry, with natural gas, iron ore, gold, and diamonds among
the many minerals adding to the wealth of the nation. For indigenous
communities the challenge is getting a fair and equitable share of
that wealth. Thanks to the UN Declaration our rights to free, prior and
informed consent for access to land is providing a ticket to the mainstream
economy.
Unfortunately, in the Australian context, full access to free, prior and
informed consent is difficult to achieve because under our Commonwealth
laws, there is no the opportunity to take full advantage of free, prior and
informed consent. Access to traditional lands through some agreements
has been negotiated under FPIC principles, but others only have within
certain limits. As much as traditional owner groups push to put it into
practice, there is always a line in the sand whereby specific legislation
prevents us from seizing the full advantage.
Traditional owners groups have been negotiating agreements with
the resources industry successfully for a number of years. There is an
emerging problem, however, that needs to be addressed. It has not been
caused directly by the recent global financial crisis, but we are certainly
starting to experience some of the negative ramifications the crisis is
having.
A lot of agreements that have been negotiated by traditional owner groups
with mining companies, under the principles of free, prior and informed
consent, became increasingly vulnerable during the economic downturn.
Not only because of the changing market and less economic opportunity
generally, but also because once again indigenous peoples are at the
whim of the government’s desire to maintain a stable economic climate.
In Australia we had to start understanding that globalization is not a
panacea for indigenous peoples—and at the end of the day, some
indigenous groups could just find out that they have lost more than