The Pilbara Crisis: Resource Frontiers in Western Australia

Photo by David Caloren, licensed under CC BY NC.

The remote and fragile Pilbara region of Western Australia contains some of Australia’s greatest mineral wealth, as well as some of its richest, most globally significant Aboriginal heritage. In November 2014 the largest mining rush in the nation’s history abruptly ended, coinciding with the shock announcement that government support for remote Aboriginal communities would be withdrawn as of 2016. Where the state continues to roll back services once considered its basic responsibility and transnational corporations step into the gap to ensure business certainty, developments on the Pilbara as resource frontier mark a crisis symptomatic of many Indigenous communities around the globe. If the Pilbara is a site of investment, extraction, development, and negotiation, it is also Country—the term that Aboriginal people use to describe their inherited places, inhabited by living ancestors who embody the law that guides behavior. This Hot Spots series draws from diverse disciplines, experiences, and backgrounds to examine the extraordinary changes underway in Western Australia.

Posts in This Series

Introduction: The Pilbara Crisis

Introduction: The Pilbara Crisis

The remote and fragile Pilbara region of Western Australia contains some of Australia’s greatest mineral wealth, as well as some of its richest, most globally s... More

Aboriginal Country and the New Heritage Landscapes of the Pilbara

Aboriginal Country and the New Heritage Landscapes of the Pilbara

Change in the Pilbara is everywhere: it is witnessed in the construction of new roads, ports, and wastewater facilities; announced by government agencies who de... More

Tracking Onslow: Journalists Recording Impact Over Time

Tracking Onslow: Journalists Recording Impact Over Time

There are competing narratives in the Australian public sphere about mineral extraction. Keen on royalties, the current pro-extraction conservative state and fe... More

The Damage Done: The State as a Facilitator of Corporate Appropriation and Destruction of Indigenous Sites in the Pilbara Region

The Damage Done: The State as a Facilitator of Corporate Appropriation and Destruction of Indigenous Sites in the Pilbara Region

When iron ore prices began edging up above $20 a ton in late 2003, the Pilbara region of Western Australia was producing around 220 million tons of the commodit... More

Why Not Work for the Mine? Costs and Benefits of Extractive Economies in Remote Aboriginal Australia

Why Not Work for the Mine? Costs and Benefits of Extractive Economies in Remote Aboriginal Australia

Western Australia comprises two resource frontiers. Both share a foundation in resource extraction, but while one is driven by global demand, the other is struc... More

Culture Clash: National Heritage Values, Native Title, and the GDP

Culture Clash: National Heritage Values, Native Title, and the GDP

Aretha Franklin’s “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” was a forceful anthem in the 1960s: adopted by both the civil rights and feminist movements in the United States. Forty years ... More

Resource Frontiers in the Pilbara: Lifestyle Choices?

Resource Frontiers in the Pilbara: Lifestyle Choices?

The current crisis in the Pilbara opposes economic arguments about viability that center on education and employment against those privileging culture and histo... More

Exile in the Kingdom: The Struggle for Cultural Heritage in the Pilbara

Exile in the Kingdom: The Struggle for Cultural Heritage in the Pilbara

Western Australia has had Aboriginal heritage protection legislation in place for over forty years in the form of the Western Australia Aboriginal Heritage Act ... More

A History of Forced Removal: Diminishing Returns in the Northwest of Western Australia

A History of Forced Removal: Diminishing Returns in the Northwest of Western Australia

At the time of writing in mid-2015, the Prime Minister of Australia Tony Abbott and the premier of Western Australia are attempting to justify the inappropriate... More

Nothing New? The Heritage of Indigenous People in Resource Industries in Australia’s Pilbara

Nothing New? The Heritage of Indigenous People in Resource Industries in Australia’s Pilbara

Think Pilbara today and Australians think of resources and industry. The vast remote region is central to current debates in Australia about future national dev... More

Autonomy through Mining Wealth or Government Dependency: Operations of the Neoliberal State

Autonomy through Mining Wealth or Government Dependency: Operations of the Neoliberal State

Large-scale, open-cut iron ore mining in the Pilbara region of Western Australia is well established, as are the Aboriginal organizations that have been develop... More