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.
             Aboriginal land ownership - The Whiteman's perspective:
             Prior to the Mabo decision "it was generally imagined but with great injustice, as well as incorrectness, that the native have no idea of property in land, or proprietary rights connected with it. Nothing can be further from the truth than this assumption, although men of high character and standing, and who are otherwise benevolently disposed towards the natives, have distinctly denied this right, and maintained that the natives were not entitled to have any choice of land reserved for them out of their own possessions, and in their respective districts. As far as my own observations has extended,...