The Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/9906/14/text/features2.html 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. ************************************************************************* This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.alexia.net.au/~www/mhutton/index.html Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
