Based on author's thesis (doctoral - University of Sydney, Department of Anthropology, 2013) issued under title: Forces of destruction, acts of creation: aboriginality, identity and native title, on the far west coast of South Australia.

Aboriginal title represents one of the most remarkable and controversial legal developments in the common law world of the late-twentieth century. Overnight it changed the legal position of indigenous peoples. The common law doctrine gave sudden substance to the tribes' claims to justiciable property rights over their traditional lands, catapulting these up the national agenda and jolting them out of a previous culture of governmental inattention. In a series of breakthrough cases national courts adopted the argument developed first in western Canada, and then New Zealand and Australia by a handful of influential scholars. By the beginning of the millennium the doctrine had spread to Malaysia, Belize, southern Africa and had a profound impact upon the rapid development of international law of indigenous peoples' rights. This book is a history of this doctrine and the explosion of intellectual activity arising from this inrush of legalism into the tribes' relations with the Anglo settler state. The author is one of the key scholars involved from the doctrine's appearance in the early 1980s as an exhortation to the courts, and a figure who has both witnessed and contributed to its acceptance and subsequent pattern of development. He looks critically at the early conceptualisation of the doctrine, its doctrinal elaboration in Canada and Australia - the busiest jurisdictions - through a proprietary paradigm located primarily (and constrictively) inside adjudicative processes. He also considers the issues of inter-disciplinary thought and practice arising from national legal systems' recognition of aboriginal land rights, including the emergent and associated themes of self-determination that surfaced more overtly during the 1990s and after. The doctrine made modern legal history, and it is still making it.

In the space of just fifteen years, Andrew 'Twiggy' Forrest's Fortescue Metals Group has become a global iron-ore giant worth 70 billion dollars. But in its rush to develop, FMG has damaged and destroyed ancient Aboriginal heritage and brokered patently unfair agreements with the traditional owners of the land. When FMG has met resistance, it has used hard-nosed litigation in pursuit of favourable outcomes. This strategy came unstuck when FMG encountered several hundred Yindjibarndi people and their leader, Michael Woodley, who left school in Grade Six and was from then on immersed in his traditional culture. Woodley has led his community in an epic, thirteen-year battle against FMG, all on a shoestring budget.

A detailed study of the engagement of state law with indigenous rights to water in comparative legal and policy contexts.

This book provides a strikingly original explanation of the Britain's treatment of sovereignty and native title in its Australasian colonies.

Native title involves an interface between the Australian legal system and Indigenous legal, cultural and political systems. The assertion and management of native title rights involves collective action by sometimes large and disparate groups of Indigenous people. Contentious politics makes such collective action difficult and the courts will often be asked to decide whether group decisions have been validly made. In the last two decades a vast and complex body of law and practice has developed to address this challenge. Authorisation law is a set of principles about how the views and intentions of native title claimants or holders are translated into legally effective decisions. This book sets out the legal rules and their application in various situations: native title claims, native title agreement-making, decision-making by native title corporations, and compensation applications. It also addresses key practical, ethical and political dimensions of native title decision-making. This book will be useful for native title practitioners including lawyers, judges and native title holders. It will also be relevant to academic research into the ethical, political and anthropological dimensions of Indigenous governance.