Description

The framing of “human,” “rights,” and “sovereignty” are assumed to be agreed upon, but contextual reality is often different from theory. Indigenous communities vie for power and sovereignty without political legitimacy and therefore form corporations to represent themselves. Without legal power, they turn to the leverage of natural resources leading them into private industry corporate contracts. Pharmaceutical and mining agreements offer the potential for power and governance within a system that offers none, but not without risk. Choosing to operate within Western frameworks and ideology often means the automatic abandonment of Indigenous culture and ways of being. However, there is a now growing contingency of Indigenous Australian scientists attempting to rewrite the historically racist methodologies for genetics research across the country by incorporating cultural knowledge. Will corporations and contracts provide a bypass to direct colonial oversight, or is genomics simply the newest extractive industry? Decisions made in one Indigenous context always have enormous ramifications for others, and the legal precedence is guaranteed to be impactful for decades. This dissertation project follows the scientific, ethical, legal, and cultural quandaries involved in the formation and implementation of genomics projects and extractive industries by and with Indigenous peoples in Australia.