'The Barngarla and Yindjibarndi are just two groups that have struck substantial agreements for projects on their land, with the benefits including employment and procurement of Indigenous business services,’ says Professor Marcia Langton.

Marcia attended the recent First Nations Clean Energy Symposium in Adelaide, hosted by the First Nations Clean Energy Network with the Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation and National Native Title Council, where several native title groups outlined their successes to date.

She says demonstrably, the benefits of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act and the Native Title Act are clear.

'The impact of living in controlled Aboriginal reserves and being denied the right to own land resulted in the almost complete exclusion of Aboriginal people from the economy, except as indentured labourers confined to substandard work camps, working for no wages at all, only substandard food rations, or unequal wages, usually a few shillings a week.

'This was the lot of the vast majority of Aboriginal people prior to the recognition of their rights.'

Marcia says new First Nations clean energy partnership developments 'show the way forward in unleashing the economic potential of native title, especially the negotiation rights offered by the legislation, to transform a non-fungible, non-commercial title into a mechanism for economic participation'.

Marcia concludes the federal government's First Nations Economic Partnership model with the Coalition of Peaks is an attempt to move Indigenous policy forward, and to achieve improved outcomes.

She says, ‘this new policy pivot to economic development ... draws attention to the universal aspiration for Indigenous economic parity in a way that no other national Indigenous affairs policy has in the past 50 years.'

And emphasises 'that support to Indigenous entrepreneurs and existing businesses will be critical’.

This is an excerpt from an essay written by Professor Marcia Langton which first appeared in The Saturday Paper.