Paper short abstract:

Conflict among claimants is endemic to South African land restitution: communities settle claims, only to end up litigating internal struggles. Intra-community conflict reflects patterns of juridification and neoliberal governance, undermining restitution and limiting opposition to state policies.

Paper long abstract:

Conflict among claimants is endemic to South African land restitution: while land-claiming communities and the state rush to nominally settle claims, these leave latent conflicts that subsequently result in litigating internal struggles. Public hearings as part of a national review of restitution policy (HLP Report 2017) confirm the findings of local ethnographic studies (Beyers and Fay 2015, Fay 2013), as "speakers referred to the conflict, and enormous waste of time and expense in litigation, caused by competing or overlapping land claims, or competing stakeholder interests in particular land under claim" (HLP Report 2017: 239).

Drawing upon the author's ethnographic fieldwork on the Dwesa-Cwebe land claim (Fay 2013), and comparative analysis (Beyers and Fay 2015, HLP Report 2017), the paper critically reflects on attempts to theorise these processes. The practice of "bunching" disparate groups and interests in large group claims, tensions between claimant groups and the legal entities created to represent them, and the uncertainties and highly technical processes of claims implementation all contribute to the prevalence of conflict. These take place against the neoliberal background of the diminishing administrative capacity of the state, fragmentation of sovereignty, and the promotion of contractual arrangements between land claimants and "strategic partners," conditions which allow external actors to take advantage of intra-community conflict. Given the prospect of an independent hearing in the courts, these conditions give rise to the prominence of recourse to the law and litigation, even as such conflicts limit and fragment opposition to state policies and practices.

Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic work in Central Queensland to address disputes relating to coal and unconventional gas extraction. We focus on the intersection between kinship, landed identity and divergent aspirations for the future.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper we draw on our ethnographic work in Central Queensland to address disputes relating to coal and unconventional gas extraction in the Galilee and Bowen Basins. We focus on the intersection between kinship, landed identity and divergent aspirations for the future within the context of resource developments and environmental debates. While addressing intra-Indigenous agency within these disputes, we also pay attention to structural constraints introduced by the native title system, as well as the role of different kinds of Whitefellas in fomenting disputes, and seeking to resolve them.

Paper short abstract:

How conflict and disputes are framed by participants and others in the native title claim arena can affect claim outcomes. Viewing 'culture' or group identity as emergent through disputation enables conflict to be seen as a productive and integrative aspect of social and cultural practice.

Paper long abstract:

Conflict and dispute within and between Aboriginal communities is a frequent counterpart to the native title claim process in Australia. Whether or not the claim process itself is seen as a causal factor in a given instance, it does provide an arena (and resources) for disputation. How conflict and disputes are framed by participants and other parties in the native title claim arena can profoundly shape outcomes. Conflict and dispute are often interpreted by participants and observers as a barrier to timely claims resolution. I argue that anthropology's long-standing interest in the integrative and constitutive role of conflict and dispute has both theoretical and practical value for re-framing the treatment of conflict and dispute. Of particular value are ideas from anthropologists associated with Manchester University in the mid-twentieth century regarding conflict as a normal state of dynamic tension within society. A reappraisal of the Manchester School's contributions in the light of more recent theoretical concerns with human agency allows us to examine conflict not just for what it reveals about other facets of social and cultural experience (e.g., kinship systems, normative practices regarding rights in land), but also as a means by which social and cultural values themselves are constituted and reproduced. Viewing 'culture' or group cohesion as emergent through disputation should assist anthropologists working in the native title field to incorporate conflict as a productive aspect of social and cultural practice, and not necessarily as something detrimental to the claim process.

Paper short abstract:

This paper concerns political divisiveness in the Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation and it clarifies the relationship between the Yorta Yorta and the Bangarong with some stake holders. Consequently, it reveals that the present YYNAC movements occur on the multiple conditions.

Paper long abstract:

This paper concerns political divisiveness in the Yorta Yorta Nation Aboriginal Corporation and it clarifies the relationship between the Yorta Yorta with some environmental NGOs and academics and the Barmgaong with local government and people through the dispute over the Co-operative Agreement between the YYNAC and the state of Victoria. Consequently, it reveals that the present Yorta Yorta movements do not only occur on the binary situation between the Yorta Yorta and local people and government, but on the multiple conditions due to involvement of the international, national and local environmental NGOs and the intellectuals from the urban area. Moreover, a family group in YYNAC takes collaborative work with local government and people. Thus, the strategies for conducting the movements are transformed in terms of wider or narrow network. In this context, the wider society tends to treat the Yorta Yorta people and the Bangarong people as one of the mere actors who support this civil movement so the movement threatens the Yorta Yorta and the Bangarong to lose their authenticities as Traditional Owner in their country. In preventing the Yorta Yorta and the Bangarong from losing their authenticities as Toraditional Owner and, in conducting their movements in control, they have to seek the way to maintain their indigeneties through their traditional and living knowledge on the forest and river into the Cultural Map. On the other hand, the Bangarong people use the name "Bangarong" to get solid trust from local people as the Traditional Owner in the area.

Paper short abstract:

Ethnographic encounters from the Shadows of the Law, exploring the extent the perceived problematic fissioning of Aboriginal Peoples in the pursuit of Native Title might be more positively re-conceived as 'friction' evidencing persistent, resilient, locally indigenous ways of being

Paper long abstract:

A small assembly direct ethnographic encounters from within the shadows of Native Title Law (see Bourke 2010: 57-58), in north-east Australia's wet tropics (including from Yarrabah and Cairns and more), retrospectively casting light on the extent to which the perceived problematic fissioning of Aboriginal Peoples in the pursuit of Native Title might be more properly and more usefully re-conceived as 'friction' (see Tsing 2004) positively evidencing persistent, resilient, locally indigenous systems of lore and ways of being in the way they grind up against the more Anglo-Australian idealized Native Title legal dreaming