Indigenous Australians and Their Lands: Post-Capitalist Development Alternatives

This chapter explores post-capitalist development alternatives that are emerging in remote Australia for Indigenous peoples who have repossessed their ancestral lands. My exploration is based on over 40 years of research as an economic anthropologist/comparative economist exploring development alternatives. I deploy a grounded model of actually existing economies that I term the hybrid economy to illustrate how through their agency Indigenous landowners are creatively reconfiguring and recombining elements of capitalist and non-capitalist forms of production. Customs and traditions that need to be legally demonstrated to secure landownership are being activated in pursuit of diverse livelihoods that include self-provisioning, the controlled commodification of culture and the production of environmental services, including carbon emissions avoidance and sequestration, and renewable energy mega-projects. The hybrid economy theorisation challenges the envisioning of capitalism as the singular dominant mode of economy and might yet prove a harbinger of post-capitalist futures essential for Indigenous and non-Indigenous survival.