I thank the participants in the ‘Effects of Native Title’ workshop for their comments on the version of this paper that was presented there, and Sturt Glacken for his thoughtful and perspicacious comments on the first draft of the paper, and for saving me from solecisms that were the product of my unfamiliarity with matters of the law. I would like to have addressed all his comments, but that would have turned this into a different—and longer—paper. The second draft benefited greatly from Tom Keely’s detailed comments, and I hope that I have gone some way towards taking them properly into account. I also thank Daniel Lavery, David Martin, Howard Morphy and Rebecca Morphy for their comments on the second draft. Needless to say, all remaining solecisms and errors of fact or interpretation are my responsibility alone.