Aboriginal People & the Land
The Aboriginal concept of land ownership, is different to Western understanding of land tenure. The western concept basically sees land as an economic resource, that can be exploited in a number of different ways ( by purchase, development and extraction of resources), using several forms of tenure such as leasehold and freehold title to denote legal ownership or rights to use a particular geographical area.Traditional Australian Aborigines believed that each member of their social groups occupied precisely the same territory that had been created by (and had been occupied by) their ancestors - as a result of particular Dreamtime events. As a hunter-gatherer society their land was an economic resource. But their Dreamtime stories or myths (myths in the sense of being narrative material that led to belief), taught the people that they had a personal relationship with their land and all it contained. We will expand on these points later. However, the Aboriginal understanding of 'my land, my country' was formally recognized by the Australian legal system, in 1992, by the High Court of Australia in the Mabo decision. The Court established that before colonization, the continent of Australia was owned by Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people under a tenure called native title. The territory of any tribe may have (and usually did) extend over thousands of square kilometers. Each owned the particular area they occupied. For example when increase ceremonies would be performed. It explained how it came into existence, identified those who were responsible for creating it and identified those who were responsible for its continued existence - an identifiable group of Native Title owners. " However 'claims by birth' had a different meaning than some people give to this today. Those who understand land in the sense of being an item to exploit, don't speak the language of traditional Aboriginal people. In other words the area that had been created for a tribe was comprised of a number of smaller areas and anything between 20 and 50 Headmen were custodians of these areas. This was a superstitious belief, but it was very important to the Aborigines. In other words Native Title is a community title. Land: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people had an affinity with their land that is difficult to understand. (quoted by Reynolds,1972,pp141-142)Joseph Orton (Methodist missionary) believed that colonization "should be conducted with sacred reference to all rights to the original occupants of the soil. Buxton:Buxton: Do the natives in the interior possess any land; have they any idea of property?Yate: There are certain very large districts which they claim as belong to different tribes, but which the English took possession of, without taking any notice of their claims. The Aboriginal would speak of 'earth' and use the word in a richly symbolic way to mean his 'shoulder' or his 'side'. This involved people who did not 'belong' to a particular area, having to seek permission of the 'owners' to enter their land.
Common topics in this essay:
WEH Stanner,
Native Title,
Dunmore Lang,
Prior Mabo,
Knowledge Laws,
Orton Methodist,
Australian Aborigines,
Yate Yes,
,
Buxton Buxton,
native title,
land ownership,
land created,
idea property,
aboriginal people,
aboriginal land ownership,
aboriginal land,
traditional aboriginal,
increase ceremonies,
property soil,
economic resource,
land economic resource,
traditional aboriginal people,
aboriginal torres strait,
torres strait islander,
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Acceptance Essays
