Contesting Native Title: From Controversy to Consensus in the Struggle Over Indigenous Land Rights

Description

After the historic Mabo judgement in 1992, Aboriginal communities had high hopes of obtaining land rights around Australia. What followed is a dramatic story of hard-fought contests over land, resources, money and power, yielding many frustrations and mixed outcomes. Based on extensive research, enriched by intimate experience as a lawyer and negotiator, David Ritter offers both an insider's perspective and a cool-headed and broad-ranging account of the native title system. In lucid prose Ritter examines the contributions of the players that contested and adjudicated native title: Aboriginal leaders and their communities, multinational resource companies, pastoralists, courts and tribunals, politicians and bureaucrats. His account lays bare the conflicts, compromises and conceits beneath the surface of the native title process.

David Ritter teaches at the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Australia. He is currently working in a senior campaigns position with Greenpeace in London.