Indigenous accumulation and the question of land: the Kimberley region of Western Australia in the second half of the twentieth century

In Australian Aboriginal affairs the period popularly known as “selfdetermination,” or what I have termed “indigenous trusteeship,” began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, coinciding with the end of the post-World War II long boom. This period – especially in the Kimberley, an extensive and remote district situated in the far north of Western Australia (see Map 10.1) – was ushered in by the growing failure of both segregationary and integrationary policies as directed by state trusteeship. The policy of state trusteeship had seen, since the time of federation in 1901, the state as the principal instrument and facilitator of development and involved, among other things, sequestering indigenes on pastoral stations and reserves.1 This approach was devised for facilitating the provision of much required Aboriginal labor to the pastoral industry, as well as to assist in maintaining social order.