Land Rights and Resource Development

This course is available for on-campus & remote (online) learning. All students participate in interactive, real-time classes. Through critical social inquiry this course considers Indigenous perspectives and conceptions of Country, land and place, and the role of place-based learning in informing understandings of land rights issues and resource conflict. The course uses case studies from different parts of Australia, the Pacific and Asia to examine four major themes in resource negotiations with the holders of Indigenous land rights: the relationships and roles of different actors, the institutional contexts in which they negotiate, the distribution of knowledge, and the distribution of power. Using a real-time online, virtual game it considers how people who hold Indigenous land rights, the agents that target their resources for extraction or conservation, and the various agencies and organisations involved in resource governance (mining and forestry) may compete.