Table of Contents
This paper investigates the native title process from the perspective of Kaanju families living on our traditional homelands at Chuulangun on the upper Wenlock River in central Cape York Peninsula, Northern Australia. Our experiences reinforce our view that the native title process and the structures it upholds are at odds with Indigenous land tenure and governance systems, that they create and maintain obstacles for the carrying out of on-ground Indigenous land and resource management aspirations and obligations, and that they work against the homelands development and economic development aspirations of Kaanju Traditional Owners living on homelands. This paper draws particularly on the experiences of core Kaanju families with a native title claim to some 241 000 hectares of our homelands centred on the Wenlock River in central Cape York, locally known as the Batavia Claim. This claim was lodged with the National Native Title Tribunal in 1997 and eight years on ‘we’re tired from talking’[1] and engaging in a process that works on the assumption that we have to justify and prove our ownership of homelands, while government and other ‘stakeholders’ presume control over our traditional lands.
This paper stresses three main points. First, our frustration with a native title process that has:
accommodated the ‘interests’ of the State government and other ‘stakeholders’ to the detriment of our rights as Traditional Owners of our lands under claim, and
led to proceedings being dominated by claimants whose connection to the area under claim is questionable.
It also documents our serious concerns about the ability of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cwlth) (NTA) and the system of prescribed bodies corporate (PBCs) contained in the NTA to adequately and effectively recognise ‘proper’ on-ground indigenous governance, primary Indigenous land and resource management and decision-making on homelands, and the right of Traditional Owners to use and develop their land and associated resources economically in order to sustain their people and land into the future.
Finally it makes the point that the NTA needs to recognise that Aboriginal people should be compensated for their sovereignty being taken out of the land.
The paper will first outline briefly Kaanju governance, which determines the system of land tenure for the Kaanju people and the formation of the Chuulangun Aboriginal Corporation. This brief summary will provide the necessary framework for the discussion that follows.
Kaanju (Kaanichi) Ngaachi (homelands) encompass some 840 000 hectares centred on the Wenlock and Pascoe Rivers in central Cape York Peninsula, Northern Australia (see Fig. 5.1). Our lands stretch westward from the Lockhart River valley and across the peninsula to and including Embley Range (meeting the Wik people and the Thanakwithi people of the west coast region). Our lands continue south to the Archer River (to meet the ‘Southern’ Kaanju) and north along the Wenlock as far as Schramm Creek (to meet the Atambaya and Angkamuthi people), then across to the southern bank of the upper Olive River (to meet the Wuthathi people).