Spinifex People - Native Title

Native Title

In 1997 the Spinifex Arts Project was begun to help document the Native Title claims. Both Native Title paintings, the Men’s Combined and the Women’s Combined, document the entire Spinifex area; they show the claimants' birthplaces and express the important traditional stories that cross and give shape to the area.

The Spinifex people were the second tribe in Western Australia to receive recognition of their Native Title land rights in 2000, in accordance with Section 87 (agreement) of the Commonwealth Native Title Act 1993. The ruling, by the Federal Court of Australia, in a case brought by a third party on behalf of the Spinifex People, found that agreement had been reached between the applicants and the two named respondents: the State Government of Western Australia and the Shire of Laverton, over a sector of land encompassing around 55,000 km2.

This territory - which was designated as either unallocated land or park reserve, and contained no pastoral leases - lies to the north of the lands of the Nullarbor People, to the east of the Pilki People and to the south of the Ngaanyatjarra Lands, the eastern boundary being formed by the South Australian border. Apart from the area of two Nature Reserves, the only specific "other interests" identified within the territory was for public right-of-way along an existing road which traversed some of the territory.

The Native Title claim was made by twenty-one families constituting the current Spinifex people. Some Spinifex had begun returning to their land from around 1980. From 2001 many of those who left to live at the Christian missions have since returned to their homelands and the Unnamed Conservation Park Biosphere Reserve (now Mamungari Conservation Park). In 2004 the government turned over the pristine wilderness area of 21,000 sq/km jointly to the Pila Nguru and the Maralinga Tjarutja.