Introduction to the discussion

Abstract

BARBARA: Because I didn’t introduce the session today, before I give the microphone to Bob Tonkinson, I would just like to make a few comments. I think it’s very important the way everybody has insisted on the importance of history, and also on the issue of cognitive kinship in Native Title because it’s not just an issue for Noongar people, for people who live where there are cities, but also everywhere in Australia where people in one way or another have been displaced, or were moving before the settlements were organised. The issue of Noongar land that was presented by Virginie Bernard, was already discussed in the 1990’s in Broome, for instance, when the Rubibi Corporation was created, with Yawuru around Broome, the importance of history then. I would just like to tell a personal story because the reason why I was involved there at the time, in an oral history project that I was asked to work with my ex-mother-in-law who was a Yawuru woman. She had been recording since the early 1980’s the history of displacement in the Broome region. There were about 12 big families involved who were later in the Rubibi Corporation. This project led to a book that was going to be published by Magabala Books but the day before going to print, it was already announced to come out, it was seized by the State. And what was in this book? There were many, many testimonies, I mean transcribed, that was my job, and criss-crossed with any literature I could find in French, in English or in German [...]