September 27.
Treaty by Glenn Loughrey
Aboriginal dancing and British gibbets
Claimants sang and danced their religious affiliations to their land.
During this turmoil [involving the Northern Land Council, the federal government under Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and mining companies which were interested in the Oenpelli region], Justice [John] Toohey, the Aboriginal Land Commissioner, was quietly assessing traditional land claims in the [Northern] Territory under the Land Rights Act. In open-air court sessions on traditional lands, claimants sang and danced their religious affiliations to their land. The Walbiri and Kartanangaruru-Kurintji people claimed 95,000 square kilometres of land south of Wave Hill, which Toohey granted, reversing an exodus from this land that began after massacres by whites in 1928. [1] Assessing the Alywarra and Kaititja claim to 1540 square kilometres of land north of Alice Springs, Toohey remarked: 'The obvious enthusiasm of those people for their country and the disclosure of important places and sacred objects was compelling'. [2] He granted their claim. Toohey wrote: 'there are some objective criteria by which to measure but in the end the assessment must reflect a large element of the subjective, an attempt to understand the feelings and attitudes of people, an attempt to see things as they see them'. [3]
Aboriginal Territorians were fortunate Toohey had such empathy. During his tenure, they gained 30 per cent of the [Northern] Territory's lands by about 1980. However, claims on Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Kata Tjutu (the Olgas) were not possible, as they were national parks and not eligible for claim under the Act. The Larrakia's application for land around Darwin was also thwarted by the Darwin town council, which in 1979 enlarged the size of Darwin's boundaries (population 50,000) to four times that of London (population 14,000,000). This was done as the Act prevented claims on town lands. Land was also set aside at Tenant Creek for future public use, smack in the middle of an Aboriginal land claim. However, in 1985 the High Court ruled these attempts to manipulate the Act were illegal, for the excisions were not made for town planning purposes, but to defeat the terms of the Aboriginal Land Rights Act. [4]
Age, 27 September 1978.
Land Claims by Alyawarra and Kaititja, Report by the Aboriginal Land Commissioner, Mr Justice Toohey, to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, AGPS, Canberra, 1979, p. 23.
ibid. p. 22.
Age, 26 September 1985.
Acknowledgment: Richard Broome, Aboriginal Australians – A history since 1788, pp. 237, 402 n.26, n.27, n.28, n.29.
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Further on Gibbets (from entry for 18 March)
Like [Governor] Phillip before him, [Acting Governor William] Paterson reached a breaking point [1] and sanctioned a military intervention. [David] Collins said he directed 'a party of the corps to be sent from Parramatta, with instructions to destroy as many as they could meet with of the wood tribe ('Be'-dia-gal); and in the hope of striking terror, to erect gibbets in different places, whereon the bodies of all they might kill were to be hung'. [2]...Collins recorded that 'several people' were killed but no bodies were found to hang in the gibbets.
This followed the killing of two settlers: Joseph Wilson and William Thorp – Gapps, p. 113.
AEC, vol.1, pp. 345-46, 348; HRNSW, vol. 2, p. 307 (Paterson to Dundas, 15 June 1795).
Acknowledgment: Stephen Gapps, The Sydney Wars, pp. 113, 115, 300 n.19.