ABSTRACT
Despite having ownership rights over large tracts of land, Indigenous people in remote and regional Australia have, until recently, had few employment opportunities available to them for participation in market-based economic activity. In the last few decades, however, several sources of income have arisen that enable the cultural and natural assets of these economically marginal traditional lands to be leveraged for economic participation. The first two, art and tourism, are now mature industries in which there has been substantial government and institutional investment. The third is provision of environmental services through management of the natural environment on traditional Indigenous lands, for which the wider settler society is willing to pay. This includes control of weeds and feral animals; management of fire to reduce carbon emissions; and, in coastal areas, surveillance as part of quarantine. Lastly, there are wildlife-based industries by which Indigenous people extend their historical exploitation of wildlife such as fruits, seeds, and animals into commercial markets. In this chapter, we describe the current extent of these economic opportunities in the Northern Territory of Australia, and compare them with each other and other sources of income. We conclude that policy enabling Indigenous people to engage in a portfolio of income-earning activities is likely to yield the most sustainable employment.
