SO, WHAT'S NEW? NATIVE TITLE REPRESENTATIVE BODIES AND PRESCRIBED BODIES CORPORATE AFTER WARD

摘要

Measured pessimism must not be confused with despair.54 Aboriginal people will only ever he able to redress the power imbalances against them in Australian society to the extent that they have political force that can be exerted on wider society. Notwithstanding its faults, its disappointments and its rococo intricacies, the common law doctrine of native title and its statutory expression remain a source of power for Aboriginal people. In the aftermath of Ward, the rules may have fluctuated somewhat, but native title in the hands of the representative institutions of Aboriginal people remains a fecund tool for coercing the institutions of non-Indigenous Australia into affording Aboriginal people a better deal in society. It may not be 'justice', it may not have the standing of a treaty, it may be only begrudgingly supported by some of the nations' elites, it may have its skewering limitations, but in pragmatic terms it can be still skilfully utilised in order to achieve Indigenous aspirations. In this sense, the aftermath to Ward is redolent of longer continuities in settler-relations in Australia: Indigenous people have always been better served by a critical and pragmatic engagement with non4ndigenous authority than by faithful observance of its liturgies, or trust in the substantive equity of its principles.