ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the chronology and stakeholders of the Walmadany controversy. Walmadany, also known as James Price Point, is an area of the Dampier Peninsula, some 50 km north of the town of Broome in the state of Western Australia. Between 2008 and 2013, Walmadany was the focal point of relations between indigenous peoples and the state in matters of development. Browse Basin’s reserves of hydrocarbons, particularly its gas, have been known since the 1970s. The project involved building a gas liquefaction factory on the coast of the Dampier Peninsula and an industrial port for its exportation. In the Australian context, the dominant law providing actual content to the notion of indigenous peoples’ rights as developed at the international level, particularly in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), remains one elaborated by non-indigenous members of Parliament and judges.
