Publisher Phaidon Press 1st Ed Edition October 11 1998 Aboriginal Art

1. Introduction

In Australia, like Indigenous peoples throughout the world, First Nations Australians have used art to support their country championship claims (De Costa 2006, pp. 669–98; Pomedeli 1995, pp. 313–39; Wicken 2002, pp. 89–93; Koch 2013). As a visual and cultural advice tool, while it has proved useful in supporting other evidence in new ways, it was not the critical cloth on which the conclusion of the case was made. Such instances include not-indigenous stylistic forms such equally cartographic maps or sketches too as indigenous mark making that was encoded with traditional knowledge and which represented, for the indigenous claimants, ancient, contemporary and cultural history associated with the lands in question. For literate land claimants, the visual expression of their cultural cognition enables them to interact meaningfully with Western legal systems and successfully provide prove to courts of vital cultural associations with their lands. A study of iii successful legal cases, each relying on differing cultural expression—drawing on paper, acrylic on sail and ochre on bawl—elucidate the strategies pursued by Beginning Nations Australians in defence of their country claims.

Post-obit an introduction to the traditional culture and the early history of the ethnic fine art motility, I discuss the iii legal studies and highlight the style the visual presentations in the diverse mediums take been deployed in native title claims. The first study is a review of the way the diagrammatic mural sketches of Mer (Murray Island) in the Torres Strait, that was associated with the landmark 1992 native championship state claim in the Federal Court of Australia, were used. These were the drawings of the claimant Eddie Mabo of that year, and were used within the Federal Court proceedings to support his case.

The 2d study references the utilise of acrylic paintings, of the Ngurrara Canvas one (1996) and Ngurrara Canvas two (1997), which originate from the western desert of Australia. The hearings for this claim were conducted on the desert lands of the claimant Ngurrara peoples. The distinctive acrylic style produced by desert painters at this time was largely devoid of human or fauna figuration; instead, the paintings were equanimous of largely abstract geometric forms that symbolically encoded traditional knowledge related to the artist's human relationship and entitlement to the land, referred to in the painting. These paintings were brightly coloured and covered past finely dotted abstract backgrounds, with a conceptual design that has been likened to aerial topography or Cartesian mapping. However, they were not maps in a linear sense, representative of a precise surface area and distance, but rather mental abstractions related to the artist's understandings of his/her Country (Anker 2014, pp. 153–54).

In the third study, the text investigates where the bark medium was successful in presenting visually encoded traditional knowledge for the 2008 native title claim of the Blue Mud Bay region of eastern Arnhem Land, specifically its use in the Yirrkala Saltwater Collection. Barks were produced from the tropical forests of Arnhem Land in the far due north of Australia, and the artwork imagery incorporated traditional cognition relating to the artists' customary rights to the ownership of their tidal lands. The visual language had been uniquely adapted by the painters for public view such that it contained no secret sacred fabric. Most of the imagery largely consisted of figures of animals and plants painted in ochre and encoded with various cantankerous-hatched patterns specific to the artist'due south kinship identity and rights to a particular surface area of land.

2. The Dreaming and the Law

Different Europeans who own land, in the minds of First Nations Australians who live their lives closely associated with their ancient traditions and belief systems, land is non owned by them. They see themselves as intricately continued to their lands or Country, the latter being a highly complex cultural term that embodies associations with kinship, sacred purposes, religious beliefs and ancient cultures' inherited connections to their lands (Australian Government 2016). Such understandings are aligned to their dynamic, sacred cosmology, variously called the Dreaming, Tjukurrpa or Cosmos Time, that acts as a stiff agency, informing traditionally inspired paintings like Arnhem Country barks and desert acrylics (Rumsey 2001, pp. 22–24; Stanner 1998). This is greatly of import to the civilization and informs traditional police force and the style people think, feel and alive. Critically, the Dreaming determines the people's relationship to their lands or Country (Ginibi 1994, p. 8).i First Nations Australians believe the entire Australian continent was shaped by the travels of spirit ancestors who created their laws in this process. Their epic journeys were passed down in narratives known every bit Dreamings, which are referred to in ceremonies, body painting, song, trip the light fantastic toe, sand sculptures, artifact design and rock art.2 Traditionally, each aborigine inherits the responsibleness for particular Dreaming story/ies and the surface area of land/south on which the ancient narrative/south took place.

These mythologies, which referred to traditional cognition, were represented in symbolic grade, in a range of visual forms. Dr. Raymattja Marika (c.1959–2008), a Yolngu aboriginal leader of the Rirratjingu people, explains:

The deepest knowledge is abstract—we know it is there, but it cannot be put into words. Information technology cannot be seen, simply it is at that place and contains teachings given by the ancestors, and still carries on downwards to the present, to contemporary Yolngu society. When one-time people paint, it is as if they are meditating; it is not just a man painting a pattern, but the blueprint is a real meaningful and alive totem that somehow communicates with the painter. When a person does a painting it actually increases their cognition of Yolngu law. There is communication going on.

Indigenous sacred noesis was expressed symbolically in ceremonial designs that were painted in ochre onto the torso in preparation for dancing and formalism performances that were undertaken to reinvigorate tribal culture. Moreover, traditional knowledge informed the pattern of collaboratively created, visually spectacular ground paintings or sand sculptures that were used in ceremonies and danced over. In the making of these masterworks, the sand-filled ground was busy with drawings or sculptures by indigenous ceremonial participants, using traditionally inspired symbols referring to the sacred noesis associated with their lands (Myers 1994, p. 37; Isaacs 1987; Sutton 1988a, 1988b). Such culturally of import images became the source fabric or informing designs that were refined and adapted for use in the first Papunya paintings about the land or Country in 1971. They became foundational to the content expressed subsequently in the dotted acrylic paintings of the Papunya-led, contemporary desert art movement of the 1970s, in paintings of the Ngurrara 1976 and 1977 canvases (Anker 2014, p. 148; Bardon and Bardon 2007; Johnson 2010a, pp. 29–41), and and then in different ways in the symbols used on bark paintings such equally the Saltwater Collection 2008.

Within traditional sacred law, the specific surface area of land or Country to which a design applies may be endemic by a number of individuals and is inherited by the artist/south from family unit members.4 In protecting information technology, they have on the role of a lifelong shared custodianship to wait later on it. This ways beingness responsible for protecting the state to ensure its ecological and spiritual sustainability for future generations. The procedure of using these designs, adapting them and painting them on artworks for sale to outsiders invoked ancestral memories associated with lands the artist no longer lived on, but yearned to return to. Nevertheless, inside this context, information technology was seen as a mode of cultural renewal in the present, and the places the creative person paints were acknowledged by the peoples as those over which he/she had traditional entitlements (Myers 1994, p. 37; Isaacs 1987; Sutton 1988a, 1988b). Afterwards, these understandings were more than widely recognised by outsiders, later they had been fully explained. Paintings with such encoding were used as legal instruments to show the artists' long-term, enduring cultural connectedness to their lands. In the early years of the painting movement, a pioneering Papunya Tula artist of the Pintupi peoples, creative person Charlie Tarawa Tjungurrayi, succinctly summarised his people'southward and other Papunya Tula artists' motivation for painting their lands in the title description of his painting of 1987. It read: If I don't paint this story, some whitefella might come and steal my country (Johnson 2008, p. 57). Because of the aforementioned contexts, the human relationship that governs indigenous people's behaviour towards their entitlement to their country or Land is circuitous (Weir et al. 2011, pp. 1–17).

3. Indigenous Activism—1973 Yirrkala Bark Petition—1988 Barunga Agreement

Informing this behaviour and how it operates today within the state championship contend are the outcomes of indigenous-led civil rights campaigns that had their origins in the late nineteenth century (Owen 2016, p. 303), and which gained significant momentum in the early twentieth century (McGregor 1993, pp. 555–68). These initiatives triggered the moves towards native country title claims and, within the terms of Australian law, the successful reinstatement of land rights to indigenous peoples all over the nation. This was state stolen past Europeans over the two hundred and xxx years of British settlement.

One of the key motivations for this Ethnic activism was "to affirm and promote their [Kickoff Nation peoples] relationships with country" (Weir 2012, p. one), and the desire to be back on the lands from which they had been coercively displaced (Sutton 1995, pp. 49–50; Foley and Anderson 2006).5 Offset Nation peoples wanted to take intendance of their country, equally the generations of their ancestors before them. They aspired to live traditionally and enjoy the benefits of eating and using traditional bush foods for healing. They also desired to undertake traditional ceremonies to empower their culture (Sillitoe 2016; Griffiths and Kinane 2011).

An early instance of cultural activism in Commonwealth of australia where artwork was used to accelerate issues of self-decision occurred in 1963 at Yirrkala, in the Northern Territory. The traditional owners of the lands in question used ii signed bark paintings which they had painted collaboratively to convince the Federal Government in Canberra that the mining of their tribal lands past the Pechiney mining company was illegal (Museum of Australia Republic 2005). These barks bore paintings with the sacred imagery of the claimants, related to the lands in question (Pasco Gaymarani 2011). The presentation included a typed argument, in both English and Yolngu (the local language). Information technology requested that no lease be granted to the French mining company Pechiney over Yolngu lands until the concerns of the Yolngu peoples had been addressed. Pechiney intended to mine large deposits on Groote Eylandt and the Gove Peninsula, where Yirrkala is located. The petition stated that the Yolngu had used the state from time immemorial; it sustained their life and contained many sacred sites (Australian Government northward.d.), (Morphy 2008, pp. 66–67). While the Bark Petition established a precedent for art to be used equally a means past which First Nations peoples in Australia could pictorially and conceptually communicate their cultural issues to regime agencies, the litigation was not successful. This first native title case in Commonwealth of australia, namely Milirrpum and Others five Nabalco and the Commonwealth of Australia (1971), was held in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory from 1970 to 1971. Justice Blackburn's ruling questioned "the plaintiff's descent from the people who had owned the contested lands in the proper noun of the British Crown on 26 January 1788" (Williams 1989, pp. ix, 42–43) and determined "that Yolngu proprietary interests in land could not be recognised nether Australian police force" (Corn and Gulumba 2004, p. 105; Williams 1989, pp. 109–203).

A decade later, the Ancient Land Rights Commission was formed, and by 1975 the development of a process to enable First Nations Australians to merits freehold titles to land in the Northern Territory had taken place. The starting time successful land merits in this jurisdiction was lodged in 1976. Many others followed, such that today over fifty pct of the Northern Territory has been granted to traditional owners. The establishment of the Northern and the Fundamental State Councils in 1976 assisted indigenous peoples with the process of land claims within the territory and helped maintain the land one time it was granted to them (Koch 1996).

A follow-up to the Yirrkala Petition was the painted sheet The Barunga Understanding, of 1988 (AIATSIS 2021) presented to the and then Prime Minister Bob Hawke (Central Land Council 1995; Quango for Aboriginal Reconciliation 1995). It was a Memorandum of Agreement to support the development of a framework for negotiating a Treaty with the Offset Nations of the Northern Territory of Australia (Northern Land Council 2018).half dozen The argument was composed as an English language text that was pasted within a collage of paintings from Arnhem Land and the Primal Desert area. The paintings represented a variety of kinship identities and rights to item areas of lands related to the authors of the painting. Information technology called on the Australian nation-state to recognise a range of collective indigenous rights and individual human being rights, including self-determination and sovereignty. It urged the negotiation of a treaty between the Indigenous peoples and the country that would recognise prior ethnic "ownership, continued occupation, sovereignty and man rights and freedom" of Australia (Tickner 2001, pp. 40–41). It also proposed that the Commonwealth Authorities laissez passer laws for a "national system of land rights" (Council for Ancient Reconciliation).

4. Mabo Drawings—Murray Island Torres Strait—1992 High Court Ruling

A watershed moment in the history of Australian native championship law occurred in 1992. Information technology was marked by the legal success of the Meriam people of Mer (Murray Island) in the Torres Strait, in the at present famous Mabo state title case (French 2002, pp. 143–51; Weir 2012, p. 6). The claimants proved they had a standing connection with the state in question and rights and interests in the land under ancient and Torres Strait islanders' traditional law and custom. Their native championship was recognised in the 1992 High Court Mabo decision (Mabo 5 Queensland [No 2], 1992). Nonetheless this, the court had previously acknowledged the distinct legal rights of indigenous peoples in the state.vii Following Mabo, the native title was enacted in Federal legislation as the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) (NTA).8

The NTA establishes a organisation for recognising native title, making native title applications, forming native title agreements, and for holding and managing native championship rights. Native title rights and interests are unique for each native title property group, as based in their laws and customs, and reflecting the diversity of Indigenous peoples' cultural, legal and political traditions. However, native championship is not the same equally those laws and customs, rather it is the recognition of them. In this recognition, native championship brings with it a sweep of intercultural interactions, intricacies and ideologies around the law, Ethnic peoples' cultures and traditions, and separation thinking and connectivity thinking.

As evidence of the legal determination of these land rights, the claimant, Eddie Koiki Mabo (1936–1992), submitted a series of maps of the blocks of lands he held on Mer Isle. The maps were executed using coloured markers, black ink pen and watercolour paint on notepaper, and represented cartographic diagrams, indicating where the borders of his lands were. They were outlined using a herringbone outline, or marked with a diagonal stripe (National Library of Commonwealth of australia 2009a, 2009b). The sketch concerning Mabo's "Portion of Baugered on the hill site towards Tall end of Gelan paser (Hill)" was signed E. Mabo.ix These sketches were presented in support of other critical material presented to the court, and the claimant proved he had a continuing connexion with the land in question and had rights and interests in the country under aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders' traditional law and custom. This show besides supported his claim that he had continued to observe laws and customs which defined his ownership of rights and interests in the land.

The proof that established the ethnic ownership of the island and supported the claims for the continuity of indigenous occupation and the maintenance of their traditional customs and laws on the isle also included archival materials—wax cylinder recordings, photographs and films that had been made by the Cambridge Trek to the Torres Strait in 1898 (Koch 1996). The consequences of the Mabo decision were revolutionary, with the depiction of a new type of country right known as native championship. It was recognised throughout Australia and triggered the lodging of Showtime Nation peoples land title claims all over the nation.10

However, the strict requirements within the Native Title Human action accept made it hard for the majority of indigenous Australians to successfully apply for land rights (Weir 2012, p. 1). The examination for a claimant registration is frequently besides onerous in many respects and may deny worthy native title claims. Often, a situation arises where claims must be registered inside a ready notice period, and it is difficult for some claimants to provide the details required inside this period (especially where a court lodge is required). Similarly, the strict terms required by the courtroom for providing proof of a physical connection to the country can be difficult for some (Australian Human Rights Commission 2000; Keon-Cohen 2013). When the court favours propositional logic, the indigenous lack of literacy and skills to communicate effectively in English has been problematic, equally well as the fact that in some indigenous communities there is little business for the apparent contradictions in the information that they present (Neale 2003; Eades 2015). Further, the courtroom bias towards favouring written equally confronting that given orally has presented difficulties, as has its ability to access key information from indigenous claimants. Unlike Western culture, which values a prompt access to information, within indigenous civilization knowledge is non easily accessible, simply governed in highly selective means, according to age, spiritual affiliation and sex. In particular, the focus of proof in native titles is on the details of peoples' connections to places—the facts that are near likely to be restricted knowledge or "secret concern" (Anker 2005, p. 97).

The emphasis on "tradition" plays a large role the recognition of native titles and indigenous peoples' rights. Hither, the narrow frames of the constabulary recognise simply certain contemporary practices equally being "traditional enough" and demonstrating a continuity with the past (Otto and Pederson 2005). The Yorta Yorta'south claim for their river Country on the Murray River, on the southern edge of New South Wales and Victoria (Yorta Yorta Aboriginal Community vs. State of Victoria and Ors 1998), highlighted this outcome. Their contemporary practices of resource management and environmental conservation of the Land were rejected by Justice Olney equally valid bear witness of them continuing to engage in their traditional land practices. Farther, their adoption of commercial farming was seen as untraditional and antonymous to their status every bit traditional owners because they were seeking to make a commercial livelihood from the State. Olney ruled they had "abandoned" their native title traditions and that these practices were not part of the Yorta Yorta culture (pars. 126, 128) (Weir 2012, p. vii; Strelein 2001, p. 95).

5. 1971 Launch of Desert Acrylic Paintings at Papunya

As regards the apply of dotted acrylic paintings on canvas as legal instruments to claim native titles, the twelvemonth 1971 is significant. The desert art movement was founded at this time at Papunya, in the Northern Territory, through the collaboration of the local school teacher Geoffrey Bardon with local artists and elders. Papunya was a settlement which had been ready in 1959 by the government to administrate a number of primal desert tribes. The scholar Ulli Beier noted:

Papunya was established by the government in the early 1960s as a settlement for tribal Aboriginals, who had been persuaded, cajoled, pressured fifty-fifty forced to abandon their own way of life in the desert and accept the 'security', the monotony, and the bleakness of the life in a drove of broken-down shacks, with few jobs, no opportunities and often only the dole to proceed them alive.

During this menstruation of deficient resources, the desert men, when introduced to the opportunity to create paintings for sale, immediately saw the economic benefits that would follow. They were aware of the local commercial success of the Arnhem Land bawl artists and the widespread acclaim that had been accorded to the watercolour painting of the indigenous fundamental desert artist Albert Namatjira.eleven They too recognised that this collaborative initiative would give them the chance to reinvigorate their civilization and record traditional noesis for later generations. They were concerned that their traditional ceremonies and practices were increasingly being abased because the people could no longer hands admission their lands to deport such of import cultural activities. Furthermore, they saw the opportunity of using the Western medium of acrylic on canvas as a vehicle to promote their civilization to wider audiences. Their paintings deployed sacred symbology that encoded formalism values and sand drawings in culturally appropriate ways while referring to their cultural connections to their lands. What appealed to them was the possibility to advance their cultural self-determination. This transcultural aesthetic process gave them the ways to take control of their civilization for political purposes, as had the bawl artists at Yirrkala before them, and to utilise the paintings as evidence of their traditional entitlements in land title claims (Myers 2002, pp. 169–71).

The founding of the aboriginal-owned Papunya Tula Artists Cooperative by the Aboriginal men, in 1972, was seminal to accelerate this cause. It facilitated the product, administration, distribution and sale of their traditionally inspired acrylic paintings. In the post-obit decades, while the bark painting sales continued in Arnhem Country, acrylic fine art production spread to other communities in the desert. There, it was taken up past women and has connected to flourish since. During the 1970s and early 1980s, this do was promoted by two regime-funded bodies: the administrative, aboriginal-controlled Aboriginal Arts Board and the retail fine art-sales arrangement Aboriginal Arts and crafts Pty Ltd. (Johnson 2007; Peterson 1983; Geissler 2017, pp. 170–72; Geissler 2020; Geissler 2021). These organisations facilitated the promotion, sale and exhibition of indigenous artworks. Autonomously from providing a welcome source of income, the economic success facilitated a "tremendous resurgence of involvement in culture on the role of the Aborigines" (Canberra Times 1975), sparking a cultural renewal. Furthermore, it fostered confidence in the artists and the strength of their culture and encouraged the use of paintings in land title tribunals.

They were accepted in these legal forums equally living bear witness of the reality of the artists' traditional tribal sovereignty over item areas of country.12 The concept of such group ownership as axiomatic in traditional indigenous police finds resonance in the Western tradition of nationhood (Bleiker and Butler 2016, p. 64). As Australian historian Henry Reynolds explained:

Aboriginal tribes were, in effect pocket-sized nations which had long traditions of complex 'international' relations. They made war and peace, negotiated treaties, settled conflicts, arranged marriages and organised access to resources and right of fashion across territories

This traditional connection to the land and its expression in acrylic painting were passionately explained in the comment by Kuntjil Cooper, a Pitjantjatjara desert elder and artist from Irrunytju, in cardinal Australia.

When I am gone my grandchildren will be able to sympathise their culture when they run across my [acrylic] paintings. I want whitefellas to respect anangu [Pitjantjatjara people's] culture. When they encounter these important paintings, they will know that tjukurpa [Dreaming} is strong, that anangu {Aboriginal peoples] are strong.

6. Ngurrara one (1996) and Ngurrara 11 (1997) Canvas—Bully Sandy Desert of Western Australia—2007 Federal Court Ruling

An case of the successful use of acrylic paintings equally evidence in a country title claim is exemplified in 1997 for "Determination Area 'A'", for the Ngurrara peoples.13 On this occasion, the Ngurrara 11 acrylic canvass was successfully used as a legal instrument for the determination of a land title in the Cracking Sandy Desert, in northwestern Australia. It was a collaborative artwork by over fifty artists. The presentation of this painted solution equally show to the land title tribunal was agreed to past the claimants, because they were non fluent in English. They saw the familiar medium of painting as a way to graphically nowadays their ideas to the tribunal, namely, the relevant geographic and traditional information concerning their traditional ownership of the lands in question.

This claim, which began in 1996, was a two-stage procedure. The initial painting was Ngurrara 1 sail (Figure 1). Information technology occurred at Pirnirni, a clay pan site in the Swell Sandy Desert, where the recording of artists' stories from the site were painted onto canvas (National Museum of Australia n.d.a). They were represented by a series of abstract symbols—concentric circles, dots, arcs and lines which the claimants identified with specific physical locations in their lands. It was decided that each person would paint the department of land for which they were responsible within their law. The sail measured viii by five meters and asserted facts that related to the footing of the artists' entitlements and traditional relationships to their lands and to each other (Anker 2014, pp. 143–44).

The following year, as the claimants decided that the original lacked appropriate integration and scale, another painting, the Ngurrara 11 canvas, was produced (National Museum of Australia n.d.b). In the new canvas, with ten by eight metres, the designs and patterning of the related areas addressed the bug raised past the first merely departed from its more geometric, divided compositional construction. Information technology was more than organically conceived, using a blend of flowing colours and forms and illustrating the spirit of the interconnection betwixt peoples and lands that the artists wished to express (Lowe et al. 2011, p. 30). Importantly to the claimants, the painting represented both their country and its traditional constabulary. Commenting on the aerial, map-like cultural presentation of the painting, anthropologist Kirsten Anker, while referring to its aerial view, stated that it is

far more meaning for positioning people in relation to, and because of the landscape. Such land could never exist a possession. It is more than similar family. The relationship is one of care, stewardship. The map of country that it paints is total of people, history, constabulary, stories, connections, allusions and symbolism.

The individual claimants reinforced this passionate connection to their lands by giving a powerful brandish of oratory in their address to Justice Gilmor at a plenary session of the Native Championship Tribunal in 1997. Each stood on the traditional encoded section of the sail, with painted symbols that represented their lands, and presented their show to the tribunal in their traditional language—the closest thing to being on the country in question.xiv

Although this eloquent performative display and the aesthetic affect fabricated past the special traditionally encoded configurations of dots, circles and lines painted onto the awe-inspiring canvas were indecipherable to the non-indigenous observers, they were received past the tribunal as evidence derived direct from indigenous law (Gilmore 2007; Anker 2005, p. 54). The presentation of their art as cultural evidence, while non "a title deed" and representing something quite different to belongings, communicated in means supplementary to the proper facts of the case, by its entreatment to the senses through its colour and rhythms, its sense of infinite, the traditional narratives of the material provided by the artists to the court and the sense of authenticity that the presence and performative deportment of the claimants were able to generate at the desert hearing (Anker 2005, p. 106).

In the logic of native titles, the frame of reference which gives a painting value every bit evidence is the use of traditional designs which are intricately jump upwardly with the land, its boundaries and the Dreaming stories and law related to it (Anker 2005, p. 34). These presentations are understood past indigenous claimants as proof that they agree the requisite knowledge of their Land and continue to exercise information technology every bit law. Because of the demand to translate the encoded material in the paintings and to understand what indigenous law is, non-indigenous judicial authorities accept to not only to suspend their disbelief and put to i side their knowledge of how the mainstream world works, simply likewise interpret it through other principles, while accepting the authenticity of the bear witness presented.

The instance was only decided in the artists' favour in 2007 (National Museum of Commonwealth of australia n.d.a), when Justice Gilmore justified information technology in the determination of the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) s.87 A(4) 94A, by noting in her statement the vital nature of the additional show provided to the court for the example by the claimants. Significant in the show was the acknowledgement by the tribunal of the importance of "the overarching beingness of jila law" as a unique system that was shared past all members of the Ngurrara claim, and which was recognised every bit such past neighbouring indigenous groups and also actively practiced by the claimants to demonstrate their connection to the lands of the "Application surface area". The judgement also noted that the artists demonstrated their connectedness to the lands in question by "painting country" and the places "where they were born/found and grew up." Native Championship Act 1993 (Cth) southward.87A(four) 94A (Gilmore 2007).

7. Yirrkala Saltwater Bark Drove—Blue Mud Bay—2008 High Courtroom Ruling

Past contrast to the ii sometime case studies, an example in the bark medium where map-like painted representations of indigenous lands were used equally visual prove is the Yirrkala Saltwater Bawl Collection land title claim of 2008. The Yolŋu indigenous rights at upshot were those related to the intertidal zones of the coast, specifically the lands of Blue Mud Bay, nearly Yirrkala, in east Arnhem Country (Stubbs 2013 pp. 112–fifteen; Marawili 2013, p. 117).

The legal instruments in question were the fourscore bark paintings now in the collections of the National Maritime Museum in Sydney, which were painted c. 1997 (onwards) by twoscore-seven artists (Figure 2). The Chairman of the Northern Lands Council, Wali Wanungmurra, explained the traditional cognition encoded within the paintings to Raymattja Marika in the following style.

By painting these designs nosotros are telling you a story. From time immemorial nosotros have painted simply like you use a pencil to write with. Yes, nosotros use our knowledge to pigment from the aboriginal homelands to the lesser of the sea.

The paintings represented the visual and living traditions of the Yolŋu interacting with their saltwater countries (Buku-Larrngay Mulka Eye, in Association with Jennifer Isaacs and Associates 2014; Dhimurru Ancient Corporation 2021) Their traditional knowledge was there in the individualistic representations of the figures of fish, sharks, turtles, crocodiles, burn, spears, rocks, clouds and cross-hatched traditional designs used by the artists to infill the painted forms.15

Figure ii. (Australian National Maritime Museum 2018), Djambawa Marawili, Mangalili Yindiwirryun 1988, 159 × 75 cm, ochre on eucalyptus bawl, Australian National Maritime Museum Seawater Collection, purchased with the assistance of Stephen Grant of GrantPirrie Gallery © Djambawa Marawili. Courtesy Buku-Larrnggay Mulka.sixteen

Figure 2. (Australian National Maritime Museum 2018), Djambawa Marawili, Mangalili Yindiwirryun 1988, 159 × 75 cm, ochre on eucalyptus bark, Australian National Maritime Museum Seawater Drove, purchased with the help of Stephen Grant of GrantPirrie Gallery © Djambawa Marawili. Courtesy Buku-Larrnggay Mulka.xvi

The artworks refer to the traditional narratives relating to ancestral beings and their actions, equally well equally the relations between the peoples, places, the sea and h2o (Pasco Gaymarani 2011). Art Center manager Andrew Blake explained:

These paintings represent the Saltwater Country of the Yolngu. They reveal saltwater in many states, show qualities of depth, surface, and the mix which shroud the secrets: the sacred and frequently unsafe land just below the surface, the totemic life forms that inhabit these waters and the profound fronts in the deepest waters. The surface depicts the Ancestral Beings—instigators and adventurers in canoes. Their presence and their deeds are also shown every bit icons that float from association estate to association manor, thus connecting people in organised systems of buying, ceremonies and rights to country. When this connexion is established, the giant clouds on the horizon accept up the waters, to return as fresh h2o (rain) over the sea, over the declension, over the land, into the rivers that run to encounter the declension, to encounter the tides before mixing with the currents to complete the wheel. All the h2o—both fresh and table salt, both in the land and saltwater country is sacred. The motility of these waters is enacted in ritual dance and narrated in the sacred vocal cycles.

The paintings were deployed as a form of collaborative community action. They were used as cultural material supporting the fundamental testify on xxx July 2008, when the determination of the Australian High Court was made—the Blue Mud Bay Case (Brennan 2008). The paintings were accepted as title deeds of the artists' rights, associated with the coastal intertidal zones. The paintings presented "an argument that the coastal waters between the low and high-tide marking involved sacred sites both in the physical and spiritual planes" (Anu 2017). The High Court'south decision gave aboriginal ownership to eighty percent of the Northern Territory's coastline, a ruling that included a precedence over any commercial interests or angling (Anu 2017).

8. Conclusions

The elucidation of the strategies used in 3 successful land title cases within the Australian legal arrangement, each relying on different visual artistic expressions—drawings on paper, acrylic on sheet, and ochre on bark—highlighted the legal bureau of visual fine art as a style of indigenous Australian cultural expression, and demonstrated how they acted as cultural evidence in establishing sovereignty over traditional lands. The iii mediums that were chosen reflected their popular status within contemporary art practice.

For the Mabo drawings on paper, the country entitlements of the Meriam peoples were successfully prosecuted past the claimant Eddie Mabo, past presenting a serial of colourful map-like sketches (some using watercolours, others coloured inks) of his various land allocations on Mer Island, his homeland in the Torres Strait. These were presented to the Federal Court in 1992 in conjunction with other cultural materials and led to the 1992 Land Title Act.

By dissimilarity, the successful large-scale Ngurrara 11 canvas of 1997, painted in acrylic as a collaborative cultural production by the Ngurrara peoples and presented as legal evidence to a tribunal set on their desert lands, allowed for a platform for multi-stakeholder entitlements to exist presented in one painting. Though the symbolic encoding of the paintings and spoken oratory of the claimants as testify was indecipherable to the viewers and the courtroom, the compelling visual and spoken modes of presentation were understood and recognised by the court to be representative of accurate indigenous testimonies. These findings led to changes to the Native Championship Human action in 2007.

For the bark medium report, the visual prove presented in the eighty paintings of the Saltwater Bawl Collection proved disquisitional every bit support evidence for the 2008 saltwater intertidal constabulary claim of Blueish Mud Bay. While non a single collaborative work, similar Ngurrara 11, the paintings were received by the court as representative of the individual claimants' cultural links to their tidal lands. As a torso of work, they contributed to the success of their land title claim.

In the aforementioned word, while the visual elements of the artworks were not the determining factors in the native title determinations, simply only part of them, they were nevertheless recognised as effective advice tools. They added new cultural context to the evidence and were seen as legitimately authored legal instruments of the First Nation claimants. These findings indicate to the importance of ethnic Australian visual art as a mode of legitimate legal show within the Australian legal system. Information technology demonstrates that visual art comprehensively presents First Nation Australians' cultural cognition and histories associated with their long-standing and enduring connections to their country. Further, information technology provides an effective tool for meaningful intercultural engagement.

The author acknowledges the traditional owners of Country throughout Commonwealth of australia. She recognises their continuing connection to lands, waters and culture and pays respect to the elders' past, nowadays and time to come.

Funding

This inquiry received no external funding.

Institutional Review Lath Statement

Non applicative.

Informed Consent Argument

Non applicable.

Acknowledgments

Figure 1. Ngurrara artists painting Ngurrara Sheet II at Pirnini Dandy Sandy Desert, May 1997. Photography K. Dayman. Used with permission from Ngurrara Artists and Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency. Copyright Ngurrara Artists and Mangkaja Arts Resource Bureau. Figure 2. (Australian National Maritime Museum 2018), Djambawa Marawili, Mangalili Yindiwirryun 1988, 159 × 75 cm, ochre on eucalyptus bark, Australian National Maritime Museum Seawater Collection, purchased with the aid of Stephen Grant of GrantPirrie Gallery © Djambawa Marawili. Courtesy Buku-Larrnggay Mulka. Epitome used with permission from Djambawa Marawili and the photography from the Australian National Maritime Museum, Sydney.

Conflicts of Involvement

The writer declares no conflict of involvement.

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1	Ancient laws were encoded in each group's religious tradition and handed downward from generation to generation, past word of mouth. They were a role of the oral tradition, passed on by the guardians of that tradition, who gained access to it as they were initiated. All aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait islanders were familiar with their ain laws and with the daily rights and obligations that were imposed on them past these. From early on childhood, they learnt what the law allowed and what it forbade. They knew both the spiritual dangers and the punishments that threatened the law-breaker. They witnessed the process past which offenders were punished and the cases argued and decided (Ginibi 1994, p. 8).
2	These sacred Dreamings are referred to using different names, dependent on what region of Australia and what specific language group the individual belongs to.
iii	All Yolngu peoples in northeast Arnhem State belong to one of two basic divisions or moiety, called Dhuwa and Yirritja. Children vest to the aforementioned moiety as their father; their female parent belongs to the other moiety. All things in the Yolngu globe, including Spirit Beings, association groups, plant and creature species and areas of land or h2o, belong to one of the 2 moieties. The Dhuwa categorisation is given to the Djang'kawu Sisters, the morning star, the h2o goanna, the stringy bark tree and the land in and effectually Yirrkala. The Yirritja identity, by dissimilarity, is given to the evening star, stingray, cycad palm and members of the Mangalili clan (Dhimurru Aboriginal Corporation, Yolngu-civilization, Dhirurru Website. http://www.dhimurru.com.au/yolngu-cuture.html (accessed on xviii August 2020)).
4	Within indigenous traditions, ownership or the entitlement to use lands is often shared amongst individuals.
5	The word country is oftentimes used to describe ethnic lands. It evokes complex associations, meanings and forms. While one country might have many peoples affiliated with it, i individual might have many countries. A dynamic, multi-interconnected arrangement, the nature of these relationships is negotiated over an individual's lifetime (Weir 2012, p. two). Foley and Anderson "explain Australian Aboriginal country rights as a only claim of a long historical movement, driven by Aboriginal voices of resistance to dispossession", pointing out that "Native Title offers weak form of championship to some communities, but the 'extinguishment' of claims for the vast majority". (Foley and Anderson 2006, p. 830).
half dozen	The signatories of the Barunga Agreement were the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, on behalf of the Northern Territory of Commonwealth of australia, the Chair of the Northern Land Council, the Chair of the Anindilyakwa Land Council and the Chair of the Tiwi Land Quango. The Barunga Agreement of 1988 was a painted annunciation on canvas that referred to the aspirations of the "Ethnic owners and occupiers of Australia". It was produced past Indigenous leaders in the Northern Territory every bit a political gesture of self-determination to the Australian Government. Stylistically, it combined both the cross hatched painting grade, from Arnhem Land, and the dotted-style painting from the desert (AIATSIS) (Tickner 2001, pp. 40–41).
7	This was in respect to Gunditjmara people. Meet Onus five Alcoa of Australia Ltd (1981) 149 CLR 27 (Weir 2012, p. 13).
8	"The Mabo Litigation Records arise from the litigation conducted in both the Supreme Court of Queensland and the High Court of Australia. They comprise a Statement of Facts by the Plaintiffs, wills, state transactions, courtroom transcripts, exhibits, pleadings, applications, witness statements, submissions, correspondence, memoranda and research textile. They take been arranged into volumes in broad chronological club. Many of the papers are in copy format, particularly the research materials" (National Library of Australia (b)).
9	Maps included references to cardinal points, local roads, vegetation, topography, shoreline, beaches, villages, airport and clan lands.
10	The presentation of an indigenous native title claim can take over six years to finalise.
11	Papunya's early painters, Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri and Kaapa Tjampitjinpa, had worked as artists prior to coming to Papunya, and some men were actively painting with Kaapa Tjampitjinpa at Papunya (Johnson 2010b, pp. 11–43).
12	The aboriginal contemporary art move, from which this practice has its straight origins, is typically traced to Papunya and its art centre in the cardinal desert, in 1971. It was founded on the commercial success of Arnhem land bark paintings in the art marketplace, before in the twentieth century (Geissler 2017, 2019, 2021). In Papunya, however, the content and the medium were quite different. Instead of bark painting and ochre, sheet and acrylic were used. The enthusiasm for this motion is due to the local teacher Geoffrey Bardon, and desert artists were motivated to reinvigorate their culture through painting. This resulted in the innovative adaption of traditional imagery in culturally appropriate ways. These new versions of cultural blueprint not merely promoted the composure of the civilization and the individuality of the artists simply also new and compelling aesthetic forms and ethnic ideas that would become foundational to shape the identity discourses of the nation (Myers 2002, pp. 5–6, 64, 284, 289; Morphy 1998, pp. 16–twenty; Anker 2014, p. 160; Smith 1980; McLean 1998, p. 114).Papunya paintings were map-like renderings of Dreaming stories, aeriform maps of cultural heritage. They were informed by the pictorial vocabulary of ceremonial trunk design and ground paintings which, in this new expression, saw their transference from ochres to acrylics and the deployment of graphic symbols that were encoded with multiple meanings. Concentric circles represented sacred rocks, campsites or campfires. U-shapes signified both human and spiritual beings. Wavy lines referred to water and strait lines to bequeathed journey or travelling routes. The highpoint of this fine art occurred in Possum Spirit Dreaming through Napperby Country, the spectacular, map-like canvas covering thousands of kilometres in the desert. It was painted by Clifford Possum and Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri and consisted of multiple Dreaming narratives, namely Possum, Erstwhile Man, Yam, Sun and Moon, depicted in i painting (Sutton 1988a, p. 112).
13	Determination Surface area "A" is communally held by the Ngurrara people—the Walmajarri, Mangala, Juwaliny, Wangkajunga and Manjilarra peoples living in and around Fitzroy Crossing. Determination Expanse "B" was a dissever claim. The determination of "A" that was sought covers some 77,810 square kilometres and is located in the vicinity of the Great Sandy Desert, between the southern extent of the Kimberley pastoral leases and the Percival Lakes. This is land from which native peoples had been expelled in the 1950s and 1960s (Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency 2021).
14	This innovative evidential framework and meaningful cultural context could not have been reproduced in a conventional court.
15	For each there is a transcript in traditional language and English of the traditional stories associated with the Land depicted.
sixteen	"This bark painting could be described equally portraying the cantankerous sections of the Mangalili Saltwater country. The miny'tji (sacred clan design) represents the saltwater surrounding the ancestral sacred fish spear that was thrown at Yindiwirryun, a sacred stone. This bawl shows the turtle Yinipunayi swimming effectually the base of Yindiwirryun and the Wanupini (storm clouds) gathering on the horizon. The Burrkun, an Ten shaped configuration on the painting is linked to the bequeathed female parent Nyapalinu and her characteristics of womanhood and fertility." Australian National Maritime Museum 2018, 'Mangalili Yindiwirryun 1998, Djambawa Marawili', ANMM website, http://collections.anmm.gov.au/objects/14497/mangalili-yindiwirryun?ctx=66ddafbe-fe3f-42d0-947f-a5879d49cf40&idx=0 (accessed on 12 April 2021).

Figure 1. Ngurrara artists painting Ngurrara Sheet 2 at Pirnini Peachy Sandy Desert, May 1997. Photography K. Dayman (Used with permission from Ngurrara Artists and Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency). Copyright Ngurrara Artists and Mangkaja Arts Resources Agency.

Effigy 1. Ngurrara artists painting Ngurrara Canvass II at Pirnini Great Sandy Desert, May 1997. Photography K. Dayman (Used with permission from Ngurrara Artists and Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency). Copyright Ngurrara Artists and Mangkaja Arts Resources Bureau.

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