The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act provides the basis upon which Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory can claim rights to land based on traditional occupation. The Act was strongly based on the recommendations of Justice Woodward, who chaired the Aboriginal Land Rights Commission (also known as the "Woodward Royal Commission"). The Whitlam government first introduced a Bill to Parliament; however, this lapsed upon the dismissal of the government in 1975. The conservative government, led by Malcolm Fraser, reintroduced a Bill, though not of the same content, and this was signed by the Governor-General of Australia on 16 December 1976.
The Act is significant in that it was the first of the Aboriginal land rights acts, allowing for a claim of title if claimants can provide evidence of their traditional association with land. About 50% of the Northern Territory land and 85% of its coastline are owned communally by Aboriginals.
There are four land councils established under the Act to represent Aboriginal landowners:
- Central Land Council is in the southern half of the Northern Territory
- Northern Land Council covering the Top End
- Tiwi Land Council covering Bathurst and Melville Islands north of Darwin
- Anindilyakwa Land Council covering Groote Eylandt and Bickerton Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
In August 2006, the Federal Government amended the Act. The "Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Amendment Bill 2006" added several clauses which intend to promote economic development in remote townships. Amongst these, low interest loans were subsidised to promote private home ownership. The Amendment does away with communal ownership of certain parcels of lands previously vested as parts of inalienable Aboriginal Land Trusts.
The Amendment also prescribed for the 'fast-tracking' of mining negotiations between corporations and Indigenous communities, minimising the role of the large land councils on behalf of land owning groups.
Famous quotes containing the words aboriginal, land, rights and/or act:
“John Eliot came to preach to the Podunks in 1657, translated the Bible into their language, but made little progress in aboriginal soul-saving. The Indians answered his pleas with: ‘No, you have taken away our lands, and now you wish to make us a race of slaves.’”
—Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program. Connecticut: A Guide to Its Roads, Lore, and People (The WPA Guide to Connecticut)
“When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” you may indeed set over you a king whom the LORD your God will choose. One of your own community you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who is not of your own community.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 17:14,15.
“... most Southerners of my parents’ era were raised to feel that it wasn’t respectable to be rich. We felt that all patriotic Southerners had lost everything in defense of the South, and sufficient time hadn’t elapsed for respectable rebuilding of financial security in a war- impoverished region.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)
“Dangerous conceits are in their natures poisons,
Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,
But with a little act upon the blood
Burn like the mines of sulphur.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)