Paper short abstract:

Could a map produced for a native title case potentially be a representation of a ‘genuinely new ontology’ of place/space? Or is it inevitably hybrid – an artefact of attempted translation between two incommensurable ontological (and legal) systems? This paper attempts an answer.

Paper long abstract:

In the early 2000s I was an expert witness in the Blue Mud Bay (BMB) native title case. One of my responsibilities was organising the preparation of the map of the clan estates and associated ‘songlines’, both on land and in the sea, of the Yolŋu applicants. This map was, self-evidently, produced in and for the context of the case. The initial research was a collaborative effort between the ‘experts’ and a subset of the applicants. But the final object, the map itself, was a ‘translation’ of a Yolŋu ontology of place/space into an essentially Western artefact that matched the expectations of native title evidence with respect to Yolŋu ‘laws and customs’. It provoked varying reactions from Yolŋu who had not been closely involved in its production. One woman of my own age commented that seeing the Yolŋu system displayed in this way made her realise just how complex it was and how much knowledge it represented. On the other hand another, very senior, woman was singularly unimpressed: ‘What are all these [clan estate boundary] lines? You’ve rounded us up like cattle in a paddock.’

Is a map like this a representation of a ‘genuinely new ontology’? Or is such a map, as I have argued elsewhere for the court document known as the ‘witness statement’, a hybrid artefact, resulting from attempted translation between two incommensurable ontologies, that ‘belongs fully to neither of its authors’? The paper will explore these questions in the process of providing a (third) answer.