Extract A
Strategic burning combines modern technology with traditional Aboriginal knowledge - and generates income through carbon credits. The rains have finished in Arnhem Land. The humid, tropical air is cooling and the prevailing wind has swung to the north-east.
In the Kunwinjku calendar of western Arnhem Land, it is almost Yekke, the transition from the wet to dry season, a pleasant time after months of torrential rain in a good year, or overwhelming heat in a bad year. All six Kunwinjku seasons have their highlights but Yekke is perhaps the most anticipated by Bininj (Aboriginal) people of the region.
Not only does it provide relief from rain and heat but it also signals a time to start planning. Last month more than 80 Indigenous rangers converged on Maningrida, a community on the top end coast, about 500 km east of Darwin, to plan for the main event in the region's ecological agenda: where and when to start burning.
For millennia, fire has been the prime land management tool for Indigenous people and, while it has largely been taken out the hands of Aboriginal people in southern Australia, it has been reclaimed with a vengeance up north, with substantial environmental, social and financial results.
"Every year the ranger groups come together to look at the fire scale," says Terrah Guymula, a senior ranger at Warddeken Land Management Ltd. "We discuss how last year went; if there was any fuel left and maybe trim a little bit here or there to balance the burning.
"There are cultural reasons as well as environmental reasons that we burn. We want to protect small animals like bush rats, quolls and bandicoots because they want to live comfortably, just like us.
"We humans and our native animals have a connection - they play a big role in our ceremony, so we want to protect them and we want them to live forever so our people can see them. Protecting our rock art and anbinik trees is also very important. These are places of sanctuary where our old people used to go and places that tell our stories."
Extract B
There are 37,000 unresolved Aboriginal land claims in New South Wales awaiting determination by the government, including the first claim lodged under the land rights act in 1984. The backlog has been described as "a national disgrace" and a form of institutional racism. According to research seen by Guardian Australia, the backlog has built over decades.
In 2011 only 3 685 of the more than 29 587 outstanding claims had been determined, leaving 25 912 awaiting assessment.
By 2016 there were 29 289 outstanding land claims, of which 197 were more than 16 years old, 520 were more than 11 years old and about 15 000 were more than six years old.
The chief executive of the NSW Aboriginal Land Council, James Christian, said at the current rate of processing it would take the NSW government 100 years to resolve the 37 000 claims still outstanding.
Christian said at the bureaucratic [1]level "there's been institutional racism, deliberate obstacles".
"The most disappointing thing is that successive governments in New South Wales have failed to deliver on the beneficial nature of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act, which was designed to provide some compensation and remedy for ongoing effects of Aboriginal dispossession," Christian said.
"It was intended that the process would be simple, quick and inexpensive and it would deliver vast tracts of crown land[2]. We barely have the scraps, really, in terms of what we have been able to reacquire.
"There's huge opportunity for our people that hasn't been delivered on and there's a relevant legal maxim, which is: justice delayed is justice denied."
[1] bureaucratic – relating to official rules, processes or government systems
[2] crown land – land owned or managed by the government
Extract C
The NSW government sold land that was subject to claim by Indigenous Australians while keeping them in the dark in a practice the Aboriginal Land Council says has kept restitution out of reach.
The independent report commissioned by the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment recommended the overhaul of a negotiating program that treated Aboriginal land councils unequally.
The department has committed to this overhaul, and will work with Aboriginal land councils to design negotiation processes, including for land otherwise unavailable under legislation.
"We will ensure there are governance processes in place to provide equity in dealings and processes for review on matters disputed by Local Aboriginal Land Councils," a spokesperson for the department said.
The report found even when Crown land negotiators were told the government had called for expressions of interest over areas already claimed under Aboriginal lands legislation, or their sale was being actively pursued, they declined to take any steps to intervene in the actions of their departmental colleagues.
NSW Aboriginal Land Council CEO James Christian said the practice also historically extended to shifting Crown land into the possession of other state government agencies and taking up minimal use of un-utilised facilities so they were no longer claimable.
Extract D
In 1982 a group of Meriam people, Eddie Koiki Mabo, Reverend David Passi, Celuia Mapo Salee, Sam Passi and James Rice, brought an action against the State of Queensland and the Commonwealth of Australia in the High Court. With Eddie Koiki Mabo named as the first plaintiff, the case became known as the Mabo Case.
The Mabo Case challenged the existing Australian legal system from two perspectives:
- On the assumption that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had no concept of land ownership before the arrival of British colonisers in 1788 (terra nullius).
- That sovereignty [1]delivered complete ownership of all land in the new Colony to the Crown, abolishing any existing rights that may have existed previously.
The case presented by Koiki Mabo and the people of Mer successfully proved that Meriam custom and laws are fundamental to their traditional system of ownership and underpin their traditional rights and obligations in relation to land. The ruling on this landmark case recognised the fact that Indigenous peoples had lived in Australia for thousands of years and enjoyed rights to their land according to their own laws and customs. The following year the Native Title Act 1993 was passed.
[1] sovereignty – the authority to govern land or people
Read the four extracts below on the topic of 'Land Rights’.
Choose the option (A, B, C or D) which you think best answers the question.
Which extract...