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Aboriginal community wins 30-year fight for land

27 April 2007 - An Australian Aboriginal community celebrated the end of a 30-year struggle for their land Friday when a court recognized them as the owners of a remote cattle station at the center of landmark protests.

The Noonkanbah claim, which gained international attention in 1980 when a US company's proposal to drill for oil on a sacred Aboriginal site prompted major protests, is seen as the impetus for Australia's land rights movement.

The Federal Court Friday determined that the local Yungngora people have exclusive native title rights over the 1,800 square kilometer (720 square mile) estate in Western Australia's Kimberley region.

Hundreds of Yungngora gathered at Noonkanbah, which they now run as a cattle station, to celebrate the decision and to consider what to do with the land, which is rich in minerals, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reported.

"It puts behind the struggles that we have gone through in the past, when the government and miners tried to override our people and our culture for the sake of the so-called public good," Noonkanbah community chairman Dickey Cox said.

The Yungngora have held a pastoral lease for the estate since 1976 but the Federal Court decision gives them exclusive rights over the whole parcel of land, save for a stock route and an aerodrome, which are government owned.

Australia's indigenous communities were stripped of all their land when British settlers arrived more than 200 years ago and it was not until the 1970s that a movement to recognize native title rights gained support.

Despite having a lease for the Noonkanbah estate, in 1980 the Yungngora people came up against the mineral exploration company AMAX, which had state government backing to drill for oil at a sacred site on the estate.

The resulting protests have been credited with leading to the establishment of the Native Title Act and other decisions that have sought to give indigenous people control over their traditional lands.

"The struggle over Noonkanbah went to the heart of the aspirations of Aboriginal people to control their own land," National Native Title Tribunal member Dan O'Dea said. "Their example has greatly influenced the subsequent development of the law toward recognition of indigenous ownership of traditional lands."

Fred Chaney, the federal minister for Aboriginal affairs at the time of the dispute, said that he had to "stand by and watch what I thought was a thoroughly unpleasant exercise, which I thought brought no credit upon any of us."

"So, for me, the determination is an important closing off of what I thought was a very bad chapter, in favor of what I think is a really good future," he told the ABC.

Source: Middle East Times

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

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