Kamali Council; Neowarra, Paddy --- "The Ngarinyin Response to the Wik Decision" [1997] IndigLawB 33; (1997) 4(1) Indigenous Law Bulletin 16

Ngarinyin Response to the Wik Decision

By The Kamali Council and its Chair, Paddy Neowarra

We Ngarinyin were very happy when the High Court of Australia recognised that pastoral leases did not extinguish native title.

The land which names us, gives us our identity, in which we belong, has 12 pastoral leases granted to families who have come from other parts of Australia and the world. These leases for cattle grazing were only given in the middle of this century--just 30 to 50 years ago when we were young fellas living in our country, in the Law.

Nobody asked us about what we thought about that in those days because we were just `Natives' under the protection of the Crown. We didn't know then what these cattle grazing leases would become in the 1990s because we didn't know much about whitefella ways. We were innocent in those days.

We didn't stay innocent for very long. We found ourselves moved to other places, not in our country. Many of the old people then did not want to move, and soon returned to the places that named them, that gave them their identity and meaning.

Some of us younger people decided to see what this whitefella culture was all about, and tried to give it a go, knowing that we would return to our own places one day. We really believed that.

We never knew that we would have to fight for recognition of who we are, where we come from and where we belong, and our ancestors have belonged since the world began. We didn't understand the meaning of `extinguishment'.

Now in the 1990s we are starting to understand what this `extinguishment' really means.

We are starting to understand that, for whitefellas, Money extinguishes Culture.

We are realising that people in Canberra and Perth and Brisbane don't want us to continue in our country, so are making paper laws to outlaw recognition of who we are, and our relationship in our birthright country.

You see, we didn't come from anywhere else. We don't belong anywhere else. We can't go anywhere else.

Our tribe of Ngarinyin--maybe 600 people--belong in that country where those 12 small newcomer families are trying to grow their cattle. These families keep changing because cattle don't grow enough Money for them to stay there.

Now the families are growing their Money from tourism. Not just tourists who visit their cattle operations. Tourists who want to learn about Ngarinyin culture, visit our sacred waterholes, photograph our living images in the rocks, our Wandjina paintings.

They are taking tourists to our cultural sites where we are not allowed to go with our visitors, where we are not allowed to create employment for our young people, where we are not allowed to grow Money for our communities, our people who are dying from boredom, and despair, and alcohol in reserves out of the country which names them.

This is what `extinguishment' really means.

It means killing off our chance to survive as a living culture, as a people, as participants in the future of Australia. It means extinguishing our birthright and meaning, so that we cannot thrive or survive in this life.

Nothing can thrive and grow without its nourishment. Our nourishment is in our culture and its reflection of our land. We are named and claimed by the animals, trees, birds, mountains, frogs, waterholes of Ngarinyin country. Our kinship and marriage system and the Law that governs it, is reflected in our land; our pattern of life is reflection of that land.

Not any land, anywhere.

Not all land no matter where.

Just the land that we are born from, named by, and nourished in.

Our lives are copyrighted in the land.

It owns us; the land gave us our names.

We are the chapters and illustrations of its intent and meaning.

It shapes our lives.

And gives us our life.

We are its servants.

Our relationships are written in the land.

We and the land belong to each other.

If native title is extinguished where pastoral leases are granted, this is what is being extinguished.

Many people are talking about native title rights.

These rights--like hunting and gathering, ceremony and ritual, visitation--these actions are the enactment of the copyright, they are not the copyright itself. Our identity is the copyright, the substance of creation, and that must not be extinguished.

We can embrace pastoralists and their cattle in our land. We have no problem with that.

We can negotiate our native title rights. That is no problem either.

We can negotiate access, and movement around their leases--gates, roads, rubbish--all of those things.

What we cannot do is allow our identity, and the birthright of our identity, to be rubbed out. No human beings on Earth can allow that.

None.

We Ngarinyin are developing up a Bush University to take people into our country, to teach them the meaning of Relationship in land. We are doing this because we are sorry for people who are looking for meaning in their lives, and are lost to their identity. We want to share our knowledge and our lives with them. We are doing this because we want their lives to be enriched with meaning that they can get from learning how to receive identity from the land. When they are grounded in the real world which is the Earth, they become happy. They stop wandering around lost to themselves. This is our Gift.

If our identity is extinguished, instead of receiving this Gift, Australia will have to live with the shame of our extinguishment.