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The irony of ‘poverty in the midst of plenty’can be applied to many developing and emerging countries rich in mineral resources. The resource curse thesis ‘correlates natural resource abundance to evidence of slow or declining economic growth’(Langton and Mazel 2012: 24; see also Auty 1993; Sachs and Warner 1995; Freudenburg and Wilson 2002; Bebbington et al. 2009). Raw materials such as copper, nickel, gold and uranium are found and widely exploited in regions inhabited by indigenous peoples who live far from the centres of political power. In most cases, the mining sector offers few economic benefits for the indigenous peoples, even if mine operators promise to provide opportunities for social, educational and economic development. In their study of the Pilbara region in Western Australia, Taylor and Scambary (2005: 28) note:‘While the