By Ray Jackson
President, Indigenous Social Justice Association
I remember when this 'first native title claim' was hailed as a land rights win for the Dhungutti people.
If I remember well, the land was handed to the Elders, including Aunty Mary Lou Buck, for about a half hour, then the land was given back to the NSW govt., who then immediately onsold the land to the developers. The 12.4 hectares was prime coastal land and the developer would have made squillions. The Elders, on behalf of the other owners received a paltry $738 000, a mere pittance of what the land would have been generated by the developers.
Why they had to wait a further 14 years to get the second instalment is unknown. Probably locked up in the government coffers. How many of the traditional owners would have passed on during that time is unknown. Too bloody many, I suppose.
As I said, this was touted by the govt. and media back in 1996 as everything from a land rights victory, another step forward towards reconciliation and a 'first treaty'.
It was none of these. All it was was another sick and cynical example of govt. spin and pure bastardry. And the same examples have continued right up to the present day. The indigenous land use agreement is but another example of govt. theft that is trumpeted as land rights. It is nothing of the sort.
True land rights is complete ownership of the land in question, whether in total or part, including all resources relative and inclusive to that land. Nothing more nor less. Anything less is theft and genocide.
We are lambasted for our poverty but all our wealth is stolen from us. As was the Dhungutti land.
The Dhungutti people would be better off looking at what the Ghitibul people are doing with the lands of their nation to the north.
$6.1m payout made on native title claim
DEBRA JOPSON
February 20, 2010
A GROUP of NSW Aborigines who won the first native title claim on the Australian mainland following the historic Mabo decision yesterday celebrated a $6.1 million compensation payout which the state government has made 14 years later.
At a ceremony in Kempsey, Ruth Campbell-Maruca, chairwoman of the Dunghutti Elders Council Aboriginal Corporation, declared that the 1996 agreement between her people and the government recognising their ownership of 12.4 hectares at Crescent Head was a ''first treaty''.
The Dunghutti's agreement to surrender their native title on land to be developed at Crescent Head led to the payment, the NSW Minister for Lands, Tony Kelly, said at the ceremony, attended by 60 elders.
Thirteen years ago, a Federal Court judge said the agreement was the first ever made between the Crown and Aboriginal people. The government decided to make the agreement after development approval was granted over some of the land before anyone realised native title could still exist there.
The Dunghutti got $738,000 in compensation in 1997 under Federal Court orders based on that agreement, with another block of money to be paid 10 years later, their lawyer, Eddy Neumann, explained.
''It will strengthen and mobilise our people to finalise all outstanding land claims, revitalise our cultural life and bring hope to our people,'' said the secretary of the elders' council, Mary Lou Buck. The Dunghutti would seek an indigenous land use agreement, she said.
''[It] will be the first in Australia which seeks to comprehensively settle all native title still existing in an indigenous people's territory. We intend to achieve another first,'' she said.
''Native title can work. The courts, the government, the people are not going to fall apart. Old bogys have been put to rest. We are not afraid and there is no reason for other Australians to be afraid,'' she said.
The elders also plan to set up scholarships to encourage more Dunghutti youngsters to complete school and university.