Self-Determination and the Problem of Economic Development.

Melville Island lies half an hour by small plane north of Darwin, Australia, at the very tip of the Northern Territory. On a hazy day, it seems to take shape in the Arafura Sea like a more substantial haze. The pilot makes a slow sweep to give his only passenger -- me -- a good look at the landscape before we touch down at Garden Point, the tiny airstrip outside a village called Pirlangimpi. As we begin descending from 4,500 feet, the pilot tells me about an enormous convective storm called Hector -- one of the tallest thunderheads in the world -- that forms over Melville and Bathurst Island (collectively known as the Tiwi Islands) every afternoon during the monsoon. He points out a network of straight, raw, red-dirt roads running through the backcountry. I look more closely and see that the irregular broken cover of eucalyptuses native to the Tiwi Islands gives way to what look like geometrically planted orchards -- 75,000 acres of them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]