ABSTRACT
Aboriginal people of Australia have frequently been styled people without any formal political structures. Using a processual definition of "politicks" (following Swartz 1968 and emphasizing the use of power and goals that are public), the evidence relating to land tenure from the Cape York Peninsula presented here shows that Aboriginal people do indeed "have" politics, and that having politics for them crucially involves control of land and resources. Among Aboriginal people of the Cape York Peninsula, individuals have some freedom to choose what they will "inherit." Succession to rights in land, language, totems, names, and so on is to a significant extent a matter of the appropriation of property rights of ancestors by living actors, either for themselves or on behalf of their children or other heirs. Such choice and action contradict the conventional wisdom that Aboriginal society is rigidly governed by "tradition," The Dreamtime and the Law are unquestioned, succession is more or less automatic, and property is largely transmitted patrilineally. The proper understanding of Aboriginal territoriality requires attention to the politics of the appropriation of property by the living. One must also recognize that large amounts of energy are channelled into ritual and other symbolic forms of competition.
