Birds, Native Title and Acculturated Landscapes in the Northern Territory of Australia

As part of an extensive program to establish the Native Title rights of Aboriginal people across the vast pastoral estate of the Top End of the Northern Territory, the Northern Land Council has commenced a number of Federal Court of Australia proceedings seeking confirmation of those rights and interests. I will briefly explain the Native Title legislative regime and its implications for Aboriginal claimants.

Preliminary factual investigation of the scope and nature of claims of the rights, interests and ownership of this vast estate required a mapping exercise that focuses on the relationships between people and known and identified sites. These sites can be single points (i.e. a traditional well, tree, hill or plain etc) or a connected chain of sites with a common property. These chains of sites are often referred to as “dreaming tracks” and can be localized within the estate of a local language group ranging up to trans-regional or –continental in scale and passing through many local clan and language group estates.