Description
Drawing on fieldwork at two mining investment conferences and with a mineral exploration programme in so-called Australia, this paper examines the drive to ‘open up’ the 80 percent of the continent that is currently ‘unexplored’ for mineral resources. This paper firstly shows that the areas targeted for exploration hold a high proportion of Indigenous-titled lands. Building on Altman and Markham’s (2015) observation that these lands have become available for Indigenous reclamation in part because of their historic low market value, due e.g. to their lack of mineral deposits (or water), this paper argues that mineral deposits have not previously been discovered in these areas largely because they are sedimentary basins, where the crystalline rocks more likely to contain mineral ores are hidden beneath the surface. It further shows how geological surveys and industry are developing drilling technologies and geological knowledge to enable the discovery of buried mineral deposits in precisely those (often Indigenous-titled) regions/sedimentary basins formerly considered of low commercial value. These new geographies of mineral exploration represent a shift in the commercial value of Indigenous-titled lands, with implications for Indigenous consultation and self-determination over extractive projects, as well as debates around a just energy transition (as expanded mineral exploration is being justified by the need for critical minerals for renewable technologies). This paper thus makes a contribution to the growing literature on colonial capitalist land relations and the ‘green’ transition.
