Intellectual property law and the protection of indigenous Australian traditional knowledge in natural resources

This essay is not about native title (though it will get a brief mention). Rather, its subject is the potential means for protecting Indigenous traditional knowledge rights in natural resources, which arguably, at its core, is about the nature of the socio-political and, perhaps more importantly, the economic relationship between Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous society in Australia. It is these relationships which form the two fundamental pillars of the study and understanding of Indigenous/non-Indigenous relations, particularly in all common law jurisdictions in North America, New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere, and probably wherever Indigenous lands have been conquered or otherwise settled by Europeans and others.