The physical reintroduction of people to place in the context of mineral exploration in the Tanami Desert has thrown up complex and challenging issues. The production of boundaries over space and place in addition to the processes of exploration and gold mining have created an enormous amount of work aimed at identifying and maintaining different kinds of boundaries that are physical, social and spatial. Under the ALRA, Aboriginal land can neither be bought nor sold, yet the reintroduction of people to place has nonetheless commodified, not only the relationships between people and place, but also those between different groups of people. Mapping was the first part of this process that drew together Warlpiri politicking over rights to places in the face of the institutional requirements of the CLC, the mining industry and the government, in order for them to resolve questions of boundaries and ownership of place. Decisions over the identification and protection of places have, by and large, been the responsibility of senior knowledgeable persons. The identification of the appropriate owners of those places demands that Warlpiri people map their relationships to place with respect not only to their own places and boundaries, but also to those that are created by the development process.

The process of mineral exploration in the Tanami Desert requires Warlpiri to think carefully about their places within different kinds of physical and social boundaries. It has been argued that the mining model of land tenure requires that both Warlpiri and mining companies must carefully weigh how Warlpiri place is constructed with respect to an exploration or mining project. Exploration, mining and royalty payments expand the scope of politicking among Warlpiri by introducing an economic context within which they organise, negotiate and resolve competing claims of ownership and affiliation to place by different individuals and landholding groups.