Channeling Country: An Interoperability Framework for Aboriginal Economic History and Economic Engagement Today

The economic history of the Australian Aboriginal people is often simply described as highlighting certain flaws, such as emphasizing colonial destruction and welfare dependency. This article, however, takes a different perspective, reinterpreting this history using the concepts of "channels" and "interoperability", and reflecting on contemporary policies. It no longer simply divides Aboriginal societies into "hunting and gathering" and "agriculture" categories; instead, it believes that they originally had a mature political and economic system, which operated through various "channels" (such as long-distance trade, artificial breeding, etc.), and these channels were both material and included arrangements across time and institutional levels. From this perspective, the impact of colonization is not just the loss of land, but more importantly, these "channels" were artificially cut off, modified, or even plundered. For example, through administrative restrictions and labor exploitation (such as "stolen wages"), the original economic operations became difficult to continue. However, even after experiencing such systematic destruction, the Aboriginal community has been trying to rebuild these economic connections, such as striving for land rights and participating in new environmental economies represented by grassland carbon markets. This article points out that to address the current statistical "gap", land and traditional laws should be regarded as key economic infrastructures, correcting historical wage exploitation to restore intergenerational capital, and strengthening "transformation institutions" to enable the Aboriginal governance system to truly achieve "interoperability" with the mainstream market.