Earthbound law: the force of an Indigenous Australian institution

Abstract

Australian Native Title law is critiqued in three moves: 1. Analysing the kinds of knowledge used in Australian Native Title law to make cases for Indigenous land tenure; 2. Analysing how a Nyikina elder narrates a legal matter of concern from his point of view; 3. Speculating about how an Indigenous ‘legal’ institution called the bugarrigarra was mobilised to resist extraction colonialism. These are all experimental moves in that they are partially composed around matters of concern, rather than displaying matters of fact. They are experiments that stage a learning process as they describe (that is, write about in order to add reality to) a number of different events.