Aboriginal land and land rights
Explore what land means to Aboriginal people, the many threats to this close relationship and what happens if it is broken.
List of articles
10 major threats to Aboriginal land
Aboriginal homelands & outstations
Aboriginal houses
Aboriginal land claims
Aboriginal land management & care
Aboriginal land rights
Aboriginal scarred trees
Blue Mud Bay High Court decision
Cool burns: Key to Aboriginal fire management
Guide to Aboriginal sites and places
How was Aboriginal land ownership lost to invaders?
Indigenous Protected Areas (IPA)
Land management improves health
Land rights and native title – what's the difference?
Meaning of land to Aboriginal people
Native title
Native title issues & problems
New economic opportunities for Aboriginal land
Northern Territory (NT) Land Rights Act (1976)
Overcrowded houses
The 1963 Yirrkala bark petitions
The 1972 Larrakia petition
Tourism on Aboriginal land
Water: Meaning and management
The tide of history can never take away our connection to land, because it is a spiritual connection and at a higher level. [...] Our law and spirituality is intertwined with the land, the people and creation and this forms our culture and our sovereignty.
— Wadjularbinna, Gungalidda Elder (Gulf of Carpentaria) [1]
Why are there so many 'Boundary Roads' throughout larger cities, such as Brisbane?
Show
Boundary roads get their name from the landmarks Indigenous people could not cross at night. [2]
How can a community be so successful?
The remote Aboriginal community of Utopia, 110 kms north of Alice Springs, left researchers and bureaucrats ask: Why is this community doing so well?
- The death rate is "strikingly low" compared with other Aboriginal populations in the NT.
- The average mortality rate is nearly half that of the general NT population (which has an Aboriginal proportion of more than 30%).
- There is no increase in diabetes or obesity over the past 20 years.
- Death rates from cardiovascular diseases are about half those of the Territory's Aboriginal population.
Such results are unique because they are outside national trends, even though residents in Utopia had the same levels of housing, income and employment as other remote Aboriginal communities. [3]
Researchers attributed the community's success to a pro-active health service, and the decentralised layout of the community, which provided access to traditional lands for hunting and gathering.
"Mastery and control over life circumstances is a fundamental determinant of good health," concludes Prof Ian Anderson, from the Co-operative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health. [3] "People in Utopia have designed their own community, have freehold title to their land and control over the way health services are delivered."
There is also a great sense of pride in the community's achievements and in the strong cultural practices that continue in Utopia.
This study gives hard evidence that community outstations and a community lifestyle do actually work if the primary healthcare is delivered properly.
— Ricky Tilmouth, Urapuntja Health Service, Utopia [3]
Sustainable hunting and gathering
Aboriginal people were acutely aware of the delicate relationship they had with the land. When they hunted and gathered food they had to do so sustainably in order to preserve the resource for the next cycle.
Ngarrindgeri man Tom Trevorrow explains a few gathering and hunting methods and how his people made sure the sources were not depleted: [4]
- Fruits and berries. Aboriginal people gathered evenly from the land and never picked everything from one area, otherwise it would take a long time to return again.
- Birds eggs. They only took about half the eggs from a nest, and only the fresh ones. To avoid birds abandoning their nest because of human smell, Aboriginal people splashed the nest with water or rubbed their hands in the surrounding grasses, trees and sand.
- Fish. Only the fish required to feed the family were caught. If they caught more fish, the extra fish were kept alive and fresh for another day in fish traps.
- Animals. When hunting kangaroos or emus the ones with joeys or chicks were not taken.
Now I realise that this was, and is, the Ngarrindjeri way of farming the land and this is how my ancestors survived in this country for so long.
— Tom Trevorrow, Ngarrindjeri man [4]
Bush tucker: Collecting bush onions
The following video shows a group of Aboriginal students from Wangkatjungka School, led by teachers of the Department of Education, driving out into the bush to search for bush onions, or jurnta (pronounced 'yurnda'). Bush onions are an important source of protein.
The students themselves shot and comment this video. The Wangkatjungka community is located about 120 kms south-east of Fitzroy Crossing in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
Aboriginal weather knowledge
Aboriginal people distinguish between more than just four seasons, for example, the Dharawal people of NSW distinguish six seasons: 'hot and dry', 'wet becoming cooler', 'cold, frosty, short days', 'cold and windy', 'cool, getting warmer', and 'warm and wet'.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has published a calendar showing Indigenous Weather Knowledge for each of their seasons. It currently has many entries for the NT, but also for WA and NSW.
Story: Wind totems
Torres Strait Islander people have different names for wind to describe a cold breeze or a tropical storm. Elma Kris, from the Bangarra Dance Theatre, explains the winds of her home country, the Torres Strait. [5]
"They use [different names] to describe the winds: Naigai, Zei, Sager and Kuki, and how they merge in a climate way, in a weather way.
"In white man world, you gotta use the compass and the direction, where it comes from and have the name for it: 'ok, the wind comes from the south' or 'the wind comes from the west'.
"In our culture, we have a language for it and it is also our totem. So we have wind totem. We have Zei, the cold breeze wind and then we have Kuki like a cyclone wind and Naigai is the calmness, where the water goes still but you have the glittering and shimmering on the water. Sager is the south-east trade winds. Many boats used this wind; it helps their sailing mast to sail that journey."
