This is a download from the BBC. It's the latest edition of From Our Own Correspondent,

broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and introduced by Kate Adi.

Today, what are ancient memories worth? It's a crucial question for Australia's

Aborigines as they find themselves thrust into the front line of global economics.

Six years on we learn no one's been brought to court for atrocities carried out during the Civil War in Nepal.

There's a final glimpse of Venezuela's Comandante, as calm in death as he was loud in life. And once there were hundreds of

hermits living in caves in the mountains of Lebanon. Today there are just three.

We're off to meet one of these defenders of an ancient faith.

The long and wild western coast of Australia is fringed by hundreds of miles of pristine beaches,

but this is also the part of the country which powers the nation's economy.

Australia has gold, diamonds, cobalt and coal, but this is primarily iron ore country.

Huge amounts had dug out of the red soil here, much of it bound for China.

Many of these mines are in Aboriginal territory, and Neil Trevithic says some Aborigines have now

begun to share in this mineral wealth.

The trains clank into Dampier Port day and night to be loaded with iron ore.

I watch as the Red Earth pours in a constant stream into the huge bulk carrier wagons.

And yet there's nobody here in this vast landscape.

The loadings all being done by somebody moving a computer joystick in the mining company's office, three hours

flight away in Perth. Emptiness is what the early settlers saw here, Terra Nullius, the conflict that began as the longest continuous culture on the planet

began to appear out of the bush 200 years ago is still going on. The Aboriginal population continues to fight for what is called native title

over their lands and thus the right to negotiate with mining companies for some small share

in their wealth. Some Aboriginal communities have come for some

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