Presented in person and online. Zoom details below.

This paper is a continuation of my long-standing interest in the interaction between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and institutions, which I have called `intercultural’. The paper focuses substantively on some aspects of the intercultural in the context of land claims. In this overall category I include not only the federal land claims regime which operated in the Northern Territory but also a second phase of claims under the federal Native Title Act. I draw on my range of experience in both of those regimes over many years. These complex events are a domain of intercultural engagement. This paper is largely based on case material, mostly cases in which I had some kind of involvement (but necessarily de-identified in some ways). I use the material to develop three propositions of wider anthropological interest: (1) forms of Indigenous-non-Indigenous interaction and entanglement have always been, and still are, sidelined in the legal formulation and transaction of land and native title claims. In fact, in many contexts acknowledgement of Indigenous-non Indigenous interaction and mutual influence is seen as downright inconvenient. (2) Land claims call for analysis from points of view which consider not only conventional history as treated in claims materials, but also contemporary aspects of Indigenous-non-Indigenous relations; (3)  Some widely held public views on the (usually, deeper) histories of intercultural relations continue to underpin Indigenous-non-Indigenous domain separation and make it difficult to discern and understand the intensive kinds of interaction that are crucial to the conduct of land claims.

Speaker:
Emerita Professor Francesca Merlan was a professor of anthropology in the ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology, from 1995 to 2021. She has conducted research on culture and language, especially in the Katherine region of the Northern Territory since 1976, research in Papua New Guinea with Alan Rumsey from the 1980s, and periods of research in Europe. Relevant to this seminar, over many years she has been senior anthropologist, judge’s assistant, witness and commentator in land and native title claims in the Northern Territory and elsewhere in northern and southern Australia.

Zoom link: https://anu.zoom.us/j/82431454032?pwd=owA39nWqTYm2TGOcC0sWa9bEDVangD.1