Central Land Council

The Land is Always Alive

Foreword

Aboriginal spirituality, culture and society can be defined in one word: land.

Land Councils give Aboriginal people a powerful and independent voice in the issues of their land – that is, their culture, their spirituality. When the history of Aboriginal land rights in Australia is finally written, the establishment of the Land Councils of the Northern Territory will be counted among the most important developments in that struggle. Perhaps it is because Aboriginal people insist on setting their own priorities in relation to land and resist outside interference that the Land Councils have been maligned by government officials and the media and misunderstood by the public generally.

This book has been published to help people understand what the Central Land Council is, and what it actually does. For almost 200 years, government officials, missionaries and pastoralists made most of the decisions about where and how Aboriginal people lived. When Aborigines spoke about their love for the land and their responsibility to it, few listened. Even as more and more non-Aboriginal Australians became aware of the injustices done to Aboriginal peoples by colonisation and accepted the need to return some part of their land, government officials assumed that they, and not the Aboriginal landowners, would control the process of handing back the country.

This approach was turned about when in 1973 the newly elected Labor government appointed Justice Woodward to head a Royal Commission into Aboriginal land rights. This commission was to look at not whether, but how, land rights should be granted. Justice Woodward recognised that Aboriginal peoples needed to be independent of government in land matters, and one of the first things he recommended was the formation of both a central and northern land council in the Northern Territory to represent the views of traditional landowners.

The Department of Aboriginal Affairs organised the first formal meetings of the Central Land Council (CLC) in 1974, but Aboriginal people took over almost immediately, making it clear that Aboriginal people wanted to control their own affairs in this crucial area. They transformed the CLC into an independent Aboriginal organisation controlled by delegates representing communities throughout the region. The legal recognition of Aboriginal land rights changed the lives of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. People who were once supervised by 'the Welfare' or 'the Mission' were now able to take control of their own communities and their own lives. Those who were rounded up and shifted to authorised settlements were able to return to their own country, to set up their own outstations and care for their land and sacred places.

Aboriginal people in Central Australia have accomplished a great deal through their representative Land Council and continue to do so, despite continuing strong opposition. In the CLC region traditional landowners have won back 347,000 square kilometres of land. About half of that area was handed back after successful land claims, with the rest made up of former reserves and missions. Traditional landowners have control over who enters their land and what they do there. However, contrary to the views of their adversaries, traditional landowners are keen to share their country and to develop their resources. Each year the CLC issues more than 3,000 permits to tourists, mining companies, researchers and others seeking to enter Aboriginal land. As well, a wide range of commercial activities, including cattle operations, tourism ventures and mineral exploration and extraction, currently take place on Aboriginal land. M

ore than 10 per cent of the CLC region is now being mined or explored under agreements between the traditional landowners, mining companies and other developers for activities on Aboriginal land. Such agreements, of which there are more than two dozen, would not have occurred without the assistance of the CLC. Oil, gas and gold are all extracted from Aboriginal land in Central Australia for the benefit of all Australians. The traditional landowners share in these benefits through royalties and negotiated payments. This money is used for community development projects and investment in Aboriginal enterprises as well as individual payments to traditional landowners. Aboriginal people are striving to achieve lasting economic security through their own enterprises. With the assistance of the CLC, they are establishing cattle companies and tourist ventures; they are setting in place sound land management practices, and developing community infrastructure, such as water supplies, shelter, power, roads and so forth, for existing communities and remote outstations.

The CLC has also helped Aboriginal people set up an enterprise/development agency, secure productive investments in major tourist ventures such as Kings Canyon Wilderness Lodge and Central Australia's largest motor vehicle dealership, establish an airline which serves remote communities and to develop the Tanami Network – a widely acclaimed two-way video conferencing system that links remote communities to each other and to agencies and corporations across the world. Yet, even with these achievements, the hard struggle to gain justice for Aboriginal people and improve the conditions of their lives continues. It is a distressing fact that living conditions on many Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory sink below Third World standards. In a recent study, it was revealed that 13,000 Aboriginal people live in communities without reticulated water.

The struggle to improve these conditions and provide education, training and employment opportunities has never been greater. Looking back over the history of the CLC the most frustrating battles have been to defend Aboriginal rights from groups with vested interests in their land. Such groups would rather work against Aboriginal people than with them. These recurring campaigns, often led by the Northern Territory Government, have attempted to weaken the Land Rights Act, to obstruct land claims and to promote divisions in the Aboriginal community.

The fight to obtain even small living areas for Aboriginal people whose land was taken for cattle operations and other developments before the Land Rights Act has been long and frustrating. The battle to protect sacred sites has often been openly antagonistic and at times insulting to Aboriginal people. By their words and deeds, government officials frequently give the public the impression that the Land Councils have too much power and manipulate or impose their views on Aboriginal people. But the Land Councils are only an instrument of traditional landowners' will. The CLC is a council of Aboriginal people representing their own communities.

They make the decisions on everything from excisions policy to mining agreements. The CLC's involvement in issues such as protection of sacred sites and the defence of the rights established under the Land Rights Act is a direct result of traditional landowners' profound concerns. Attacks on the so-called power of the Land Councils are really attacks on the limited power of the Aboriginal peoples they represent. There is no question that Aboriginal peoples have come a long way since the passage of the Land Rights Act.

But there is still a long way to go. The job of holding on to what little has been won does not get any easier, and that makes it more important than ever to remember our history so that we can continue to move ahead. This book brings together the story of the Central Land Council for the first time. The people who made these stories are the thousands of Aboriginal people who have kept their culture and language alive and maintained their land and their law. They have been assisted by CLC staff – administration workers, anthropologists, field staff, land management specialists, lawyers and many others.

They have all worked together to bridge the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people and cultures. CLC is proud of its achievements and recognises that most of the stories told here barely scratch the surface of the effort and struggle which went into the making of them. But the goal is constant and can be largely summed up in the words of Wenten Rubuntja, a long-time CLC member and former Chairman: 'That's the Land Rights Act: your law and my law is standing as one. Two different, different laws standing as one.'