In effect, the demands of indigeneity under native title offered recognition to only one set of Warraber ancestors, those who were neitiv. The native title process elevated the prominence of these figures over porena ancestors—a reverse of the existing local situation. In addition, the genealogical links that it was necessary to document among Warraberans involved tracing links to a range of neitiv ancestors who were largely female. I asked residents how they would refer to a group thus defined (in Torres Strait Creole). The consistent response was ‘Warraber people’—the discourse of totemic clans was subverted in this new framing. I asked how this concept would be expressed in prapa tok or langus (i.e. in the Kulkalgaw Ya language). The answer was Warraberalgal, meaning ‘people belonging to Warraber’. This became the name of the native title claimant group.

Elicited from Warraber people themselves, the term Warraberalgal was certainly an apt illustration of the importance of place within local representations of collective identification, but clearly marked a shift from the Gau Clan, with its emphasis on poren ancestors esteemed by the bulk of Warraber’s residents. Both male and female informants on Warraber struggled to reconcile their sentiment of male ancestral value with the state’s valorising of a definition of continuity and connection that marginalised many of these same figures. They fully comprehended the requirements placed before them, but those with porena male ancestors in particular were dissatisfied by a requirement to shift the existing local emphasis in matters of descent in order to secure native title to an island they already occupied and considered theirs. It especially rankled that the State of Queensland had already transferred other islands to them in the previous year as the Gau Clan, a collective form of representation that was successful without recourse to female or neitiv ancestors.

Far more than the Gau Clan, Warraberalgal marked an instance not simply of cultural objectification, but of native title as a realm of intercultural production—a form of representation occupying a discursive ground where a regime of value imposed by the nation-state intersects with the existing reality of an indigenous population. In this sense it belongs wholly to neither, but is inseparable from both.^[14] For the state, a conception of ‘native title’ that relies very much on precursive cultural assumptions concerning an authentic indigeneity couched in terms of autocthony requires descent-based continuity of physical occupation. For most Warraberans, a valorised identification with apical male ancestors takes preference over visions of absolute ancestral emplacement. It is imperative to note that the outcome of such a meeting is an expression of unequal social relations—as is native title itself (Merlan 1998: 176,181).

But while it is fair to state that, as a point of personal or collective identification, the new basis of group boundedness for the NTA claim was far less intuitively meaningful, it is notable that the new claimant group emerged as being just as embracing and inclusive as the Gau Clan had been. In this sense the level of ‘violence’ involved in the form of recognition offered to Warraber people by native title (see Smith, Chapter 6) could be described as somewhat muted.