ABSTRACT
“Connection to Country” is a fundamental, constitutive element of establishing native title in Australia. The construct provides a splice of space–time, in which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander law and custom must flow substantially uninterrupted from the past to the present, to gain recognition under settler law as native title. This chapter seeks to unravel settler/Aboriginal law interconnections through the lens of legal geography method. Legal geography typically seeks to make apparent how “time”, “space” and “law” crystallise around a conception of place. The intention is to probe by what method(s) are ruptures in the continuity of connection achieved? How is the space–time of Aboriginal relationships to place rendered discontinuous? How does law simultaneously perpetuate discontinuities while ensuring narrative continuity with respect to place? The methodological insights offered by critical legal geographers as part of the spatial and material turn in the social sciences and law are pivotal to thinking through these questions. Conceptions of space as dynamic and malleable, as well as shaping law and being shaped by law, provide a platform to engage with calls by Indigenous researchers to decolonise methods and the archival record. The conclusion looks to the possibility of using legal geography method to deconstruct the judicial history of materialising place that sits at the heart of native title.
