Like what you've read?

On Line Opinion is the only Australian site where you get all sides of the story. We don't
charge, but we need your support. Here�s how you can help.

  • Advertise

    We have a monthly audience of 70,000 and advertising packages from $200 a month.

  • Volunteer

    We always need commissioning editors and sub-editors.

  • Contribute

    Got something to say? Submit an essay.


 The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
On Line Opinion logo ON LINE OPINION - Australia's e-journal of social and political debate

Subscribe!
Subscribe





On Line Opinion is a not-for-profit publication and relies on the generosity of its sponsors, editors and contributors. If you would like to help, contact us.
___________

Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

A bunch of nomads - whose land is it anyway?

By Stephen Hagan - posted Friday, 10 February 2006


In early December 2005, I attended an international racism conference at the opulent Coolum Hyatt Regency on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. After passing through the wide, alluring entrance to the resort I felt momentarily awestruck by the beauty of the ultimate fairway off to my left and the stately clubhouse directly ahead. Workers dismantling the scaffolding of the temporary seating adjacent to the 18th hole also reminded me of the Australian PGA Championship I had watched on television the previous weekend.

Despite being a non-golfer, I appreciate the esteem with which the golfing public hold this breathtaking piece of real estate, with its wide expanse of well-manicured lawns, deep sand bunkers and numerous water features that punctuate the path of visiting golfing fanatics: professionals, affluent tourists and occasional weekend high-20s handicap players.

After sitting through countless sessions of non-black (as opposed to non-Indigenous) speakers reading impressively from their academic papers on the scourge of racism, I reminisced over morning tea with fellow Indigenous social justice advocates Jackie Huggins, Lillian Holt and Terry Kapeen, about how rewarding this tranquil land would have been hundreds of years ago for its traditional owners. We unanimously agreed that this beautiful country, wonderfully positioned within short walking distance of the ocean and a lush mountain range, would have provided abundant food and enclosed shelter for even the most discerning warrior.

Advertisement

Land ownership, although spasmodically challenged and repelled, was acknowledged by all neighbouring traditional custodians to be the spiritual and physical country of the Gubbi Gubbi. Before colonisation, ownership of land was never in dispute and the 300 tribes that comprised the million plus inhabitants that populated this continent, speaking a similar number of distinct languages, sought no piece of paper or advice from someone in higher office to confirm their territorial boundaries.

Reputable history books now confirm that there is no clear or accepted racial origin of the Indigenous people of Australia. Although they say we migrated to Australia through South-East Asia (a theory I do not espouse) they acknowledge we are not related to any known Asian population. There is some speculation, however, that we are related to some racial groups in India, based on mitochondrial DNA evidence. In view of the very long time that we have been in Australia, almost entirely isolated from other human populations, it is unlikely that we will be found to be closely related to any identifiable racial group.

For instance Mungo Man, whose remains were discovered in 1974 near Lake Mungo in New South Wales, is believed to be the oldest human found in Australia yet. Although the exact age of Mungo Man is in dispute, the consensus is that he is at least 40,000 years old. Stone tools also found at Lake Mungo have been estimated to be about 50,000-years-old based on stratigraphic association. Since Lake Mungo is in southeastern Australia, many archaelogists have concluded that humans must have arrived in northwest Australia at least several thousand years earlier.

For 46 years I have exuded great pride in my father’s tribe: the majestic countryside, the sacred sites and their related stories. I have been proud to pass these stories on to my children, the next generation of Hagans, so adding them to the approximately 1,250 generations in the timeline placing our people here between 40,000-50,000 years before the present.

So it came as a total shock recently when I was informed that my family’s genealogical links to the country needed further authentication before an anthropologist would give his tick of approval on a native title claim. To hear this feedback from members of the tribe, who were in attendance at a shared country mediation session hosted by the local representative body, was an insult to my father, his father and his grandmother.

The anthropologist once met with my father and showed him a photo, on his laptop computer, of a group of Aborigines including a very young girl about eight-years of age whom he believed could be his grandmother. He said he suspected she was taken 1,200kms north from a community in southern NSW because her name sounded like a name of the town from that area. He simply informed Dad of his views and never sought input or clarification from him. It reeked of paternalism and I do not blame Dad for not validating his views with a response. However, Dad never thought the anthropologist would pass this information on to the claimant group that he chairs, while he was absent on other cultural business.

Advertisement

Dad wrote to the chief executive officer of the representative body (a land council), which employed the anthropologist, asking her to provide him with a copy of the documentation that identifies our matriarch to land other than our country. That is, he sought the exact location of her birth, tribal affiliation, the name of her mother, the name of her father, their skin group and totem.

My father provided copies of letters to the CEO from the Chief Protector of Aborigines, exemption papers and the like, identifying his grandmother’s links to the country. Dad concluded his letter saying the anthropologist would need to come up with something a bit more credible than a photograph to convince him that his grandmother came from southern New South Wales in a horse-drawn buggy when she was eight-years-old around the mid-1870s. He said he would believe existing government documentation and the word of his father and grandmother over an anthropologist with a vivid imagination.

Dad received an apology from the CEO saying she hoped no distress was experienced by the incident.

I am a strong supporter of the need for one to prove his or her link to country. However, I will not be subjected to a non-Indigenous person riding roughshod over a family’s tribal affiliation in the same vein as the Chief Protector of Aborigines did when they had total, and unchallenged, control over our peoples lives not so long ago - and we know how devastatingly wrong their misrepresentations and actions were.

I also heard the same anthropologist was successful in convincing traditional owners to significantly reduce the size of their claim because he heard old tape recorded interviews from people who provided a different version of the boundary dimension. That exercise in fact took away two major water holes from the tribe - how stupid is that? Most traditional custodians survived on their land because of access to a major water supply.

All traditional owners around the country should challenge any assertions from professional non-Indigenous people who dare to offer a definitive position on their relationship with the land - because gone are the mission days of the “white man knows best” mentality.

If similar genealogical mischief was to occur regularly throughout the country, via anthropologists’ unsubstantiated conjecture, it would not be beyond the realm of possibility that this nonsense could be the impetus needed for the ultra-conservative members currently holding office in the nation’s capital to concoct a notion that all Indigenous people are no more than native title squatters.

I can hear the debate on further amendments to the Native Title Act in the House of Representatives as I type "A bunch of nomads - whose land is it anyway?"

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. All

Article edited by Natalie Rose.
If you'd like to be a volunteer editor too, click here.



Discuss in our Forums

See what other readers are saying about this article!

Click here to read & post comments.

33 posts so far.

Share this:
reddit this reddit thisbookmark with del.icio.us Del.icio.usdigg thisseed newsvineSeed NewsvineStumbleUpon StumbleUponsubmit to propellerkwoff it

About the Author

Stephen Hagan is Editor of the National Indigenous Times, award winning author, film maker and 2006 NAIDOC Person of the Year.

Other articles by this Author

All articles by Stephen Hagan

Creative Commons LicenseThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Photo of Stephen Hagan
Article Tools
Comment 33 comments
Print Printable version
Subscribe Subscribe
Email Email a friend
Advertisement

About Us Search Discuss Feedback Legals Privacy