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The Reconstitution of Aboriginal Sociality Through the Identification of Traditional Owners in New South Wales
Author(s) -
Correy Simon
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/j.1835-9310.2006.tb00068.x
Subject(s) - sociality , kinship , personhood , indigenous , identification (biology) , sociology , identity (music) , phenomenon , relevance (law) , social identity theory , epistemology , genealogy , social group , law , anthropology , social science , political science , history , aesthetics , ecology , biology , philosophy
This paper argues that native title determination applications, facilitated by the Commonwealth Native Title Act 1993 , constitute a modern social phenomenon. A characteristic of these applications is that they contain processes associated with demonstrating traditional modes of land ownership, which compel claimants to engage in critically reflexive projects that contain the potential to problematise fundamental dimensions of their intersubjective‐accord, including the very concept of indigenous relatedness. With particular reference to situations in New South Wales, this paper suggests that the identification of traditional owners and the definition of claimant groups actively contribute to the reconstitution of contemporary Aboriginal sociality. In this process, ideas of relatedness are converted into ideas of descent and concomitantly notions of kinship, personhood and identity are reconstructed. Early anthropological research regarding descent, kinship and the relevance of groups to descriptions of society has alerted us to some of the problems highlighted in this paper, but they appear to have been largely forgotten in native title processes.