Aboriginal Law Bulletin --- "Yambah Claim" [1989] AboriginalLawB 36; (1989) 1(39) Aboriginal Law Bulletin 7

• Yambah Claim

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Yambah Claim

Five Arrernte families - the Lynches, Turners, Rices, McMillans and Palmers - are amongst thousands of Aborigines who have been displaced by the pastoral industry. Five years ago, they returned from Alice springs to set up camps in the stock route and reserve that crosses Yambah station. Because they have no `legal' land title, government departments have refused to provide their camps with even the most basic services. The families have been fighting for 14 years to get title to some of their traditional land on Yambah pastoral lease.

Magdalene Lynch said, "We have done everything asked of us under whitefella law to try to get a small part of our land back. Our fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers built up these cattle stations. But the greed of the pastoralists, the pig-headedness of the Northern Territory Government and the failure of the Federal Government to provide for us as directed by white Australia in the 1967 referendum has led us to despair and now to direct action."

In June the families, who together form the Mperwinge-Arnapipe Council, shifted to a prominent place on the side of the Stuart Highway. On Friday, 4 August the group moved on to the pastoral lease and will settle down on a small area near Harry Creek. The area is at the juncture of the five families' traditional country and is only two percent of the Yambah pastoral lease. On the date of going to press, the AboriginalLB was informed that the Yambah people have been served summonses to appear in the Supreme Court, presumably in relation to trespass charges.

Letters of support and donations can be sent to:
Mperwinge-Arnapipe Council,
PO Box 8070
Alice Springs NT 0871.