ABSTRACT
In the early 1990s, I worked as a member of a team of experts on a land claim in Cape York Peninsula in north Queensland, Australia, lodged by Yiithuwarra, Lamalama and some other Aboriginal peoples (Aboriginal Land Tribunal (ALT), 1993, 1996). It was this experience that caused me to develop an understanding of Aboriginal accounts of their lineages, families and ultimately their land holding corporations, one more inclusive than the standard anthropological explanations, and which relied on the exegesis of knowledgeable men and women from these groups. Although this was not an innovative idea—Rigsby and Williams had influenced me—it was a problem I have elaborated in different ways. (Langton, 1997, 2002, 2006; Rigsby & Williams, 1991; Williams 1982, 1986, 1987). From the late 19th century, thousands of their people had been forcibly removed from their traditional lands and incarcerated as wards of the state in highly regimented and supervised Aboriginal Reserves and brought under the strict control of ‘Protectors’ or their agents in order to evacuate the presence of Aboriginal people from land designated for pastoral leases for stock grazing purposes.
