Paper short abstract

Ethnographic encounters from the Shadows of the Law, exploring the extent the perceived problematic fissioning of Aboriginal Peoples in the pursuit of Native Title might be more positively re-conceived as 'friction' evidencing persistent, resilient, locally indigenous ways of being

Paper long abstract

A small assembly direct ethnographic encounters from within the shadows of Native Title Law (see Bourke 2010: 57-58), in north-east Australia's wet tropics (including from Yarrabah and Cairns and more), retrospectively casting light on the extent to which the perceived problematic fissioning of Aboriginal Peoples in the pursuit of Native Title might be more properly and more usefully re-conceived as 'friction' (see Tsing 2004) positively evidencing persistent, resilient, locally indigenous systems of lore and ways of being in the way they grind up against the more Anglo-Australian idealized Native Title legal dreaming