Dreamings beyond 'opportunity': the collaborative economics of an aboriginal heritage trail. Issue 5 (2nd September 2016) - Wergin, Carsten Holger
ABSTRACT: This article presents the Lurujarri Heritage Trail, an Indigenous tourism experience in Northwest Australia as exemplary for a world different from the teleological-minded futurism of neoliberal market economics. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork undertaken between 2011 and 2015, it first outlines how in 1987 the Trail was established at the very margins of the Australian economy. Through its emphasis on the here and now that is grounded in a collaboration of people and land and acknowledges diverse worldviews and ontological differences, the Trail today offers its participants a means to experience Indigenous culture as different from Western politics and development policies. As a result, its allegedly marginal Dreaming ( Bugarrigarra ) leads beyond the pursuit of economic opportunity and in doing so enabled the defeat of large-scale industrialisation in the region.