Native Title policies

Native Title policy is offal thrown to a legion of lawyers... 22nd March 2009

We want to believe that Indigenous Land Councils offer benefits to Indigenous peoples.
We want to believe that the right of negotiation might bring Indigenous peoples more than simply access to their land, but some kind of economic return from another's want of use...
A while ago I was asked about Native Title, about its policies... and I sat thinking, as I was surrounded by a lawyer and anthropologist, what answer they were expecting...
Are there any right answers here??!
Prior to this meeting I had sat thinking about what Native Title had given to many of Australia's Indigenous peoples... and besides thinking the obvious, the SFA - 'sweet f... all' I had thought whilst sitting there, that Native Title had given Indigenous peoples legions of lawyers and anthropologists... legal and anthropological/historical litigation dressed up as 'benefits' and 'hope' for people, a people, for many, entrenched in poverty.
Yeah right, what kind of benefits are those...??
The right to negotiate when a mining company is breathing down your neck...what kind of negotiations might that be - when rushed into thinking what commercial anthropologists are thinking - when under pressure from lawyers, who are, in turn, under pressure from Mining companies and government administrators...waving fingers and demanding outcomes...
Yep, Native Title has given Indigenous people legions of lawyers.
And what are the policies... ??
The policies are that anthropologists/archaeologists/historians, given limited time, and under pressure, should come up with the 'Indigenous goods' the evidence and the indigenous will to agree and all their hidden memories after an hour or several days of yarning... so their talk can then be thrown into the arena or shark pool where lawyers might feed (read prosper).
I remember having been represented in court by lawyers' Johnston and MacIntyre... when I had climbed a crane at the old Swan Brewery in 1989.
These two lawyers, the latter who later represented Eddie Mabo, spent hours arguing points of law.
Sure, these two weren't what I'd call sharks... they were, more 'givers than takers,' but the Noongar never got an inch of their lands at their site of Goonininup aka 'the old Swan Brewery'.
And whilst the 'Mabo/MacIntyre' case recognised Native Title in the islands off QLD, it didn't translate into something similar on the mainland...or did it???
I mean, Native Title has meant what, exactly??
Has it come to mean the same thing as freehold title??
Can it be sold off by Indigenous 'owners'??
Or can it only be fished from, camped upon, utilised...
And the lawyers... where are they...??
Their business and livelihoods remain the same, there connections will never end.
They have what one might call 'a perpetual lease of association' tied to something that few of us can grasp or understand.
Whilst there are legal questions, the dominant law of the land will always find legal definitions and points of law to contest, resolve and question.
But what and where for for the Indigenous landholder... the land connected... land knower?? (or is that land owner??)
They will always have the right to negotiate... it seems, but only if they are accompanied by a LAWYER...