ABSTRACT
Process funding supplied to rep bodies by respondents was always in order to progress particular matters and was never able to remedy deficiencies in structural capacity. Treated miserably and never taken into the fold, the bastard children of the native title system were to be kept in the poor house. Funded to fail, it is unsurprising that the rep bodies often did. Ambivalences were associated with the change; for good or ill, something of the legitimacy and organisational culture of rep bodies was undoubtedly lost, but the gains were greater liberal accountability and stability. The unloved and unacknowledged bastards had been replaced with hired help. In Australian domestic society the work was as exotic as any to be found and, if not exactly 'letting the slave go free', appeared to involve giving the legal and political system a gentle nudge in an emancipative direction.
