Pastoralism’s distributive ruse: Extractivism, financialization, Indigenous labour and a rightful share in Northern Australia

ABSTRACT

The beef industrial complex continues to exclude Indigenous people via land tenure regimes and management practices. Focused on the Kimberley region of Northern Australia, in this paper I explore the brutal history of pastoralism and its financialization, and question how it has avoided the entailments to Indigenous people of another extractive industry, mining. I argue ‘Indigenous economic sovereignty’ and a ‘rightful share’ are useful concepts for considering how the pastoral industry might achieve a more just coexistence with Indigenous people.

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous people
• extractivism
• pastoralism
• financializaton
• rightful share

Acknowledgemments

The author thanks Indigenous and non-indigenous residents of the Kimberley who have shared their experiences of the pastoral industry and its history, especially Mr Donald Campbell and Christine McLachlan. Institutional ethics review by Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee, 2018-385.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Though overseas visa holders have become an integral part of agricultural workforces in southern states, particularly in horticulture, they make up a negligible portion of the pastoral workforce in Northern Australia.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this paper was supported by the University of Melbourne under the McArthur Postdoctoral Fellowship in Anthropology; and the Australian Research Council under the Discovery Indigenous project IN180100055 ‘Beyond Recognition: Strengthening Relationality Across Difference in Postcolonial Contexts’ at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University.