Bulletin

Issue: March 2004

News

Helping the Bandjalang claim their goanna country

La Trobe University anthropologist, Dr John Morton, is making a significant contribution to a Native Title claim by the Bandjalang people in northern New South Wales.

La Trobe University has entered a contract with the ATSIC-funded NSW Native Title Services to provide the services of Dr Morton, a lecturer in Anthropology in the University's Sociology and Anthropology Program, to undertake anthropological research and present expert evidence to the Federal Court of Australia.

Dr Morton has been teaching Anthropology and Aboriginal Studies for more than two decades and is an acknowledged expert on Aboriginal land tenure and land rights.

The case, made under the Native Title Act (1993), which aims to give statutory recognition to Indigenous common law rights and to resolve land management issues, concerns an application by the approximately 400 strong Bandjalang people for a Native Title determination on about 4,000 hectares of their traditional country near Evans Head, south of Ballina.

Now national park land, the claim areas are home to many goannas, one of the traditional totems of the Bandjalang people. One part of Evans Head is officially called Goanna Headland.

Largely comprising heathlands, forests and swamps, the land in question is currently under the control of the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.

The first hearing of the claim in the Federal Court was in October 2002, with the Government of NSW and organisations representing fishermen, farmers and beekeepers responding to the claim. No further hearings have been held to date.

'Basically, the Bandjalang have to produce evidence to validate their claim and the respondents will generally seek either to prove Native Title does not exist under the legislation governing claims or to limit any traditional rights and interests that might be recognised,' Dr Morton said.

Evidence pertaining to archaeological, historical, linguistic and anthropological aspects of the case is currently being assembled and presented to the court in written form. Some 'lay' evidence by Bandjalang claimants has already been given and more may follow.

'Anthropological evidence tends to have the highest profile in the presentation of expert evidence in Native Title claims. So far my contribution in this case has been to prepare a report on behalf of the applicants and I am in the process of compiling a supplementary report,' Dr Morton said.

Dr Morton spent periods over three months in 2001 and 2002 in the field gathering evidence about Bandjalang past and present laws and customs, and examining them as evidence of the continuity of Bandjalang society from 1788 to the present.

Much of the research was genealogical, tracing families back to the early 19th C. 'I have identified landholding groups and documented laws and customs of those groups, out of which arise traditional rights and interests in the land,' he said.

'These rights and interests have to be proven to have existed from 1788 to the present day. I believe continuity does exist because the Bandjalang people retain deep spiritual attachment to the claimed land, maintain a number of sacred sites and exercise traditional rights, including to hunt and gather in certain areas and to make decisions as to what happens to their land. The country is fundamental to people's identity.

'From my research I have reached the conclusion that this continuity exists. There is also continuity in other ways, such as in language. Some older people still regularly speak Bandjalang, a dialect of a larger Aboriginal language-but language is not in my area of expertise.'

If the case is not settled out of court and further hearings before the Federal Court of Australia are held, Dr Morton may be called as a witness to give oral evidence and be cross examined on matters arising from his reports.

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