The Future State of the Indigenous Estate
The knowledge and expertise held by Indigenous Australians can drive innovation across the economy – if we can recognise and nourish it for the generations to come.
Eleven kilometres. You might drive, walk, run, ride or swim that far. For many Indigenous Australians, it’s the distance between their mission designated area and the nearest local town. It is a horizontal measure, a single line of sight and focus that determines how we see ourselves.
For me, it’s the survival zone of all things living on the planet. It’s the natural balance of our planet within what the astronomers call the Goldilocks zone, where life is possible. A vertical perspective within the sphere of life.
What does this mean for Australia’s Indigenous people, and for what we might call the Indigenous Estate? What may it mean in the future? As I see it, Australia’s Indigenous culture is a 360-degree sphere of life, joining the earth and all of its inhabitants.
The current state of the Indigenous Estate is precariously positioned. For the vast majority of Australians it is not an estate, nor is even in a sustainable Goldilocks zone that preserves and protects its future state.
Indigenous people see the entire landmass as the habitable zone where life has endured for 65,000 years, as distinct from the past couple of hundred years of mostly coastal living. We know the difference between our current state and future state. The future receives our current state and is handed to the next generation in perpetuity – in aeternum.
The Indigenous Estate in Australia comprises both tangible and intangible assets held by or for the benefit of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people by various means. The tangible assets are relatively simple to identify and define. They are the land and waters and the resources located on or within them.
The intangible assets include cultural and intellectual property rights; such forms of expression as arts, dance, music, and language of, traditional culture, environmental and bioscience practices; and the individuals, groups, clans, totems and peoples that own and believe in their right to the Indigenous Estate.
These intangible assets include the inherent potential within Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to bring new perspectives, knowledge and innovation to the wider economy. The deep purpose of our very existence is interwoven into the vast treasures of information that we have mastered in our daily lives. If we ignore them, it will be an opportunity lost over the course of our most precious commodity: our collective life and everything within it – nostrum vita.
As technology advances it is taking us further away from the intuitive lessons of life and the knowledge gathered over 65,000 years. This separation is also moving us away from the landmass that has provided us with our physical and mental well-being in its rawest form. It also means that many of us have turned a blind eye to what has been happening. We need leaders who can reset the dial and build upon the endeavours needed.
The present state of many Indigenous matters is challenging. Many Indigenous communities are dysfunctional, beset with institutional inequality and disconnected from both the past and the future.
As Matt Wilson of Innoprac observes, “Indigenous disempowerment and poverty is big business. Many champions in government and private enterprise have dedicated blood sweat and tears to help our ‘mob’ with some great achievements, but generally, overall having limited success.
“Meanwhile many companies have their whole focus on making money off this chaos, with the Australian public generally conditioned through negative press and inferred guilt being discouraged from asking, questioning or digging too deep into how this whole industry is to be managed and how this chaos continues to roll. Seemingly unlimited resources and effort produce the odd highly publicised success story, but generally with little evidence of holistic change once the money tap is turned off, leaving us First Australians in no better condition than before the tap was turned on.”
We need a new paradigm to reset the Indigenous Estate so that its current and future state will utilise and optimise its tangible and non-tangible assets.
Generational management of the current state is required to maintain the various inputs that will ensure that the Indigenous Estate remains a habitable zone. That will result in the thinking, design, renovation and critical critiquing that should be feature of each current state. Broadening skillsets within the current state will underwrite the future state and will become a feature of the Indigenous Estate.
Our objective should be altruistic pursuits that enhance psychological well-being in Indigenous communities, and which add value to life at an individual, community, regional and national level.
We are, after-all, merely humans living on a planet we call Earth situated within a habitable Goldilocks zone where life only exists because of an astronomical phenomenon.
The future state is our horizon setting. We should never underestimate the importance of being indigenous to the land which we have inhabited for so long. Our past lessons in life and living are the fabric of our thinking in the current state, and are the lessons we apply to the future state.
Our indigeneity within the global habitable zone is mutually inclusive to all. There is no other Indigenous life form in our solar system. We are all, as human beings, globally Indigenous. We are defined by our culture, our land, our communities, our values and our beliefs, regardless of where we are on the globe.
As people existing and living for thousands of years prior to Captain Cook and Governor Phillip, Indigenous Australians seek no more than a fair go. We seek equity and the ability to sustain and grow our lives, all within the mutually recognised habitable zone we all call home.
That should be the future state of the Indigenous Estate we call Australia.
Eddie Fry is chair of the Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation and Indigenous Business Australia. Born in Darwin, his mother is a Northern Territory Dagoman woman. He has a wealth of experience in the resources sector, specialises in financial and human resource management, Indigenous and Native Title issues, and has extensive corporate governance expertise.
