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Also, here is the article.
Tim
IAN VINER
Aborigines the losers in land rights review
Date:
14/06/99
There's little respect for Aboriginal customs in Canberra's
latest land grab.
JOHN Reeves, QC, has now reported to the Federal
Government on what he thinks should be done to overhaul the Aboriginal
Land
Rights (NT) Act, which I ushered into law as Minister for Aboriginal
Affairs in 1976.
In his recommendations, he does not respect the
principle that Aborigines with traditional ties to their land should make
decisions about
that land.
He has even raised the question of
"inevitable extinction" of traditional Aboriginal groupings in a line of
thinking that harks back to the
ideas that helped produce the "stolen
generations".
Reeves's proposals would mean a major shift of power and
control over Aboriginal land to the Northern Territory Government. They
would
take away the right of traditional owners to consent to or veto proposals over
how their traditional lands are used. Instead, it
would give that authority
to people who may not have any traditional affiliation with the
land.
Reeves would do this by abolishing the independent northern and
central land councils. He would establish new regional councils lacking
the
autonomy and independence the land councils now enjoy, including the two smaller
land councils, Tiwi and Anindilyakwa.
The new councils would take over
the functions and duties of traditional owners and report to a new centralised
super-governmental
body, the Northern Territory Aboriginal Council, an
instrument of the NT and Federal governments.
The land councils, ATSIC
and Aboriginal communities have been put in the position of having to defend an
Aboriginal land tenure
system in operation for nearly 25 years. It has become
a benchmark of achievement recognised nationally and
internationally.
Reeves seems not to understand the enormity of the
proposal to expropriate Aboriginal land from existing land trusts and
legislatively
place ownership in the hands of someone else.
It is a
major switch from respecting Aboriginal-style governance of traditional
Aboriginal land. He has relied on non-Aboriginal political
concepts to create
a system that non-Aboriginal governments want.
His proposals are alien to
traditional links with the land that support and sustain Aboriginal social
organisation.
This involves a plan of life based on an identifiable and
unmistakable group of people forming a descent group or clan living in relation
to
an identifiable territory publicly recognised as the "country" of the
group.
This link is recognised as a fundamental underpinning of
Aboriginal land title under the current Act. It also applies to heritage
laws
nationwide and to native title determinations under the Native Title
Act.
The omission is remarkable, but understandable. Reeves has relied
on a narrow understanding of anthropology, rather than the reality
of
traditional Aboriginal social organisation.
For example, a question
he has posed provides insight into his overall thinking. He asks: "How will
Aboriginal people address the
problems posed by the inevitable extinction of
the small-localised patrilineal groupings that, ideally, hold the highest
authority in relation
to land?"
The question reminds me of the
"inevitable extinction" theories of earlier policymakers, who believed that
Aboriginality would be bred
out by the mixing of the races. These theories
led to such policies as Aboriginal children being removed from their
families.
In his report, Reeves is covering old ground. Everything he
considered was also considered by Woodward, who set it out in the
Second
Report of the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission (Woodward Report) in
1974.
Yet 25 years on, Reeves proposes a radical change to the land
rights system Woodward recommended. Could Woodward, his advisers,
the
northern and central land councils and their advisers, the Whitlam and Fraser
governments have got it so wrong in their understanding
how NT Aborigines own
their traditional lands?
The contrast between Woodward and Reeves is
stark. Reeves would force a radical new system of land tenure, control,
management
and political organisation on Aborigines against their wishes.
Woodward saw change coming about by natural development. He recommended
Aboriginal choice within a flexible land tenure system.
Woodward saw the
role of policymakers as subservient to the choices made by "the Aboriginal
people themselves in a free and unhurried
fashion".
There was to be
consultation with Aboriginal community leaders, with "the final decision to the
traditional owners of the lands".
Reeves pays no such respect to the
traditional owners. He sees the Aboriginal land his new institutions would
control as no different to all
other land within continental Australia. In
his view, it is to be used for the same economic purposes as all other
land.
The people and the land are to be governed by the same kind of
institutional power structures as govern non-Aboriginal people.
I have
heard that a study undertaken at Hermannsburg Mission in Central Australia
demonstrated that, after 100 years of the Lutheran
missionaries' presence,
traditional society continued to flourish. It was not extinguished by
Christianity.
I am sure indigenous people all over Australia will object
to the Reeves view that local Aboriginal descent groups face
inevitable
extinction.
Reeves had no mandate to recommend change
without Aboriginal consent. The Federal Parliament has no mandate to change the
Land
Rights Act without Aboriginal consent.
It is their land. It is
their Act.
Ian Viner, QC, is a former Liberal Aboriginal Affairs
minister.
This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorised use,
copying or mirroring is prohibited.
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