Negotiations in the Indigenous World

Ciaran O’Faircheallaigh is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at Griffith University, Australia. He is Director of the Centre for Governance and Public Policy's Program on Environment, Resources and Sustainability. His research focuses on the interactions of large resource corporations with governments and communities, particularly Indigenous communities. For over two decades he has acted as a negotiator and adviser for Aboriginal communities in Australia and Canada and for customary landowners in the Pacific.

"A comprehensive analysis encapsulating a lifetime of field experience and prodigious research in an arena closely contested by lawyers who guard their words and actions behind a cloak of confidentiality. Sunlight finds it hard to penetrate this thicket; Ciaran O’Faircheallaigh has worked marvels clearing the undergrowth to expose and forensically analyse the detail of negotiations between mining companies and Aboriginal groups."—Bruce Harvey, University of Queensland "This is a sensitive and perceptive account written by a scholar who has seen negotiations between indigenous peoples and extractive industries from the inside. These negotiations are where many of the final effects of extractive industry on indigenous communities are worked out, yet until this book we knew very little about the nature, dynamics and outcomes of such negotiations. Ciaran O’Faircheallaigh combines his experience as a direct participant, his longstanding relations with aboriginal groups, a mastery of both the conceptual and empirical literature and an extensive review of documented cases to give us an unparalleled book. Remarkably useful and insightful."—Anthony Bebbington, Director, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, and Professorial Research Fellow, School for Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester

• CONTENTS: 1. Introduction: Indigenous peoples, mineral development and negotiation 2. Analysing Negotiations: Theory and Method 3. Aboriginal peoples and mining negotiations in Australia and Canada: context and issues 4. Criteria for evaluating negotiation outcomes 5. Outcomes from negotiations in Australia: A macro analysis 6. Bauxite mining in Western Cape York, Queensland 7. Silica sand mining on North Stradbroke Island 8. The Ekati diamond mine, Northwest Territories 9. The Voisey’s Bay nickel project, Labrador 10. Conclusion: Explaining and improving negotiation outcomes