Tension is building in Aboriginal affairs in Australia as mainstream employment and education departments and environmental agencies pursue different pathways for the development of the country's indigenous citizens living in remote areas.

The dominant state project of improvement seeks to integrate the Aboriginal population into the mainstream, while at the same time, environmental agencies provide support for indigenous Australians to remain living on a huge indigenous estate that covers a massive 1.5 million square kilometres, an area larger than South Africa, where only 100 000 indigenous Australians reside.

So said Professor Jon Altman (above right), director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University, in his seminar, Commodification of Environmental Knowledge: An alternative development strategy for the Australian indigenous estate.

The event on 24 November was presented by UCT's Environmental Evaluation Unit and the Department of Social Anthropology as part of the collaboration between UCT and the Australian National University.