home | news l

Justice on ancient land

By Tony Barrass

11 December 2007 - A special sitting of the Federal Court in a remote corner of Western Australia has ended a 10-year legal and artistic challenge for native title,

In searing heat, John Gilmour adjusts the long, black robes of the Federal Court and glances towards the overflowing marquee a stone’s throw from his makeshift changing screen, the opened tailgate of a hired Land Cruiser.

Plonked in the middle of a clearing peppered with the distinctive white gums of the outback, the open-sided tent shades various mobs from the Walmajarri, Wangka-junga, Juwaliny and Mangala language groups of the Great Sandy Desert, who sit in neat rows on green plastic chairs and wait patiently with palpable expectation.

Many of them have driven for days from the extremities of Ngurrara or Jila country, 83,886sq km of mainly unallocated crown land between the northern boundaries of the Pilbara and the southern gates of the Kimberley in northern Western Australia.

They have been waiting for more than a decade for this day. This on-country Federal Court session is at Pirnini, near Kurlku, an outstation south of the Kimberley town of Fitzroy Crossing. It is so small it is not marked on most maps. It takes a 90-minute flight out of Broome and another two hours along a sand track to get to senior law man Peter Slipper’s beloved country. Slipper, a respected elder who died in September, asked the court to make its determination here, even though culturally it would have been a place to avoid in the months following his death.

Old women with wild, ash-grey hair appear in a battered Toyota and begin their sorry business. Huddled together, they move into the tent and loudly, unashamedly, weep for Slipper and those who have gone before him. An uncomfortable hush falls over the gather-ing as their wails swamp the marquee.

Slipper and others — Annette Kogolo, Percy Bulagardie, Mona Chuguna, Peter Clancy, Ronnie Jimbidie, Tommy May, Hitler Pamba, Wilfred Steele, Butcher Wise, Stalin Wodigar and Harry Yungabun — knew the key to securing land title through the white man’s way was to prove an unbroken connection to country. To do this, they decided their claim should be built on the two ties that bind the four Ngurrara language groups: art and law.

Almost 11 years ago, 30 artists who grew up in various parts of the land claim that covers an area larger than Tasmania sat down to paint their country. The result is what has become known as the Ngurrara canvas, an explosion of colour and movement that records the ancestral, historical, economic, geographical, social and personal significance on a canvas half the size of a tennis court. It doubles as a dance floor at indigenous ceremonies such as this one. It also has toured the world’s art galleries and, spread out in all its glory next to the tent, bakes in the hard morning sun.

The court is called to order. An Aboriginal woman takes the microphone but is so overwhelmed by emotion she struggles to deliver her welcome to country. The old men in the gathering bow their heads in sweat-stained stockmen hats and wipe tears from watery eyes.

It has been a long journey for all of them. Many worked as stockmen in the 1950s and ’60s. But when minimum wage rates were introduced after 1966, Aboriginal stockmen became redundant almost overnight as station owners refused or could not afford to pay their black workers. Grog, idleness and all the disadvantages of living in remote communities took over. The generation of men that followed virtually vanished, lost in a fog of hopelessness so common in many outback indigenous communities.

The sense of occasion is not lost on Gilmour as he begins his first on-country determination. He speaks slowly so one of the claimants, Kogolo, can interpret to the mob. ‘‘The court is sitting here today at the request of the applicants in country,’’ Gilmour says in a gentle Scottish burr.

‘‘We’re sitting at Pirnini. Pirnini is the place where the painting of the canvas began.’’ He describes the geographical borders of a claim that was lodged more than a decade ago by ‘‘those people who are responsible for the home country, responsible for the land and the waters’’ on behalf of ‘‘a distinctive community bound together by a system of laws and customs’’ that have been in place and uninterrupted by the Ngurrara even before white settlement in WA in 1829.

‘‘Many of the traditional owners paint,’’ he tells the gathering. ‘‘They paint the places where they were born or found and grew up.

The Ngurrara canvas is one of the most important paintings. It shows the Warlu country and each Ngurrara was painted by or at the request of a person authorised to speak for that (part) of the country.’’ In making his order, Gilmour says the court did not give the Ngurrara native title but determined that native title existed.

‘‘It determines that this is your land . . . that it is based upon your traditional laws and customs, and it always has been,’’ he says. ‘‘The laws say to all the people in Australia that this is your land and that it always has been your land.’’

Before Kogolo can finish the translation, the marquee bursts into applause and cheers. Looking on is an emotional West Australian Deputy Premier Eric Ripper, who as State Development Minister has been instrumental in pushing WA to the front of native title negotiations during an era of unprecedented growth and a once-in-a-century mining boom. Harshly criticised, particularly during the late 1990s, for being too slow or reluctant to embrace the concept of indigenous land rights, the WA Government is aggressively seeking solutions to the complex and emotive subject of native title.

The Ngurrara determination is the 21st such to be made and the 13th to be declared on Ripper’s watch in the Gallop-Carpenter administration. Native title has been resolved across almost half the Kimberley and one-third of WA’s land mass, an area covering 733,000sq km. Ripper is passionate about the fact a balance can be reached and believes these outcomes empower indigenous com-munities culturally, socially and financially.

He spends many hours crisscrossing the state, making it his business to get to as many of the determinations as possible, even if they are in the far reaches of the WA interior.

While acknowledging the crucial role the state plays in such affairs, he also makes it clear that history will treat some prime ministers better than others when it comes to native title.

‘‘Let’s not underestimate Paul Keating’s role in all of this,’’ Ripper says. ‘‘What you see before you is a perfect example of what that historic judgment and subsequent legisla-tive measures mean in a practical sense to people who live in these remote areas. These determinations translate into job opportuni-ties and a way forward for many people, not just in the Kimberley but across the state and throughout the country.’’

Kimberley Land Council executive director Wayne Bergmann agrees and says negotia-tion, not litigation, is becoming more common as parties see little point in wasting money and time in the courts.

‘‘In the early days, no one really knew what to expect,’’ Bergmann says. ‘‘Now there is a greater acceptance and acknowledgment that from all sides the way forward is through talking and negotiating.’’

As the crowd begins to break up, a Walmajarri man, one of dozens of young men in attendance, unexpectedly grabs the micro-phone. He’s wearing the brown shirt of Aboriginal rangers who protect, clean and open up their country in what should be a lucrative new era of tourism along the Canning Stock Route.

Looking down at the red dirt in front of him, his quivering voice belies a new-found confidence of a generation held back by grog, drugs and abuse.

‘‘This has been like waiting for a funeral . . . like waiting to bury someone,’’ he says. ‘‘We have lost many old people, but many of them live strongly in us. Today it’s very sad, but today is also a day of great celebration. We got to remember that.’’

Tony Barrass is The Australian’s West Australian bureau chief.

Source: The Australian

Further information: native title issues page - includes news index and external links

|| click to go to the top of this page