The McGlade Case: A Noongar History of Land, Social Justice and Activism (original) (raw)

2017, Australian Feminist Law Journal

This essay examines recent significant political events in the context of Australian native title triggered by a Federal Court case, McGlade v National Native Title Registrar (2017) 340 ALR 419 brought by several Noongar people from the south west of Western Australia, and the hasty amendments to the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) that followed. I am writing this analysis as a Noongar researcher and academic, human rights lawyer, and the daughter of one of those Court applicants, Noongar elder Mingli Wanjurri McGlade. This essay includes dialogue between Mingli McGlade and myself, documenting and contextualising the McGlade case within a wider Noongar history and backdrop of racial discrimination, social justice, Noongar activism, and resistance. [J]ust as I prefer not to embrace the terms 'dissident' and 'dissenting' as they were used in argument before the Court, so I prefer not to characterise the refusal of a person in Ms McGlade's position as a 'veto' or as 'frustrating' an ILUA. As I have noted … an individual who holds views different from those of the majority of the individuals constituting the registered native title claimant may nevertheless be conscientiously performing her or his representative role … One cannot assume the motives for entering into an ILUA are any more objectively appropriate and reasonable than the motives for not doing so. There are simply different perspectives, and it is for the claim group as a whole, and the claim group only, to decide which perspective should prevail. Justice Mortimer in McGlade v Native Title Registrar 1 If he is an agitator, he is in good company. Many of the great religious and political figures of history have been agitators, and human progress owes much to the efforts of these and the many who are unknown. As Wilde aptly pointed out … 'Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them … Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilisation'. Mr Neal is entitled to be an agitator. Justice Murphy in Neal v The Queen 2 Later on in 2012 and again in 2014 we set up the camp at Martigarup (around Heirisson Island) we wanted sovereignty. I was there most days for months until the police kept coming and closing the camp. A big officer one time pushed me … We were there to talk