Conversations and collaborations about the resources sector’s future must include Indigenous Australian communities, a panel found.
About 80 per cent of future minerals are based on Indigenous land or those connected with First Nations people. This is why mineral producers should not ignore Indigenous-owned businesses when purchasing goods or services.
“I own a business to employ my own people and keep them going, and make sure they have success and that is why I push for those contracts,” Barada Barna Aboriginal Corporation chair Luarna Dynevor said at the 2022 International Mining and Resources Conference.
“We are making these companies accountable and they are giving us the first right of refusal. The biggest challenge though, is compliance. Big companies make it so hard for small businesses to weave and navigate their way through compliance and – if you do not have assistance in that – you are going to fail.”
During 2021 Whitehaven Coal spent a combined $8.73 million on 14 local Aboriginal-run businesses.
“We are keen to … make sure First Nations businesses are successful on all levels because the biggest employers of Indigenous people are Indigenous businesses and we want to make sure they are strong, resilient and able to move forward,” Aboriginal community relations manager Bob Sutherland said.
“These businesses are changing people’s lives locally. We are making a difference, not only to the economic development within Aboriginal communities but right across the northwest of New South Wales.”
The Cooperative Research Centre for Transformation in Mining Economies (CRC TiME) applauded the proponent for accepting the importance of building relationships with Indigenous communities and businesses.
“Indigenous people need to be included not as stakeholders but as rights holders. We need to be part of the decision making. We want a real participation in all things relating to mining and beyond,” CRC TiME chair Jim Walker said.
What about ‘Second Nations’ people’s?
Last time I checked, we are the Commonwealth Of Australia, and ‘We, the people’ are the Commonwealth.
Put simply, the lands and natural resources/wealth of the Commonwealth Of Australia belong to the people.
-Not its Gov.
-Not its multinational Corporations, or those conducting business operations here.
-Not to the intrests of International Financiers.
-Not to the interests of International Councils.
The benefits of extracting it’s natural resources should be RESPONSIBLY shared with the global community. (And not just with the ‘left’ or ‘right’ side of the global geopolitical paradigm, chosen by the ‘left’ or ‘right’ biased ‘powers that be’ on our behalf.)
and not just handed over to multinational corporations to utilise to create a strategic monopoly over various markets.
And I don’t mean the benefits should be given to the people by the decisions of ‘its’ Gov via budget spending, I mean the people should have direct access to the wealth exchanged for its country’s natural resources through independent means of wealth allocation obtained given in the form of wages and goods and services procurement from domestic markets as much as is realistically possible. (And this business innovation and sustainability should be incentivised by its Gov in place of importing goods and services from foreign markets/manufacturers.)
Wishful thinking, I know. And the ‘established order’ is not about to relinquish control over its current ability to dictate/manipulate and control strategic markets to serve its own vested interests….
But we must at least make our standing on the matter loud and clear, lest we wish to grant the established order the reasoning to regard the people’s consent as given through lack of any meaningful and reasonable public declerations to the contrary.