The other major leaseholder in the region is the ILC, which purchased three large but nearly derelict properties ‘on behalf of the traditional owners’ in 1998 but which, in keeping with its current national policy, shows no inclination to divest these titles even to a well-organised Aboriginal corporate body with stringent business plans in place. Though not actually excluding their supposed beneficiaries from the properties, the ILC continues to conduct its business in such a way that the native title holders, all ex-cattle station workers, have at most a very peripheral role in decision making, despite the fact that they now legally hold exclusive possession of these stations ‘as against the rest of the world’. Nevertheless, their most active involvement to date has been as CDEP-financed ‘trainees’ in menial station work.

By way of contrast to the pastoralists’ sense of drastic change in the wake of the judgement none of the Ngarinyin people I spoke to in 2005 could pinpoint any noticeable changes in their day to day lives 12 months on from determination, other than this increased resistance to their presence by many of the pastoralists. The native title holders have only recently established the Prescribed Body Corporate which is required to manage their rights in land. I expect that when this is in place more concrete economic and political gains may be achieved.