PROPIEDAD Y “CONTROL EFECTIVO”: LOS ANÁLISIS DE DAHRENDORF

Since my concern is not simply with Aboriginal relationships with the past but with the spatial expression of that past it is useful to know something of Aboriginal relationships with land. The orthodox model of Aboriginal land tenure worked out in the 1930s by Radcliffe-Brown held that land is owned by clans (exogamous patrilineal descent groups) who have exclusive foraging rights over it and who relate to it by their connectedness with the totemic sites of the land and the mythology associated with these sites. The land is occupied by foraging bands drawn from among clan members, unmarried sisters and daughters, and women who have married into the clan.

Although, by the 1960s, modifications to this model had been offered by anthropologists such as Hiatt it was essentially the orthodox model which was incorporated into the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 when the federal government moved to allow Aborigines in the Territory to make claims to vacant Crown Land.

In the period since 1976 it has become clear that this model is flawed. It is 'at best inadequate to describe the system of land tenure o f any region, and at worst, false' (Keen 1984: 26). It has been shown that among the Pintupi of the Western Desert

rights to totemic/sacred sites and hence to 'ownership' of country may derive from conception at them and by close kinship with members of a previous generation conceived there, but also from prolonged residence near a site or from the death of a close relative residing near one (Hiatt 1984: 15). The unilineal rule applying to descent groups has been challenged. In the case of the Uluru land claim (Layton 1986) it was demonstrated that decent groups were actually ambilineal, recruiting members through either parent, and that adherence by the court to the orthodox model would disqualify many legitimate traditional owners. Also, it has been shown that in much of the Northern Territory men have custodial responsibilities for sites in the area of their mother's descent group; the principle that these 'managers' be included as traditional owners was argued during the Utopia claim and accepted by the Commissioner in his findings on the Willowra claim (Hiatt 1984: 20). In practice, the Commissioners presiding over land claims in the Northern Territory have been able to accommodate much of the flexibility now shown to be inherent in land tenure, and to an extent have recognized that current affiliation to country, familiarity with it, and sharing of

knowledge about it may be as important, or even more important, than ancient descent rights (Keen 1984: 34-5).

A problem with the orthodox model was that it presented land tenure in terms of an established and rigid structure. This was partly traceable to the synchronic tradition in ethnography, social structure being seen as static because the ethnographer normally observed a society in the field only during a 'narrow slice in time’ (Rosaldo 1980: 10). But it was also because the old doctrine of social evolution died hard - if indeed it has died - and predisposed ethnographers to think of tribal societies as timeless, endlessly 'marking time', as it were, in the ethnographic present. An important contributor to the demise of the orthodox model was the movement o f anthropology, noted earlier, towards an emphasis on process over structure. This shift is seen in the Ranger Enquiry's (1977) recognition that title to the land of several clans which had died out within living memory was held by adjacent groups who could now be considered traditional owners:

This was an important decision, because it acknowledged Aboriginal land tenure to be a living system, a concept which dismayed those white people whose ideology held that Aborigines are a dying race.

Layton 1985: 157

Also committed to a processual view of Aboriginal ownership and identification with land is Myers who, in his study o f the Pintupi, argues that group membership is

socially negotiated and that land ownership 'is not a given, but an accomplishment' (1986: 129)

Land tenure is dynamic rather than static. 'Inevitably some groups burgeon while others die out; larger groups split and succeed to the estates of deceased groups' (Keen

1984: 27). In other words, the land tenure system is responsive at a demographic level to change through time. It is also responsive at a political level. The considerable choice which the system permits to an individual in taking up rights in different groups and areas allows for a constantly evolving pattern of alliances, affiliations, and

movements in space. Gumbert speaks of 'cognatic bands in a constant state of re­ formation' (1981: 116). The impression of flexibility, not allowed for in the orthodox model, is also given by the suggestion in the Gove case that displacement of groups through warfare partly accounted for the present pattem of site ownership (Layton

1985: 149).

The Finniss River claim concerned an area of land near Darwin to which conflicting claims pitted the descendants of the original owners against people from language groups on the Daly River, to the south. The Daly River people had been moving north

q|

to the Finniss River on a seasor^basis in the 1920s and 1930s and later they settled there permanently. An interesting point about this case was that the claimants o f mixed Aboriginal-European descent were recognized by the Commissioner as Aboriginal. Also, the migrant group were acknowledged to have valid common spiritual affiliations with sites in part of the area and on this basis they could be considered traditional owners. It was found that the migrant group had given names in Daly languages to many local hills and creeks. 'Dreamings, some having clear connections with Dreamings in the Daly area, were attributed to many sites' (Layton 1985: 164). In Layton's review of this case we are told of evidence presented by anthropologist Peter Sutton o f cases in the past where Aboriginal groups had forcibly taken over land. Title was held on the basis of a 'forgetting', in time, by the wider Aboriginal community that the migrant groups had not always lived there (1985: 164). Basil Sansom, another anthropologist involved in the case, 'saw politics, not law, as the dominant force in Aboriginal society':

Referring to his work in fringe camps, Sansom argued that around Darwin groups were characteristically mixed in composition, mobile and accustomed to using every claim based on kinship, friendship, trade partnership, etc. to establish their presence in an area.

In the Northern Territory, then, anthropologists and to some extent the legal system have recognized the principle that Aboriginal land tenure is dynamic. There has been a degree of recognition of the validity and authenticity of adjustments made to the system in the course of adaptation to the reality of white settlement. How much, one might ask, has that dynamism and flexibility we now see as inherent in their society allowed Aborigines in the rural southeast of the continent to endure the massive disruption of at least 150 years of white settlement while still retaining a relationship with the land which is distinctively Aboriginal?