121-225 Place and Possession

Completion of 37.5 points of second/third-year subjects or admission to the postgraduate diploma or fourth-year honours.

In this subject students survey selected case studies, and key ideas and documents in the history of the engagement between colonial and post-federation Australian legal systems and indigenous land tenure systems, culminating in a consideration of the concept of native title. An array of titles under various statutes, and the anthropological ideas which have informed them, will be examined as to their efficacy in legitimating indigenous traditions of social affiliation to place and customary ownership. Some key ideas explored in this subject include property; place; group titles; kinship; lineages and customary landholding groups; transmission and succession of customary land tenure; the sociological nature of estates of land and territory and their attributes, such as names, borders, and meanings; the attribution by anthropologists of ownership or possession to clans, 'tribes' or regional linguistic groupings; and dispute-processing in land conflicts, both in customary tradition and Australian history.