ABSTRACT
The Ngurrara canvas represents a possible bridge between cultural systems: a way for Indigenous people to 'map' their lands into a visual medium to meet the evidentiary requirements for establishing native title in an Australian legal system based on white knowledge systems. The significance of visual representations, as opposed to written forms of knowledge, was highlighted in the Yolngu Bark Petitions presented to the House of Representatives of the Australian Parliament in 1963. The petitions were presented as a response to the failure of the federal Government to negotiate with traditional land owners over mining of their lands and the removal of more than 300 square kilometres of their land for bauxite mining. The document's failure to protect the Yolngu interests, according to Yunipingu, was evidence of the invisibility to the Balanda of Yolngu law, leading to the realisation that the only way of fighting for land rights in Gove was through Balanda law.
