Central Land Council

Land Rights News

March 1993

Third Time Lucky For The Warumungu Warumungu Land Claim

Claim Lodged: November 1978

Recommended for Grant: 8 July 1988

Title Handback: 1 March 1993

Area Returned: 290.5 sq km

More Warumungu claim area title deeds were returned to the traditional landowners by Robert Tickner, Minister for aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs at a ceremony at the Tennant Creek Showgrounds on 1 March this year. The "town boundary" areas close to Tennant Creek which were returned at this ceremony were amongst the most contentious in a claim renowned as one of the hardest and most litigious in the history of land rights in the Northern Territory. The title ceremony was the third handover of land to the Warumungu under Commonwealth title, the major part of the land having been returned in 1991 and 1992.

Accepting the title deeds on behalf of the Warumungu Aboriginal Land Trust, Geoffrey Taylor Jappangardi thanked Mr Tickner, but said only "We've waited too long for this." Master of ceremonies and land Trust member, Ross Williams, remembered the long struggle of the Warumungu to win back their land. "It's a great occasion. So many people fought so long for the land. A lot of people have passed away, but they're still with us and they're still with the land. "Now it's up to us to go back and establish ourselves on those land sand develop something so that we don't have to rely on Government funding, but rely on building something for ourselves." Two historic notes to the occasion did not go unnoticed. The handover ceremony, nearly postponed by the forthcoming March 13 election, was one of the last of Mr Tickner's official duties as Minister prior to the election.

As well, Steve Hatton, a minister in a Government bitterly opposed to land claims, admitted it was "unusual for the Northern Territory Government to be present", but said it was "about time." However, while the Minister was welcomed to the ceremony, the shameful role and trickery of the Northern Territory Government in forcing endless litigation in opposition to the claim was not forgotten.

NT Federal Member Warren Snowdon said the Warumungu claim was the hardest which had ever confronted Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. "If you look through the history of this claim, the number of times it went to the Federal Court and indeed to the High Court to sort out problems which were created by the opposition of the Northern Territory Government – then to see the handover of this title today is a cause of great celebration. "Yours has been a tremendous struggle. It is a struggle which as been mounted against great adversity, which you deserve a great deal of praise for."

The areas returned at this ceremony lie closest t Tennant Creek and were the subject of years of negotiations between the Commonwealth, Northern Territory and Central Land Council to resolve detriment issues.

The negotiations delayed the grant of the land which was recommended by Land Commissioner Justice Maurice in 1988 for nearly five years. A major factor which led to the settlement was an agreement by traditional landowners to relinquish their entitlement to a large area near Tennant Creek which has been recommended for return. T

he area was relinquished to allow room for town growth based on realistic population figures and plans outlined in the draft Tennant Creek town structure plan. Speakers also commended the people of Tennant Creek and the Town Council for their sup0port for the Warumungu people and their willingness to help settle the claim.

The settlement package includes a joint management proposal for the Mary Ann Dam reserve, part of which lies in the claim area returned, and the return of two important sites at the heart of Warumungu tradition which were not originally available for claim These areas, Kunjarra (the Devil's Pebbles) and Jurnkurakurr, near the area of first non-Aboriginal settlement at the old Telegraph Station, will be returned under Northern Territory title.

As Land Rights News goes to press, no date has yet been set for the return of these areas, despite promises at the ceremony from NT Aboriginal Development Minister, Steve Hatton, that they would be returned within a matter of weeks.

"In a sense, white Australia has been caught in delicto with the Warumungu. We have taken all their good land.. We have comforted ourselves with myths about what Aboriginal people wanted, what was important to them – all the while taking more and more of their land, shifting them here, shunting them there; until all that was left was desert wasteland and what the Northern Territory Government would describe as public purpose lands. We nearly got away with it." – Justice Michael Maurice, Warumungu Land Claim Report "They're a wonderfully resilient people," said Justice Michael Maurice on the day of the handover of title to some of the most contentious areas of the Warumungu Land Claim.

Justice Maurice, the Land Commissioner who heard the claim in the 1980s, said the Warumungu had been treated "appallingly" by both Governments and by non-Aboriginal people. He spoke of "the history of displacement of being pushed from the best of their country – and we're talking about semi-arid country, marginal country – further out and onto patches which were virtually uninhabitable. By the time of the land claim all that was left was land on which no-one would choose to live." It was a history which saw a flourishing nation of "fine and intelligent people" forcibly stripped of all of their traditional land in less than a century.

The first incursions – the construction of the Telegraph line and later the arrival of pastoralists and overlanders in the 1870s – were vigorously resisted. Spears were no match for guns and the indiscriminate reprisals taken against the Warumungu in the late 19th century. by 1915 the Warumungu were reported to be near starvation; by the 1930s the last of the land reserved for them was taken for cattle grazing.

Under pressure from cattle and mining interests, reserves and missions set aside for the Warumungu in the 1930s, 40s and 50s were all abandoned one after another until finally the dispossession of the Warumungu was complete. The last settlement for the Warumungu at Warrabri was established on land belonging to the Kaytetye and Alyawarre people, leaving the Warumungu nowhere to go on their own land.

Some stayed and survived as stockworkers on pastoral land on their country, but conditions were often appalling. In 1977 the Warumungu and Alyawarre living on Kurundi station "walked off" in protest, setting up a camp in tough conditions on a water reserve on the Gosse River – an area which has now been officially returned to the Warumungu as a result of the land claim. The advent of land rights in 1976 brought no quick solutions for the Warumungu, however Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs Minister Robert Tickner has described the Warumungu struggle for land justice as "one of the greatest Aboriginal land rights struggles in recent modern Australian history."

As Justice Maurice observed later, "The problem with the Northern Territory Government then. was it didn't accept the underlying principles of the Land Rights Act. It didn't accept that it was for the Commonwealth to determine the conditions on which Aboriginal people could acquire land in the Northern Territory, so its attitude was one of resistance."

The opposition of the Northern Territory Government was obvious from the beginning. In a clear attempt to block the claim, the Government extended the Tennant Creek town boundaries, initially to an area of 750 square kilometres – the size of a major city. Then, in October 1982, the Northern Territory Government secretly alienated nine of the 12 areas under claim, frustrating the first hearing which was about to begin.

It was not until the Warumungu had successfully appealed to the High Court, that the claim finally proceeded in 1985. As the second hearing progressed under Justice Maurice, the Northern Territory Government took extensive legal action of its own over the land claim. Their actions included no less than ten appeals to the Federal Court, the full Federal Court and the High Court. The Government appealed against decisions on many key areas of the claim, including Maurice's ruling that the extension of the town boundaries had not cancelled the claim in that area.

Their legal actions even included an appeal to the Federal Court to dismiss Justice Maurice from hearing the claim. it wasn't until the Full Federal Court rejected this appeal in 1987 that the claim could proceed uninterrupted. Despite landlessness and the dislocation they had suffered, the Warumungu had maintained their identity, language and culture. Justice Maurice finally reported in 1988, recommending the return of most of the land claimed by the Warumungu.