Table of Contents
I never gave up my Country to you people. You can destroy the River all you like but in the end we’ll still be here.
Mary Pappin, Mutti Mutti Elder, Up the River Forum, Message Sticks 2004.
The recognition and development of native title law has focused attention on Indigenous peoples’ traditional identities. Indigenous peoples who collectively hold traditional laws and customs are now explicitly recognised as holding rights to their traditional country and implicitly recognised as forming political systems of self governance (Strelein 2001). Native title has been described as a ‘recognition space’ where traditional laws and customs intersect with the Australian legal system (Mantziaris and Martin 2000: 2). Native title is thus produced by a combination of traditional laws and the common law. However, this interaction of laws has been incredibly problematic, and is at times experienced by Indigenous people as being at odds with the continuance of their laws and customs (Smith 2005: 230).
Moreover, the notion that Indigenous peoples’ traditional laws and customs are operating in a realm distinct to and outside of the Australian legal system and colonial administration is unsustainable (Weiner 2003: 99). Indigenous and non-Indigenous histories and lives are so intertwined that a ‘profound syncretism’ has occurred (Smith 2003: 28). Today, Indigenous peoples’ cultural life and traditions are a part of contemporary intercultural Australia (Merlan 2005), and engagements over native title are no exception. Despite this, the influence of native title has been to continue an emphasis on the separateness of Indigenous traditions that are unchanged by ‘civilisation’ (Smith 2005: 223).
In the more densely settled south east part of Australia, narrow understandings of ‘tradition’ at the common law, and the extinguishing effect of certain categories of land tenure, has limited the potential of native title to recognise the laws and customs of traditional owners. Instead, traditional owners are asserting their traditional authority irrespective of native title outcomes. This paper engages with this context in relation to the Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN), an organisation that has formed as an alliance of 10 traditional owner groups from along the River Murray and its tributaries (see Fig. 10.1). It is argued that the rhetoric of this alliance consolidates the native title trend of emphasising a traditional authority that exists in a distinctly separate Indigenous domain. However, the work of the alliance is deeply intertwined with government structures and processes within intercultural Australian society. Indeed, native title law has had a particular effect on the mobilisation of this alliance.
