Native Title placements offer hands-on experience for students

Every year, a few lucky Australian anthropology students undertake a unique and valuable field placement. 

 

Offered by the ANU Centre for Native Title Anthropology, these give students a taste of what it’s like to work as an anthropologist in Native Title. They’re open to students from the Australian National University, La Trobe University and the University of Queensland. In 2015, two students were chosen: Natalie Bell from La Trobe University and Marian Faa from the University of Queensland.

 

Marian was hosted by the Kimberley Land Council in Halls Creek for two weeks in October 2015. Her interest in Indigenous issues stem from having grown up on Thursday Island in a small Indigenous community. Even so, she described Halls Creek as being an entirely different world.

 

For Marian, who is doing a double degree in journalism and anthropology, the focus of her placement was two authorisation meetings she assisted with. Authorisation meetings are where Native Title claimants agree to give legal authorisation for the applicants who are going to be submitted on the claim.

 

“The anthropology and the legal side of things and the community – that’s where they all intersect and converge in these big authorisation meetings,” Marian says.

 

Marian managed the use of the microphone – which in itself may not sound significant. But, as Marian explains, “Certain people can be very vocal and certain groups really want to make their point, so there’s a lot of competition to have the floor basically. 

 

“So I had to act as a bit of a mediator.”

 

She helped her supervisor, senior anthropologist Dr Tony Redmond, with logistics. These included having smaller meetings with claimants to get a sense of issues that might arise and derail the authorisation meetings, and driving around to remind people that meetings were on.

 

“These are some of the logistical things anthropologists have to do that I found out about that were surprising to me,” Marian says.

 

Native Title Centre Director Professor Nic Peterson says field placements teach students about the full complexity of the issues, and learn about the gathering of evidence.

 

“Whether or not it leads to them taking up a post in a regional native title representative body that helps Aboriginal people make claims, all students report how enormously powerful the experience of such placements was for them,” Professor Peterson says. 

 

“It greatly deepens their understanding of the many issues facing Aboriginal people in remote Australia.”

 

Applications for the centre’s 2016 field placements are now open and close on 29 April. Click here for further details.