Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I reflect on my recent "insider" ethnographic research at the Northern Land Council (NLC). It is here, where law, anthropology and bureaucratic practice collide, that the complex relationship between Indigenous peoples, their institutions and the state can be better understood.

Paper long abstract:

Having worked as a lawyer at the Northern Land Council (NLC) for over a decade, I found much legal and anthropological scholarship failed to reflect my experience of the messy mechanics of land rights.

To me, the preoccupations of both disciplines seemed similar - how do the normative systems of Indigenous law and custom "fit" within prescriptive and abstract legal definitions? In this scholarship, land rights was presented as a binarised battle between accommodation (by state law) and resistance (by Indigenous people, their representatives and allies). But my experience demonstrated that the NLC was sometimes an agent against the state (e.g. in fighting land claims), but often and simultaneously an embodiment of the state (e.g. in its status as a statutory corporation and its powerful functions including of determining the very identity of traditional owners). This apparent contradiction was navigated daily by NLC staff and seemed to challenge the accomodation/resistance dichotomy evident in much existing literature.

In this paper, I reflect on my recent ethnographic research at the NLC, which situates its employees as the principal subjects of study. It is here, where law and anthropology collide with the monotonous filling of forms, management of vehicle fleets, interpersonal relationship dynamics, and the processing of land use applications for everything from gravel pits to uranium mines that the complex and multi-scalar relationship between Indigenous peoples, their institutions and the state can be better understood.