Competing claims on land in the solar age: Valorising capital or Country in Australia?

Abstract

The colonisation of Australia was predicated on the premise of terra nullius, a contention that was successfully challenged two centuries later, confirmed with the legislation of land rights in the Native Title Act 1993. In a classic case of ‘accumulation by dispossession’, while formal land rights and the right to contract the use of native title land were legislated, in the Pilbara in Western Australia the reality was otherwise. Iron ore mining companies disregarded heritage safeguard agreements, a contractual violation which damaged their reputation which was being scrutinised as major CO2 emitters. Confronting a coincidental energy cost crisis, companies turned to acquire more land to establish renewable energy generating capacity and a new model of accumulation. Drawing on Peck and Polanyi, we posit the notion of socioecological orders, and distinguish between the instrumental approach to land as a key frame in the accumulation of capital, and First Nations peoples' concept of belonging to Country and stewardship. This provides a method for considering the interaction of two distinct socioecological orders and the evolving tensions or contradictions that are generated. The restoration of the colonisation project calls native title land into the service of capital to provide the foundations for a renewable energy generation industry. This not only results in dispossession, it can also result in estrangement and alienation that compromises the integrity and reproduction of First Nations' communities and impels new modes of socioecological organisation.