Central Land Council

Rose Report Two

Land in Aboriginal life

Introduction

Before presenting information on Aboriginal perceptions it is important to see something of the framework of beliefs from which these perceptions arise. Understanding the role of land in Aboriginal life is of fundamental importance to any understanding of Aboriginal attitudes and perceptions of land use and management issues. Aboriginal people and their land Aboriginal people derive their self-identity from the land. The relationships between people and their environment and the laws which set out the realm of Aboriginal experience are embodied in the beliefs which have been referred to variously as "the Dreamtime" or "the Dreaming".

The Dreamtime and Aboriginal Law

For Aboriginal people the Dreaming is the mythological time when the world was being formed through the actions of the spirit ancestors. These beings arose from the featureless plains of the earth and in their travels and deeds created all that is present on the earth today. While many of the activities of the spirit beings occurred in the past the creative aspect of the Dreaming continues in the present. The actions of the spirit ancestors are recorded in stories which provide the moral and ethical framework by which Aboriginal people live on the land and relate to one another, in other words, their "Law". The importance of the laws originating from the Dreaming in Aboriginal social and cultural life and in the everyday interaction of people with their environment cannot be over-stressed.

The ability of Aboriginal people to practice traditional Law depends on them at least having access to their land, at best having title and control over their land. The core of Aboriginal Law has to do with the knowledge and ritual pertaining to sacred sites. These places which underpin Aboriginal life are best cared for and preserved by the ceremony for them. All other aspects of the welfare of Aboriginal society depend on this. Because the Dreaming underlies every aspect of the universe it defines the framework of human action and links people and place. "The place from which a person's spirit comes is his or her Dreaming-place, and the person is an incarnation of the ancestor who made the place.

A person's Dreaming provides the basic source of his or her identity, an identity that pre-exists." An important aspect of this relationship is that the Dreaming spirit connects a person with particular sites so that each person has an affinity with particular places on the land. Aboriginal "ownership" is in part based on knowledge of the Dreaming songs and stories which in turn hold the knowledge of a site or estate in relation to the land around it and to other Dreaming trails. Dreaming trails link sites across the country of many different Aboriginal peoples, covering tracts of land and conferring ownership and responsibility to those who hold them. The rights and responsibilities of individuals to particular estates are passed on to successive generations through a variety of systems of descent inheritance.

For some Aboriginal peoples in the Northern Territory the responsibilities of individuals to look after the land is divided on a kinship basis. The Warlpiri, for example, divide the responsibility for actually looking after the land from the responsibility of ownership and ensuring that the "looking after" is done properly. These groups are known respectively as the kurdungurlu, who are the custodians of the land and kirda, who are the owners. Kirda, generally speaking, acquire ownership rights through patrilineal descent, while kurdungurlu usually acquire their responsibility through matrilineal descent. These roles are not mutually exclusive. A man or woman becomes a kirda or owner for their father's country while also acting as kurdungurlu for their mother's country. These sorts of relationships vary greatly among the different groups of Aboriginal people in central Australia so that in some groups such as the Pitjantjatjara there is no distinction between the responsibilities of owners and others. The owners of a place are the ones who have the responsibility to look after it.

Sacred sites

A key element of the Aboriginal world view is the existence of particular sites and objects across the landscape which are the physical manifestation of the activities of the Dreaming characters.

All of the features of the landscape were created by the activities of the ancestral spirits during the Dreaming. Places where particularly significant events took place, for example where power was left behind or where the ancestors went into the ground and still remain are special sacred sites. Sacred sites are a fundamental part of the Aboriginal relationship to the land. They may be natural or modified features of the landscape such as outcropping rocks, trees, waterholes or salt-pans and so on. Their "sacredness" may be associated with an object or feature itself or as a function of its position relative to other objects or within the landscape as a whole.

The protection of sacred sites is a responsibility of Aboriginal people which is inherited through their relationship to family, clan group and country. It remains one of the main priorities of contemporary Aboriginal culture and a cornerstone of the Aboriginal relationship to land. Because sacred site protection is a high priority it forms a focus for the aspirations of Aboriginal people with significant land management implications. Foremost among these is the need to protect sacred sites from damage and desecration which can be caused by direct interference with sites, by the impact of grazing or feral animals or simply through contact with the sites by Aboriginal or non-Aboriginal people without the necessary adherence to ritual. It is also a high priority for Aboriginal people that access to these sites is maintained so that ceremonies can be performed and the younger generation can be taught the Law for that country. The need to protect Aboriginal sacred sites has been recognised in European law under sacred sites and heritage protection legislation. This process makes allowance for the designation of areas as sacred sites if they can be shown to fit the criteria imposed by the legislation.

Some implications of the Aboriginal view of land

Because of the relationship Aboriginal people have with their land there are difficulties in using the terms and concepts created to describe the European relationship to land in the Aboriginal situation. For example the European concept of land ownership gives particular rights to owners and excludes others such as mineral rights. Aboriginal concepts of land do not separate surface and sub-surface elements so that the notion that land owners may not have rights to minerals on that land to them seems incongruent.

Another aspect of Aboriginal ownership of land is that there are often reciprocal responsibilities to related areas of land as a result of relationships between individuals and the associated estates of land that they hold. Individuals can therefore be responsible for different types of activities on different areas of the country, and can be constrained by these requirements, for example, to oversee rather than to actively participate in land management activities over a particular area. One of the fundamental elements of the traditional Aboriginal view of the world is that individuals are not separate from the environment, they are part of it. This is quite different to the way western society views the land, wherein the environment is "out there" beyond the individual, and therefore can be objectified and controlled through human understanding and intervention. Western society sees the environment as something that can be acted upon by humans as independent agents. This view is manifested in the way we attempt to know the environment, as an "objective" reality, using science as a tool to uncover "reality" and to discover universal truths.

This view of the world is a cultural construction, however, it informs all of our decisions and legitimates our actions in the environment. For Aboriginal people who do not share this dichotomy between environment and person, notions such as "management" and "control" of land must have very different dimensions. In part it is the intention of this report to provide a better understanding of these issues so that we can develop more appropriate means of bridging the communication gap. For Aboriginal people having title to their land, which in turn gives them a measure of security in their control over that land, is fundamental to the consideration of activities or developments on that land. Without secure tenure Aboriginal people face enormous difficulties in coming to terms with the requirements of managing their land.