From skills to stories: land rights, life histories and the terms of engagement

In the 1970s, in the Alligator Rivers region of the Northern Territory, things changed. From being a region of small-scale economic activity that had only recently achieved a modest level of significance even within the Territory, it became a national political hotspot, as the contentious policy discourses of uranium development, Aboriginal land rights and environmental conservation converged and collided over the same area of ground. Saddler (1980) called it ‘the battle for the Alligator Rivers’. In 1975 Ian Keen, a doctoral research student working at Milingimbi in northeast Arnhem Land, suddenly found himself in the middle—and an agent—of that transformation.