Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents preliminary findings from doctoral ethnographic research in Northern Australia, where successful land claims on behalf of an Aboriginal group have had various sociocultural and economic effects.

Paper long abstract:

In Australia, legislation dealing with Indigenous claims to ancestral lands has been in place for a number of decades. With the positive resolution of many such claims, Australia is now reaching a moment in which the effects of land rights, and their perceived 'restorative justice' can be examined in ethnographic detail.

In this paper, I present some preliminary findings from my doctoral research in the remote Cape York region of Northern Australia, where a series of successful land claims on behalf of an Aboriginal group have had various sociocultural and economic effects.

The overarching effect, however, relates to Indigenous identity construction. With the claims process involving collaboration with lawyers and anthropologists charged with gathering evidence of claimants' connection to land, and the claim outcomes involving increased access and decision-making powers over ancestral lands, opportunities to teach younger generations through being-in-place (Casey 1996), and the legally-mandated corporatization of the Indigenous land-holding group, the solidification of tribal and language-based identities can be compared to what Comaroff and Comaroff (2009) describe as 'Ethnicity Inc'.

The corporatization of landed identity and the development of business arms dedicated to receiving funding for environmental management work have also led to localized, socio-economic changes, whereby some Aboriginal claimants enjoy or aspire to waged employment working on their ancestral lands for their own corporation.