ABSTRACT
The chapter overviews the colonial history of northern Australia from the 1860s to the present as a backdrop in support of the book’s central theme; an alternative and realistic argument for inclusive and sustainable development for northern Australia. The book contends that recognising and embracing Indigenous people’s rights and their cultural and social capital is fundamental to transforming the North’s economy and society. For this to occur the North’s colonial character – land title regime, Indigenous political and economic marginalisation, and resource wealth extraction – must be overhauled. The chapter explains broadly how the North’s colonial structures of the nineteenth century have become embedded in an ongoing settler colonial relationship that the North has with the Australian nation. The critical elements of the North’s structural colonialism have remained intact and reinforced by modernisation theory and the workings of Australia’s federal system of government despite court judgements which recognise Indigenous rights in Australian law.
