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The Australian Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) provides for the recognition of rights and interests which arise from the traditional laws and customs of Australian First Nation peoples. Processing applications for a determination of native title can take many years and involves numerous stakeholders, presentation of evidence of ongoing connection with the land and sea within a claim area, negotiations with other parties including from industry and government, as well as negotiations between Indigenous groups. The process can be long, arduous, and often outcomes fail to satisfy the expectations of native title claimants. In this paper we investigate how individuals who either disagree with the premise underlying native title, or who have suffered negative impacts through the course of native title claims, may be either targeted by, or swept up in, Australian sovereign citizen rhetoric. We aim to contextualise presentations of sovereign citizen ideas in native title claim processes by providing an overview of the history of sovereign citizen thought, and examples of its contemporary expression in some Australian online forums. In doing this we aim to provide a broad foundation for future research into the issue. The dialogue in sovereign citizen online communities exposes people to extremism and superconspiracies. This article will provide a theoretical framework and historical context to the Australian sovereign citizen phenomena and describe online amplification of disinformation in Australia that has the potential to cause harm. We illustrate how stakeholders who are drawn to relatively moderate online content (such as opposing native title) may be radicalised through gradual exposure to extremist anti‐government sentiment and hate speech. This article highlights the need for further research into sovereign citizenry in Australia, and strategies for native title practitioners to engage claimants who subscribe to and disseminate sovereign citizen disinformation in native title processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how Aboriginal conceptions of time and space in Alexis Wright's Carpentaria and Janette Turner Hospital's Oyster affect representations of personal, cultural and ecological trauma through privileging sites of wounding that embody Country. The four elements of air, water, earth and fire are central to understanding how each text navigates the complex relational matrices of Aboriginal traumas and respond to ongoing issues of genocide and dispossession that are part of Australia's tragic history. Elemental energies in these novels are connected to powerful spaces that pain inhabits and moves through, providing insights into the significance of their engagement with Aboriginality and trauma, particularly when situated within the context of legislature including the Native Title Act of 1993 and the Wik decision of 1996. Elemental motifs perform a cyclical function that begins with deep connectedness to oceanic imagery in Carpentaria, then transitions to trauma inflicted on Country and culminates in a cathartic watery Armageddon. While Oyster's consideration of elemental traumatic space is primarily attributed to land, cartography and wounded bodies, the novel's narrative threads reach a similar apocalyptic denouement. Oyster's cataclysmic fires of destruction are eclipsed by the regenerative potencies of water that rejuvenate Country and supplant horror with beauty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Native title rights to take resources for unconstrained or commercial purposes were first recognised almost a decade ago, but the significance and uptake of such rights in Australia is now heightened. Resource ownership and management are critical components of global sustainable development and Indigenous interest holders play a key role in that space. The gradual acceptance of resource use by traditional owners in a modern economy reflects more developed trends overseas such as in Canada. Reluctance to concede the commercial exercise of native title rights may be due not only to evidential thresholds (required by state governments to enter consensual determinations), but also concerns about the possible consequential legal impacts for those governments and other interest holders. This article considers potential consequences of recognising native title rights to take resources for any purpose in several developing areas of native title jurisprudence including: quantum of native title compensation, the regulation of native title under resource management legislation enacted since the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth), competing claims to resource ownership and use, and the risks for government where prior assumptions of resource ownership are displaced by determined native title.. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coming more than 25 years after Mabo v Queensland [No 2] (1992) 175 CLR 1, the landmark decision in Northern Territory v Griffiths ('Griffiths') (2019) 269 CLR 1 is the first judicially determined award of compensation for both economic and non-economic, or cultural loss under the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth). Although some attention has been given to the economic loss component of the decision, very little has been written about the most important aspect of the decision, cultural loss, and what this aspect means for First Nations Australians in reality. This article examines the legal and practical implications of the decision in Griffiths as it pertains to cultural loss and in the broader context of colonialism, native title law and First Nations' law. I argue that these implications demonstrate how compensation for cultural loss under the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) perpetuates colonialism and will fail many First Nations Australians in properly compensating for the loss of connection to country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the majority default rule as a consent mechanism for area Indigenous land use agreements (ILUAs) in Australia. The area ILUA is a well-established long-term land use transaction entered into between Indigenous claimants and third parties. This agreement is highly amenable to the inclusion of focused climate governance that addresses escalating climate risks facing indigenous communities. Developing the area ILUA as a form of private climate governance (PCG) will improve climate justice concerns as it may address some of the inadequacies and omissions of the public governance framework. This Article argues that the majority default rule impedes the ability of claimants to utilize these agreements as a form of PCG by reducing the negotiating power of minority claimants and binding them to the terms of an agreement they did not approve. This undermines the relative bargaining power of all claimants because it diminishes their ability to hold out for climate governance. This Article proposes removing the majority default rule from the Native Title Act 1999 (Cth) and reverting to consensus approval. This will ensure all impacted claimants retain full participatory and approval rights. It will give all Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders a transactional voice over contracts that provide permission for projects that dramatically impact their land, resources, and climate. Removing the majority default rule will allow future ILUAs to become more amenable to climate governance which may include: adaptation and mitigation duties, transparency and accountability obligations, and disaster and resilience management planning. Providing all impacted Indigenous claimants with rights of approval means everyone has the capacity to contribute to the negotiation and approval of a contract that will bind their land and resources into the future. This will better equip Indigenous Australians to address the impacts of an accelerating climate emergency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As prime minister from 1996 to 2007, John Howard found it necessary to try to project himself as sympathetic to Indigenous Australians, but this was not easy for the leader of a government committed to the conspicuous reversal of policy wins by Indigenous Australians under the Hawke and Keating governments (1983-96). Howard's summary term, in Lazarus Rising, for the policy paradigm from which he wished his government to break was 'separate development'. In this article, I argue against taking Howard at his word. Howard pragmatically reconciled his government to much that could be called 'separate development': amending (rather than repealing) the Commonwealth Native Title Act 1993, retaining the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) (after cutting its budget), building up Keating's Indigenous Land Fund, revising (rather than extinguishing) the distinct statutory regulation of Indigenous corporations and initiating the Indigenous Protected Areas program. At the same time as he made these concessions to 'separate development', Howard sought and cultivated allies among an increasingly differentiated cast of Indigenous leaders--not least, those who had become disenchanted with ATSIC and those whose power base was distinct from it. Central to Howard's appeal to these men and women was his sincere 'compassion' for Indigenous suffering and his commitment to ameliorating their 'disadvantage'--what he called 'practical reconciliation'. By March 2004, with the Opposition abandoning ATSIC, and with a growing critical commentary on Indigenous affairs from Indigenous leaders themselves, it was possible for Howard to act more boldly against the norms of 'separate development'. As well as abolishing ATSIC in 2004-05, he authorised the Northern Territory Emergency Response in June 2007, with sufficient Indigenous support that opinion (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) was now divided as to whether he had shown himself to be Indigenous Australia's champion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples ('UNDRIP') in 2007, many extolled it for recognising Indigenous peoples' right of self-determination. Although there is some consensus that all peoples have self-determination, as a legal claim it has routinely inspired criticism that it will lead to contradictory claims, interpretations, and further political contestation. Ten years after UNDRIP's endorsement, some Indigenous claims of self-determination in Australia are contradictory. While contradictory claims may not be inherently problematic, in the context explored in this article, there are problematic effects. This article examines how contradictory self-determination claims arose in response to Australia's recent Native Title Amendment (Indigenous Land Use Agreements) Act 2017 (Cth) ('2017 Amendments'), which amended and weakened the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) ('NTA'). It also evaluates the consequences of those contradictory claims and argues for renewed critical assessment of who legitimately determines the self who claims self-determination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although consent determinations play a key role in native title law, little scholarly attention has been given to their operation. This article synthesises judicial commentary in this area to argue that claimed differences between judges as to the circumstances in which it will be 'appropriate' to give effect to a consent determination reached between the parties are more apparent than real. Nevertheless, and for the avoidance of confusion, this article propounds a new model for the 'appropriateness' test in sections 87 and 87A of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth), based upon key values drawn from the Federal Court's collective jurisprudence. Demonstrating the importance of this model, the article then considers the practical uncertainty arising from the use of 'generic extinguishment clauses' in response to the difficulties posed by tenure analysis. Cautioning that the use of such clauses may prove counterproductive, this article encourages negotiating parties to adopt current tenure analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2016 judgment in the ‘Timber Creek’ compensation case (Griffiths v Northern Territory of Australia (no. 3) (2016) FCA 900) signals an end to an era of extinguishment-related injustice and inequality, representing, as it does, the first litigated Federal Court award of compensation for the loss or impairment of rights and interests, under the 1993 Native Title Act. In this paper, I explore some of the methodological challenges and conceptual issues confronting anthropologists involved in researching compensation claims. In drawing upon my experience in researching two such claims, I discuss how the issues of gender, resource development, environmental transformation, the Stolen Generation, and the history of Indigenous-European relations in remote and rural Australia impact upon investigations into the loss or diminution of traditional attachments to land. In conceptualising this loss of connection, I discuss material relating to the ‘anthropology of emotions’, and I point to some of the obstacles encountered when talking about emotions cross-culturally. In conclusion, I explore research undertaken into the social and psychological impacts of ecosystem distress, loss of place, and environmental change, and I posit the value of Glenn Albrecht’s concept of ‘solastalgia’ (2005. “Solastalgia, a New Concept in Human Health and Identity.” Philosophy Activism Nature 3: 41-44) in framing research into the loss of solace, and in expanding upon the legal notion of this loss as ‘inconvenience’ and ‘injured feelings’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Traditional Owner Settlement Act 2010 (Vic) was enacted in response to the deficiencies of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) in recognising the native title rights and interests of Victoria's Traditional Owners. It is widely recognised that the NTA is particularly inadequate when it comes to Indigenous participation in water management. This article evaluates the TOS Act to see if it improves on the NTA in that regard. After outlining the deficiencies of the NTA and its application in Victoria, it considers the nature of water rights capable of being recognised under the TOS Act. This is followed by an analysis of the procedural rights under the land use activity regime, the TOS Act's equivalent of the NTA's future act regime. Finally, it analyses the role of Aboriginal title (introduced by the TOS Act) and joint management (enhanced by the TOS Act) in facilitating Indigenous participation in water management. It concludes that the TOS Act does little to advance the water management aspirations of Victoria's Traditional Owners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal is presented on topics including Australian criminal laws and procedure, contextualism as a modern approach to statutory interpretation, and Native Title Act 1993.

This article evaluates the taxation concessions and other advantages that flow from being a charity and how these might apply to native title groups under the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth). Specifically, it examines the role of the Prescribed Body Corporate ('PBC') under the Native Title Act and the potential for, and limitations of these bodies carrying on business, engaging in community development and accumulating funds whilst also having charitable status. The article examines the financial size and geographical status of current PBCs that have been identified as not being charities and analyses the potential benefits for these organisations if they become charities. It concludes with an evaluation of the disadvantages and disadvantages that charitable status would bring to these PBCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is directed to two immediate purposes which lie beyond anthropology as practiced within academia: to contribute to the ongoing dialogue within the discipline on applied anthropological engagement in and with the Australian native title and Indigenous development arenas; and secondly, to add to our conversations with Indigenous people themselves on what it means to be Indigenous in contemporary Australia. It aims to do this by focusing initially on what I argue are two ostensibly alternative constructions of contemporary Indigenous identities implicitly established through different provisions of Australia's Native Title Act, one of which I propose draws from the particular legal construction of Indigenous tradition in that Act and in native title jurisprudence, and the other from certain aspects of identity held to be associated with modernity. I argue, however, that there is a false dichotomy between tradition and modernity in contemporary circumstances, and that Indigenous identities are better understood as 'hybrid' in the sense that they involve a complex interpenetration of forms of identity and practice drawn from diverse domains. I further argue that these arguments have important implications for an applied anthropological practice well beyond the native title arena, and for Indigenous people themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[It is now twenty years since the High Court of Australia designated 'native title' as the site of engagement of Australian common law and jurisprudence with Indigenous law and jurisprudence in Mabo v Queensland [No 2]. Common law jurisprudence, however, continues to struggle to create the appropriate form and conduct of the relations between itself and Indigenous laws and jurisprudence. It struggles, in short, to create an appropriate meeting place of laws. In light of recent attempts to amend the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth), it is timely, then, to return to the first question that is addressed in the meeting of laws in Australia, that of the authorisation of laws and the quality and conduct of the meeting place. Here the meeting of Australian common law and Indigenous law in Australia is tracked in terms of a brief history of common law jurisdictional practice, the jurisprudence of the conduct of lawful relations in and through s 223 of the Native Title Act, and official forms of responsibility for lawful relations.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the outstanding native title claims across Australia were originally conceptualised in terms of the level at which rights and interests in land were exercised by groupings of claimants at a range of scales, rather than the level at which the body of law and custom legitimating those rights and interests was held and reproduced. Claimants, Native Title Representative Bodies (NTRBs) and respondent parties have continued to struggle with reconciling the various levels at which Aboriginal groups coalesce and become differentiated from one another. Since the Yorta Yorta High Court decision in 2002, Indigenous Australians claiming native title under the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) have had to demonstrate that their current ‘society’ is the same society as that which existed at the time of colonisation. Since the rights and interests in land and waters that can be recognised under the Native Title Act are said to stem from the ‘laws and customs’ of the society that was in existence at sovereignty, much hinges on how ‘society’ is understood. What emerges strongly from the ethnographic record is that traditional Aboriginal societies contracted and expanded in different contexts. In this paper, I argue that defining native title societies in a way that adequately acknowledges this fact does not seem to be precluded by the Native Title Act or by subsequent case law judgments on this question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order for Aboriginal rights and interests to be recognised under the Native Title Act (1993), such rights and interests must arise from laws and customs that can be shown to have continuity with the particular set of laws and customs that existed at the time of sovereignty, or, at least, at the time of first European contact. This interpretation of continuity has been applied in Australian native title cases since the High Court's Yorta Yorta decision (Yorta Yorta v the State of Victoria [2002] HCA 58). Yet today's Aboriginal native title claim groups are also required to participate in other statutory ventures outside of the native title domain. For example, ‘tribal’ representatives in north Queensland are obliged to represent their interests on the Wet Tropics Management Authority, and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. In native title terms, however, the activity and time spent participating in these ventures do not ‘count’ as instantiations of traditionally based rights and interests. Furthermore, the powers and rights granted to Aboriginal groups under these statutory ventures are often in conflict with the strictures of current native title interpretations of ‘traditional law and custom and rights and interests’. The effect is to elicit versions of Aboriginal action that may contradict each other legally. In this paper, I discuss some examples of these institutional conflicts engendered by the statutory actions of state and federal government, and comment on the implications for the contemporary Aboriginal articulations of identity and tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropology's involvement with Australian Indigenous people seeking to obtain legal rights, particularly in the context of the Native Title Act, has been subject to considerable critique both within and outside of the academy. The collected papers in this volume provide a constructive case for best approaches in this applied anthropological research, given the apparent constraints of the legal environment and the necessity to retain professional anthropological integrity. Issues of cultural change and identification of the relevant traditional ‘law and custom’ continuing through time are among a range of matters at the intersection of Australian and Aboriginal customary law. This collection assembles papers that demonstrate the relevance and significance of applied research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the tax issues that arise in respect of native title of land in Australia. It introduces some of the range of payments that may be received by the Indigenous Australians with respect to native title and mining on land. It analyses the current withholding tax regime relating to mining payments with regard to Aboriginal land under the Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 to determine whether the law applies to native title payments governed by the Native Title Act 1993.

Australia's 1992 landmark case of Mabo v. The State of Queensland [No. 2] revoked the concept of terra nullius and for the first time since European colonization of the continent allowed indigenous Australians to obtain legal ownership of their traditional lands. The following year this groundbreaking decision became statutory law with the enactment of the Native Title Act (NTA) of 1993. The case law and the statutory act both failed, however, to adequately address the question of Aboriginal claims to sea properties. For many Australian Aboriginal groups, ownership of traditional lands does not abruptly end at a shoreline but extends to surrounding coast lines, intertidal zones, and offshore seas. This indigenous view is in stark contrast to Western concepts of property that have resulted in distinct bodies of law governing rights to the ownership of land versus rights to the ownership of sea. The NTA recognizes exclusive Aboriginal property rights whether the traditional area is a land or sea property. The first case to test native title rights to sea property, The Commonwealth of Australia v. Yarmirr ("Croker Island") held, however, that native title can be recognized without the right to exclude. This precedential decision continues to bar exclusive Aboriginal ownership of sea properties and denies Aboriginal management of natural resources of the sea regardless of whether the group provides historical evidence of ownership and management. This Comment argues that the Croker Island decision does not comply with the NTA, is based in an erroneous understanding of Aboriginal law and custom, and should be overturned. This Comment further argues that where an Aboriginal group successfully provides evidentiary proof of a traditionally practiced right to exclude, native title must recognize and protect an exclusionary right to traditional sea properties. Granting ownership of traditionally held properties is central to rectifying harms caused by Australia's historic policy of dispossession of Aboriginal properties and is necessary to promote Aboriginal sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customary international law provided for some early recognition of the rights of Indigenous peoples as against European colonisers, but much of this was eroded over the past two centuries. In Britain's colonisation of Australia there was little effective recognition, in contrast to British policy and practice in North America and New Zealand. Since World War II international law has developed wide ranging treaties relating to human rights generally. These have come to be regarded as applicable to Indigenous peoples. They played a critical role in the events leading to the High Court of Australia's recognition of native title in 1992, and supported the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth). They provided the basis for international criticism of the 'winding back' of native title in the Native Title Amendment Act 1998 (Cth). Since 1982 the UN system has been developing, in collaboration with representatives of Indigenous peoples from around the world, a Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It will be considered later this year at the annual meeting of the UN's General Assembly. How will Australia vote? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both the colonial encapsulation and post-colonial recognition of North Queensland's Aboriginal population have been achieved through legislative demarcation. This paper explores the way such demarcation has extended the influence of the state within local Aboriginal life-worlds, focusing on the State of Queensland's Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 and the Commonwealth's Native Title Act 1993. Drawing on ethnographic and historical material from Central Cape York Peninsula, and recent anthropological theorization of the state, I argue that anthropologists need to seriously consider Aboriginal claims about what Michel-Roiph Trouillot calls 'state effects'. But careful examination of these claims suggests that the state no longer simply imposes its projects on fundamentally distinct Aboriginal life-worlds. Not only is the state now deeply engaged within these life-worlds, it is also deeply interwoven into post-colonial Aboriginal subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archival recordings of Australian Aboriginal songs have been used as evidence in land claim hearings in the Northern Territory since the late 1970's. The people who own songs are the traditional owners of the land associated with those songs. A further legislative development, the Native Title Act (1993) (Commonwealth), requires evidence of long-term connection with the land being claimed, thus emphasising the importance of historical recordings. Copies of historical recordings are, in turn, stimulating new performances of songs and their associated ceremonies. The paper will explain the foci of the two major Australian legislative Acts setting out procedures for Indigenous people to claim land, and then will demonstrate the connection between ownership of songs and of land. The use of archival recordings and of music in land claims and related legislation will be explored, giving specific examples. Finally, there will be a description of the various types of places where audiovisual and print documentation for land claims are held with discussion of a project to ensure that the material will be preserved and made accessible to future generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the retaining and ceasing of aboriginal entitlement particularly in the case of Yorta Yorta people. The author presents the case of Yorta Yorta in 2002, in which the claimants applied for a find of native land under the Australia Native Title Act 1993. He informs that the trial judge of the case concluded that possession of the tribal lands has been lost by 1881 and since then, Yorta Yorta people did not occupy the land as the original inhabitants had occupied it.

Australia's dominant politics of place has largely failed to give meaningful recognition to Indigenous peoples. The Native Title Act 1993 required governments, industry and others to (re)consider the basis and extent of their authority, unsettling the non-Indigenous systems’ assumed dominance. While Indigenous hopes about Native title have diminished as a result of subsequent judicial, legislative and administrative responses, Native title negotiations have been pivotal in redefining politics of place and Indigenous–settler relationships in Australia at several scales. Focusing on South Australia's Statewide Indigenous Land Use Agreement Negotiation Strategy, this paper considers such a redefinition. The paper identifies four strategies as critical to success in transformative spatial politics: getting process right; recognising and supporting Indigenous jurisdictions; engaging and transforming non-Indigenous scales; and shifting Native title process away from legalities, towards people and relationships. Since 1999, these strategies have transformed the politics of place and built more equitable inter-cultural relationships and networks based on mutual recognition and respect between Indigenous and non-Indigenous rights and interests in land and waters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia's Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) allows Indigenous Australians to lay claims to traditional country located on unalienated Crown land. The Act also admits claims to compensation for the loss of traditional country that has been appropriated and made subject to freehold or other forms of tenure. The Yulara case discussed here was historically important. It was the first case mounted to determine appropriate compensation for the extinguishment of native title. In a compensation claim, the Indigenous applicants must first establish that (taken together) they are both (i) the rightful heirs to ancestral holders of native title and (ii) that they still maintain the traditions and customs of their forebears (phase 1). Once their holding of native title has been established at law, the applicants may then enter their claim to monetary compensation for the 'extinguishment' of their native title over designated lands (phase 2). In the Yulara case, it was found that the applicants were not constituted as a group of recognisable native title holders whose rights to country were rooted in those traditional laws and customs that obtained when the Yulara lands were officially brought under the dominion of British authorities 'at sovereignty' (1824). The case could not, therefore, proceed to a hearing of the compensation phase. Eight issues concerning the proper performance of the anthropologist as expert witness in native title matters were raised by the trial judge in the Yulara case. This paper deals with the bearing of the judge's observations on those anthropological representations that may be made in future native title cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that native title determination applications, facilitated by the Commonwealth Native Title Act 1993, constitute a modern social phenomenon. A characteristic of these applications is that they contain processes associated with demonstrating traditional modes of land ownership, which compel claimants to engage in critically reflexive projects that contain the potential to problematise fundamental dimensions of their intersubjective-accord, including the very concept of indigenous relatedness. With particular reference to situations in New South Wales, this paper suggests that the identification of traditional owners and the definition of claimant groups actively contribute to the reconstitution of contemporary Aboriginal sociality. In this process, ideas of relatedness are converted into ideas of descent and concomitantly notions of kinship, personhood and identity are reconstructed. Early anthropological research regarding descent, kinship and the relevance of groups to descriptions of society has alerted us to some of the problems highlighted in this paper, but they appear to have been largely forgotten in native title processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aboriginal economic relations have been misconstrued as a type of primitive exchange in at least one native title case discussed in this paper. The pursuit by Aboriginal native title claimants of recognition at law of customary economic rights as inherent in, or an adjunct of, native title rights failed in Yarmirr and Others v. Northern Territory of Australia and Others (1998) 156 ALR 370 (the 'Croker Island case') for several reasons. The applicant's native title was found to be non-exclusive of other interests, and a fight to trade in resources of the sea was rejected. This case was argued in part by relying on historical material regarding Macassan trading arrangements. The profound alterity of Aboriginal relationships among persons and things, as the Croker Island evidence of property and trade relations demonstrates, have been re-constituted in legal discourse as an absence of economic relations. In this paper, we argue that there is no sound basis for the distinction made between commercial and noncommercial native title rights, whether in the Native Title Act 1993 (Commonwealth of Australia), or in recent judicial reasoning. We contend that native title rights and interests constitute a sui generis species of property relations that enable economic rights as conceived in Aboriginal tradition and custom to circulate in the modern market. Aboriginal customary economic relations of and between Aboriginal groupings are markedly distinct from, yet not incommensurable with, the normative conception of economic relations in the Australian market. We argue that a reformulation of the current Australian legal ideas about economic life is necessary for the recognition of Aboriginal economic institutions in native title claims and other economic arenas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the National Native Title Tribunal's (NNTT) facade of indigenous advocacy through its outcome and output framework which it uses to report and measure its performance in accordance with Commonwealth requirements in Australia. It discusses the Eddie Mabo case which won a land rights victory in the High Court's decision. It also presents an outline of the Native Title Act of 1993 and the NNTT. It also describes and analyses arbitration which is one of the four key outputs of the Tribunal. The facade conceals the reality that when arbitrating between indigenous and non-indigenous parties competing for valuable resources, the Tribunal tends to rule in favor of the latter party.

The National Native Title Tribunal was set up under the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) to provide an institutional mechanism for receiving, registering and mediating native title determination and compensation applications, and for arbitrating on the proposed grant of mining interests affecting native title. In this article, the former President of the Tribunal reflects upon the first five years of the Tribunal's existence from his perspective and through his experiences as its President from 1994 to 1998. The embryonic state of the new common law of native title, combined with a new and complex statute, interacted with indigenous expectations and non-indigenous tears, uncertainties and hostilities. This created a challenging and difficult environment for the National Native Title Tribunal, which was established to manage substantial parts the native title process. The article considers the impact of procedural amendments to the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) and recent judicial decisions upon the future direction of native title law and indigenous aspirations for recognition in Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is 10 years since the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) was passed in response to the High Court's Mabo decision. Those years have been marked by an interplay between the common law and statute. Following the High Court's decision in Ward and Yorta Yorta, this interplay has been starkly enunciated and redefined. The Act is dominant and the common law has been almost relegated, at least for the moment, to a historical artefact. Noel Pearson described the process most dramatically: 'Ten years in the sunshine of the Rule of Low was all that black Australians were fated to enjoy'. How is it that such a determinate view of the state of native title could be made a mere 10 years after the promise engendered by the Mabo decision? While there is little doubt that the nature of the rights emerging from both the common law and the Act have been significantly diminished by both the Native Title Amendment Act 1998 (Cth) and the recent decisions in Ward, Yorta Yorta and Wilson v Anderson, it is indisputable that the recognition and protection of native title as a result of Mabo provided the underpinning far a realignment of relationships between indigenous and nonindigenous Australians. Indigenous rights and interests in land can no longer be ignored or cast aside. This article argues that in spite of both legislation and the courts diminishing the concept of native title and the rights associated with it, the process of change unleashed by Mabo and the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) cannot be reversed. The question now is where this process of change will lead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the concepts of authenticity involved in the production and consumption of tourist experiences in the East Kimberley region of northern Australia. It contrasts the notions of authenticity produced in this domain with those produced in the legal context of indigenous land claims made through the Native Title process (Native Title Act 1993) in Australia. Our aim in making this comparison is to develop a deeper understanding of how the place-images of tourism relate to the politics of land use and land tenure in the East Kimberley. Environment and Aboriginal culture are the two unique aspects of northern Australia most commonly commodified by the tourism industry. We concentrate on relationships between the tourism industry and Aboriginal culture in the East Kimberley using the term 'Aboriginal cultural tourism' to denote the packaging of Aboriginal culture for tourist consumption. We describe experiences and expectations of tourists, tourism operators and Aboriginal people from the Miriuwung and Gajerrong groups regarding Aboriginal cultural tourism. Drawing on a multi-method approach that includes interviews, field observations and survey techniques we examine how ideas of authenticity are formed and promoted and their potential for change. We then compare and contrast ideas of authentic Aboriginal culture produced within the tourism industry with those produced within a Native Title claim. Interrogated in this way, the concept of authenticity is interpreted as a socially constructed value that provides a means to understanding how Aboriginal cultural tourism and tourism more generally connects with broader spatial politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aboriginal Australians have traditionally enjoyed little protection from the law. The matter of land has been at the heart of white settler/Aboriginal relations since the nation was first founded. It is only recently that recognition has been given to the land rights of Australian indigenous people. This recognition was finally made at the property law level in 1992 through the High Court decision in Mabo v. Queensland (n. 2) ([1992] 175 CLR 1). The 1993 High Court decision in The Wik Peoples v. Queensland ([1996] 71 ALJR 173) reinforced that recognition. It did so through the principle that pastoral lessees' and native title holders' rights might co-exist except that, in the event of any inconsistency, the pastoralists' rights were to prevail, provided pastoral activity was being pursued. The most recent legal change is the parliamentary revision of the Native Title Act so that the Wik co-existence principle was put to rest, mainly through permitting the State governments to upgrade pastoral holdings to a form of freehold, thus immunising them from native title claims, and minimising the payment of compensation. In this paper we argue that the country must consider what has been lost in this about-turn from the recognition of native title to land in Mabo. We argue that the nation must consider the emphases in the Mabo judgments upon the significance of international law and the need for the common law not to be locked into a racist past. From that point, we contend for the need to recognise not only native title to land but what lies beyond that: indigenous political and human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suggests that robustness arises in a critical sense from the pre-existing and widely continuing dual structure of traditional Aboriginal land tenure in Australia. Native Title Act of 1993; Aboriginal laws; Underlying titles and proximate entitlements; Autonomy of land-owning groups.

Native Title claims across Australia produce archives that contain detailed information from researchers and Traditional Owners about the past and contemporary community and their connection to Country. Reflecting the authors' experience of working with Victorian Traditional Owner communities, this article will consider the research process that occurs in claims under the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) and the Victorian Traditional Owner Settlement Act 2010 (Vic). When a claim is settled this archive is required to be returned to the Traditional Owners. This article will examine the challenges which have delayed the return of materials in the Victorian context, and the possibilities such a return of materials provides to Traditional Owner communities and to researchers. It considers the work done by Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars and institutions to understand archives as a means to facilitate self-determination. Most importantly, with the increasing importance of Indigenous data sovereignty, this article argues Traditional Owner communities can engage with these archives on their own terms-finally moving these archives from their colonial provenance to community owned, controlled and organised repositories preserving and presenting the community's historical, social and cultural knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]