Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Mumbulla – Spiritual – Contact, 1979

Mumbulla – Spiritual – Contact, 1979

ML 88/614
Bound photographic essay

This was a submission to the NSW Government’s 1978 Aboriginal Land Rights Inquiry. The Select Committee Inquiry, Chaired by the Member for Woronora, Mr Maurie Keane with cross-bench membership, produced two key reports to government, the ‘First’ in August 1980 and ‘Second’ in April 1981. The Select Committee was not only revolutionary in how they consulted Aboriginal people, they also led to significant new laws in NSW. Foremost amongst was the NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act, 1983. The Select Committee’s terms of reference were to inquire into: Land rights for Aboriginal people in NSW and protection of sacred and significant sites.

Footnotes

Dr Heidi Norman, Senior Lecturer, Social and Political Change, University of Technology, Sydney, 2013

The conducting of an Inquiry was first raised in the NSW Parliament by Mr Maurie Keane in August 1978:

... there is a method which could be satisfactorily pursued by the Government to resolve this problem.  That is the establishment of a commission of inquiry to provide the Government with recommendations on how land rights can be implemented … it must be remembered that although the [Commonwealth] Woodward commission provides some guidance for the pursuit of this objective, the specifics of [NSW] must be taken into serious consideration (Keane, NSW Parliament Assembly, 23rd August, 1978).

The Wallaga Lake Yuin Tribe Land Claim, sent to the Premier in June 1978, requested ‘the title deeds for our tribal land to be handed over to our community here at Wallaga Lake to be held by us and our people in perpetuity’ (Yuin Tribe, Wallaga Lake, Thomas, Campbell, Mumbler, (and 55 others), letter to the Premier Neville Wran, 1978, p 1).*

Today, we have had almost all of it [land] taken away from us. We are forced to live on just a few acres that remain to us, and even this we cannot call our own as long as we do not have the title deeds. We must always live in fear and insecurity, worrying if even the little we have will be taken away from us … (ibid, p 1).


* The Yuin correspondence to the Premier in part reflected their frustration with the ability to recover their land under the Aboriginal Lands Trust.


Security of tenure free from Government power was a constant theme in the South Coast land demand. But the issue of security is couched in terms of culture and tradition. It is as much about securing the past, present and future as it is about security afforded under the modern land tenure system.