Here is an invitation, and a provocation. Imagine individual Australian First Nations, each with their own Treasury. Each setting its own investment mandate. Each building a balance sheet against its own Country, its own priorities, its own idea of what wealth should do across generations.
Not variations on the same plan — distinct institutions, each sovereign in how it manages capital, all of them adding up to something Australia has never quite had: an Indigenous economy that owns what it participates in.
This week, the Yindjibarndi Nation, the Western Australian Government and Rio Tinto have established a pathway for Yindjibarndi to acquire and operate the Dampier Seawater Desalination Plant in the Pilbara.
This is not a small-business transaction. The plant has a construction budget of A$1.1 billion. It will support the long-term water needs of mining, communities and industry while reducing pressure on aquifers of deep cultural significance to Traditional Owners.
What makes this significant is what it moves beyond. Not employment. Not procurement. Ownership.
It is about Traditional Owners holding a substantial interest in essential infrastructure on their Country — converting economic activity occurring on Indigenous lands into a lasting, income-producing asset capable of supporting self-determination across generations.
The Yindjibarndi Nation, and their allies, should be congratulated for their persistence. The WA Government and Rio Tinto should be recognised for building a pathway that could place major infrastructure into Indigenous ownership. But this transaction — and a slew of others quietly forming behind it — points to a basic economic truth for Australia.
Opportunity alone is not enough
Indigenous people can hold rights, land, commercial capability, strong governance and an attractive investment proposition. Without access to affordable, patient, appropriately structured capital, the major opportunities stay just out of reach.
There is an enormous difference between being invited to participate in a project and having the financial capacity to acquire it.
There is an equally important difference between receiving a contractual benefit from an asset and owning the asset itself.
Ownership requires capital. Ownership at scale requires affordable capital at scale.
Every major economic transaction begins with the same question: who can finance it? The answer turns on price, duration and the conditions attached to the capital available to the prospective owner.
High-cost capital can make a sound acquisition unviable. Short-term capital forces an investor to prioritise immediate cash extraction over long-term value. Excessive security requirements can exclude Indigenous organisations even where the underlying asset has strong revenues, capable partners and reliable customers.
Affordable capital changes the equation
It lets future income be converted into investment today. It lets an Indigenous investor acquire an asset, service debt from predictable revenues, build equity over time, and retain the benefit for the generations that follow. That is the real power of capital: it brings tomorrow's opportunity within reach today.
The Yindjibarndi transaction shows what becomes possible when Indigenous ambition meets commercial expertise and a credible financing pathway. Australia should not treat this as an exceptional case that might occasionally be repeated. It should treat it as a preview.
Canada has Already Shown what is Possible
Canada's First Nations Finance Authority (FNFA) is a powerful proof point.
Since 2014, it has provided $CAD5.69 billion in affordable financing to First Nations. Its recently released economic impact assessment estimates that financing has generated $CAD12.08 billion in economic activity and supported approximately 52,000 jobs across Canada — more than two dollars of wider economic activity for every dollar of affordable financing deployed.
FNFA has financed housing, roads, water infrastructure, clean-energy investment, critical transport infrastructure and major commercial projects. Its capital-markets model draws private investment into First Nations-led priorities, and its bond issuances are attracting strong demand from domestic and international investors, with recent offerings reportedly oversubscribed.
FNFA is not a grant-making body, and it is not a single fund holding assets on behalf of First Nations collectively. It is a 100 per cent First Nations-led financial institution that raises capital through the market and channels it toward the priorities each First Nation sets for itself. It does the financing. The Nations do the owning.
FNFA President and CEO Ernie Daniels put the model simply: attract appropriate and affordable capital, put it to work in communities, convert investment into infrastructure, jobs and long-term prosperity.
The lesson isn't that Indigenous nations need a fund built for them. It's that they need a financing institution that lets each of them build their own.
Precisely the space of Indigenous Business Australia
In February 2025, the Australian Parliament passed legislation giving Indigenous Business Australia the ability to borrow and raise capital — a reform designed to let IBA pursue larger investment, co-investment and partnership opportunities with governments and private entities, and to remove a longstanding restriction on IBA's capacity to meet growing demand for Indigenous finance.
That change was more than administrative. It was economic.
The Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Minister Malarndirri McCarthy recognised that Australia's Indigenous economy has outgrown what grants, small programs and isolated transactions can support. The emerging Indigenous-led economy is now measured in billions: infrastructure, renewable energy, housing, critical minerals, water, major regional development.
IBA's task is to help ensure Indigenous Australians are not confined to the margins of that activity.
During the 2025-26 financial year alone, IBA mobilised close to A$500 million through finance, investment and capital deployment. A substantial result — and the foundation for what comes next.
IBA's role is to help Indigenous people become owners, investors, developers and project proponents — not beneficiaries of a fund managed on their behalf, but principals managing capital of their own. With expanded statutory powers, institutional capability and an established balance sheet, IBA can increasingly draw on larger pools of domestic and international investment and deploy it into well-structured Indigenous opportunities.
It can provide patient capital where conventional lenders cannot. It can anchor transactions that attract institutional co-investment.
It can aggregate smaller interests into propositions of sufficient scale for capital markets. It can finance development work, structure risk, support Indigenous equity, and connect Traditional Owners with the technical and commercial capability major transactions demand. All of these functions are application of sound business principles within a mature specialist investment vehicle. And make no mistake, with a balance sheet of $3 billion and over two decades of operations that is what IBA is - a value-added, specialist capital provider doing its bit to activate the Indigenous-led economy.
Most importantly, IBA can help lower the cost of capital confronting Indigenous proponents — not by replacing commercial markets, but by giving Indigenous investors the strength to enter them on their own terms. Canada's FNFA shows what the model can become. The Yindjibarndi proposal shows why Australia needs it.
From Economic Participation to Economic Ownership
This weekend, leaders from across Australia gather at #Garma on #Yolŋu Country. Over the past quarter-century, Indigenous Australians have restored recognition of the distinct First Nations that have always existed across this continent. The Yolŋu celebrate and practise their own traditions, customs and Lore as Yolŋu. Across Australia, some 200 First Nations are doing the same — restoring their own Lore, institutions, identities and responsibilities to Country.
This renewal is not merely cultural. It is a practice of authority and legitimacy: the exercise of enduring rights and responsibilities. First Nations are active in the custodianship of their lands, the assertion of their interests, the management of their own futures.
The era in which Indigenous Australia was treated as a single, undifferentiated constituency is giving way to something more mature — the recognition of distinct Nations, each with its own governance, priorities and aspirations.
No single policy or program or ideological worldview or political platform, however well-intentioned, should be allowed to quietly undo that progress by treating two hundred sovereign futures as one.
The next quarter-century will bring a further transition. Many First Nations will accumulate substantial assets, build stronger balance sheets, and take on greater responsibility for managing intergenerational wealth. Increasingly, they will need their own Treasury capability: their own investment mandates, their own approach to risk and capital, their own deliberate choices about how value is created, preserved and passed on.
Not one national Indigenous future fund holding assets on their behalf — First Nations each its own asset manager, each its own wealth creator, choosing its own path to prosperity. IBA stands ready to support that expression of self-sufficiency, authority and economic sovereignty, Nation by Nation, because that upholds the principle that only Traditional Owners can speak for their Country.
The question is no longer whether Indigenous Australians are capable of owning major infrastructure and commercial assets. The ambition, leadership and opportunity are already here. The proposed Yindjibarndi acquisition offers a clear answer. Employment, procurement and business development will remain essential. But the next frontier is ownership at scale.
When affordable capital is available, Indigenous interests move from being stakeholders in economic development to becoming owners of the assets that drive it.
Canada's FNFA shows the national dividend that follows: billions in infrastructure and economic activity, tens of thousands of jobs, stronger First Nations institutions standing on their own ground.
That is how wealth is built. That is how economic power is retained.
That is how revenue generated on Country becomes stronger communities, greater capability, and prosperity that outlasts any one generation — becoming an economic cornerstone of a stronger Australia.
And that is precisely why Australia needs an IBA capable of raising and deploying capital at a scale equal to the opportunity in front of us.
Affordable capital is not simply another Indigenous policy initiative.
It is the key that unlocks Indigenous ownership — Nation by Nation — and, through that ownership, a stronger and more productive Australian economy.
Darren Godwell is the chairperson of Indigenous Business Australia
