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Owners versus Bubu Gujin: Land Rights and Getting the Language Right in Guugu Yimithirr Country
Author(s) -
Haviland John B.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
journal of linguistic anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.463
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1548-1395
pISSN - 1055-1360
DOI - 10.1525/jlin.1996.6.2.145
Subject(s) - legislation , multilingualism , land rights , land tenure , sociology , land law , law , political science , ethnology , history , archaeology , pedagogy , agriculture
Recent Queensland Aboriginal land rights legislation and court decisions have produced a series of land claims since 1992. Many claims involve speakers of Guugu Yimithirr (GY), residents of Hopevale Aboriginal Community who are descended both from local Aborigines and from others. Much of the support for claims of "traditional" ownership flows from putative owners' knowledge of GY speech practices. Yet legal constructions of such practices accord with invented, rather than historical, "traditions." Heretofore, strictly local matters of appropriate GY talk and complex patterns of multilingualism and linguistic affiliation have been refashioned, recast, and exported into wider arenas as part of the process of legitimizing land claims. In that process, language and land—far from offering community—are among the ingredients of division and conflict.