From time immemorial, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations have worked both to fulfil their obligations to Country and to achieve their communities’ development aspirations. In the contemporary era, these efforts have included success at (re)acquiring an array of property rights – through, eg, freehold purchases, native title determinations, declarations of Indigenous Protected Areas, varied co-management agreements, and recognition of national heritage or World Heritage status. However, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations face a dilemma: current mechanisms in Australian settler-colonial law, including those provided by the CATSI Act, state incorporation legislation and co-management agreements, do not provide governance structures that simultaneously support First Nations to fulfil their obligations to Country under their own lore/law and to manage their external relationships with local, state, national and international governments under settler colonial law.
This research project built upon ongoing Indigenous nation building (INB) collaborations and was directed by a network of prominent Indigenous nation building practitioners from the Gugu Badhun, Gunditjmara, Ngarrindjeri, Nyungar, Paakintji and Wiradjuri Nations, and the Indigenous Nations and Collaborative Futures (INCF) research hub within Jumbunna Institute of Indigenous Education and Research at UTS to explore whether a new model of collaborative governance might address this concern. In particular, it explored the potential of statutory authorities, embedded in Commonwealth or state law, to facilitate appropriate land jurisdiction within a genuinely pluralist legal structure.