Law's Anthropology: From ethnography to expert testimony in native title

336 Pages·2011·6.04 MB·English

by  Paul Burke

Law’s Anthropology
From ethnography to expert testimony in native title

Law’s Anthropology
From ethnography to expert testimony in native title
Paul Burke
Research Fellow
School of Archaeology and Anthropology
The Australian National University
Canberra
THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
E PRESS
E PRESS
Published by ANU E Press
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Email: [email protected]
This title is also available online at http://epress.anu.edu.au/
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Burke, Paul, 1956-
Title: Law’s anthropology : from ethnography to expert testimony in native title /
Paul Burke.
ISBN: 9781921862427 (pbk.) 9781921862434 (ebook)
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Subjects: Native title (Australia)--Law and legislation.
Judicial process.
Evidence, Expert.
Dewey Number: 346.9404320899915
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover design and layout by ANU E Press
Cover image: Photograph of the claimants and their barristers at a reception during the Mabo
hearing on Murray Island in 1989. Courtesy of Yarra Bank Films, photo by Trevor Graham. Left
to right: Jack Wailu, Greg McIntyre, Dave Passi, Eddie Mabo, Brian Keon-Cohen, Bai Day and
Sam Passi.
Printed by Griffin Press
This edition © 2011 ANU E Press
Contents
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Lists of Maps, Tables and Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
1 . Towards an Ethnography of Anthropology’s Encounter with
Modern Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 . Anthropological Knowledge of the Murray Islands Prior to the
Mabo Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3 . Beckett in Mabo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4 . The Anthropology of the Broome Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
5 . The Anthropology of Broome on Trial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
6 . The Enigma of Traditional Western Desert Land Tenure . . . . . . . 173
7 . Western Desert Ethnography on Trial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
8 . Apocalypse Yulara? The emergence of a judicial discourse of
‘junk’ anthropology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
9 . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
v

Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the cooperation of the lawyers
and anthropologists who agreed to be interviewed. They are Jeremy Beckett,
Nonie Sharp and Brian Keon-Cohen for the Mabo case study; Patrick Sullivan
and Erich Kolig for the Rubibi case study; Craig Elliott and Ross Howie for
the De Rose Hill case study; and Peter Sutton and Jon Willis for Yulara. Tim
Wooley, the principal legal officer of the Native Title Unit of the Aboriginal
Legal Rights Movement (South Australia), provided critical access to non-
restricted documents and useful background explanation for De Rose Hill. The
Crown Solicitor’s Office of South Australia kindly provided me with a copy of
the unrestricted version of Ken Maddock’s expert reports.
In acknowledging the assistance of the participants in this research, I also
acknowledge that they do not necessarily agree with the way I have presented
them or the conclusions I have reached. All I can say is that I believe the
current version presents the facts as fairly as I can, while remaining true to my
assessment of those facts.
Ian Keen was my supervisor when this book started life as doctoral research.
He has a deserved reputation as a good supervisor who knows when the
wretched student needs praise, can offer practical escapes from seemingly dire
entrapments and knows how to frame criticism in a way that gets under the
guard of the most fragile ego. He has demonstrated all these qualities with me
at various points, but mostly it has been a happy and productive collaboration.
The doctoral research was really a group effort with my supervisory panel and
the participants in the research. The other members of the panel—Francesca
Merlan, Don Gardner and Gary Edmond—provided extensive feedback. As
will be evident in the conclusion, the discussion of the draft chapters with the
participants has been rewarding, if a little testing at times, and helped to clarify
my thinking.
At the ANU, I have received special assistance and information from
David Martin, Julie Finlayson and Kevin Murphy. Yasmine Musharbash spread
good rumours about my work. Brendan Gibson helped me with theory over a
Guinness. Moreover, Nic Peterson’s unstinting support ensured the completion
of this project.
I owe a special debt to my wife, Rosemary Budavari, and my children, Mark and
Helen. It is not easy living with a husband and father who is physically present,
but not there. Rosemary proofread previous versions of the book and translated
some German articles for me. Moreover, her job and practical support kept the
whole show on the road.
vii

Lists of Maps, Tables and Figures
List of Maps
Map 2.1 Villages and districts on Mer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Map 4.1 The claim area (Broome Aboriginal Reserve Land Trust)
in relation to Broome and Roebuck Plains . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
Map 4.2 Anthropological fieldwork locations in the Broome region . . . . . 104
Map 4.3 Detail of Elkin’s sketch map of the Kimberley Division
showing the approximate location of tribes . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Map 4.4 Detail of Tindale’s tribal map of Australia showing the
Broome region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Map 6.1 Location of De Rose Hill Station in relation to the
Pitjantjatjara Lands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Map 6.2 Selected fieldwork sites of anthropological research on
Western Desert peoples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Map 6.3 The location of De Rose Hill Station on
Elkin’s sketch map of Western Desert tribal areas . . . . . . . . 178
Map 6.4 The location of De Rose Hill Station on Tindale’s tribal map . . . 183
Map 6.5 Historical map of pastoral lands east of De Rose Hill Station . . . 207
Map 8.1 Yulara location map . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 244

List of Tables
Table 1.1 Important variables in the case studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Table 2.1 Chronology of anthropological research on
Torres Strait Islanders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Table 2.2 Summary comparison of the Reports, Beckett and Sharp . . . . 66
Table 4.1 Elkin’s table of ‘Yauor’ local groups and Dreamings . . . . . . 114
Table 4.2 One hundred years of describing traditional
landowning groups around Broome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Table 6.1 Potential title-holding groups in the anthropological
literature on Western Desert peoples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
ix
List of Figures
Figure 1.1 Idealised model of anthropological agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Figure 2.1 Haddon’s painting of an imagined Malo–Bomai
ceremony in pre-contact times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Figure 2.2 Photograph of Haddon’s informants seated at the
cleared Tomog shrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Figure 2.3 Illustration in Stars of Tagai of Bomai in octopus form . . . . . 58
Figure 2.4 Beckett’s photograph of a 1961 Malo–Bomai performance . . . . 65
Figure 3.1 Dave Passi, Eddie Mabo, Bryan Keon-Cohen and
James Rice outside the Queensland Supreme Court in 1989 . . . 93
Figure 4.1 Diagram from Radcliffe-Brown’s The Social Organisation
of Australian Tribes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Figure 9.1 Revised idealised model of anthropological agency . . . . . . 273
x