ABSTRACT
The insignia thesis, which concerns a formal identity rather than an identity based on self-understanding, enables to say that Aboriginal claims that the appropriation of art is the appropriation of identity are true. The emphasis on Aboriginal law and rights is not only central to understanding Australian Aboriginal people's experience of colonisation, it is also central to understanding the power relationships that define Aboriginal identity in contemporary Australian society. The Western concept of insignia has possibly become more like the Aboriginal conception of insignia as property than it was at the time of colonisation. Jeremy Webber has claimed that all 'indigenous rights' are translations of social practices and indigenous interests that mediate between those practices and interests and a broader legal framework as a response to colonisation. The chapter argues that a Hohfeldian analysis of rights seems to capture Yolngu practices, and that therefore the concept right is applicable in relation to Yolngu practices.
