Land to Many

In Australia, the British Crown appropriated land without buying it from the aboriginal populations, whose forms of property were not recognized. In contrast with British private and individualized property, theirs is based on common property: numerous people are in charge of a particular territory and circulate from place to place, occupying various hierarchical positions in each of them. Legal actions have been engaged against mining corporations from the 1970, and a beginning of judicial recognition has emerged for aborigines’ rights in 1976, but the exteriority of the two conceptions of property generates countless conflicts. Aboriginal groups prefer negotiating partial and localized solutions rather than engaging in debates about their relation to property and identity.