Surface Rights: Aboriginal Lands and Minerals Under the Woodward Royal Commission

On the 50-year anniversary of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act, this seminar turns to the Woodward Commission on Aboriginal Land Rights in the Northern Territory, focusing on the question of the recognition of Aboriginal mineral rights. Why were Aboriginal mineral rights not recognised in 1976 when they were assumed in Woodward’s terms of reference? Looking at the submissions and the transcripts of the Commission’s public hearings, Associate Professor Laura Rademaker finds that Woodward advanced the case against Aboriginal mineral rights, asserting that, when it came to minerals, Aboriginal people’s relationship to the state as citizens must precede rights that arose from their status as First Peoples. Woodward anticipated strong public objections to the recognition of Aboriginal mineral rights and argued that Aboriginal rights were to be balanced with those of ‘the whole community’. The anticipation of public backlash, rather than later the reality of it, curtailed the scope of the Commission’s recommendations.

Laura Rademaker is a DECRA research fellow. Her current project looks at the history of Indigenous self-determination in Australia. She is the author of numerous books, including Found in Translation: Many Meanings on a North Australian Mission (University of Hawai’i Press, 2018), Tiwi Story: Turning History Upside Down (Newsouth, 2023), and Aboriginal Rock Art and the Telling of History (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Her work explores the possibilities of ‘cross-culturalising’ history, interdisciplinary histories as well as oral history and memory. She is interested in religion, gender, secularisation, and 'deep history'. She is an editor of History Australia, monographs editor for Aboriginal History Monographs and secretary of the Religious History Association.

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