Gove land rights case

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In December 1968, the Yolngu people living in Yirrkala, who were the traditional owners of the Gove Peninsula in Arnhem Land, obtained writs in the Northern Territory Supreme Court against the Nabalco Corporation, which had secured a twelve-year bauxite mining lease from the Federal Government. Their goal was to establish in law their rightful claim to their homelands. Their action against Nabalco was known informally as the Gove land rights case, and formally as Milirrpum v Nabalco Pty Ltd (1971), and was presided by Justice Blackburn.

The Yolngu people claimed they enjoyed sovereign rights over their land and sought declarations to occupy the land free from interference pursuant to their native title rights.

The Yolngu people had petitioned the Australian House of Representatives in August 1963 with a bark petition after the government sold part of the Arnhem Land reserve on 13 March of that year to a bauxite mining company. The government had not consulted the traditional owners at the time.

In a historic and controversial decision, Justice Blackburn found that the Yolngu people could not prevent mining on their lands because Australia had been legally terra nullius before European settlement, meaning that it was empty, unoccupied land, and therefore belonging to no-one. He also found that the Yolngu had not proved that they had been in possession of the land in question at the time of its acquisition by the Crown. He categorically held that native title was not part of the law of Australia and went on to add that even had it existed, any native title rights were extinguished.

Although the Yolngu cause was defeated in this case, it highlighted a ludicrous provision in Australian law, and so was ultimately a victory for Indigenous Australians, although the law on native title remained for two decades as enunciated by Blackburn, until it was overturned by Mabo. However, Blackburn acknowledged for the first time in an Australian higher court the existence of an Aboriginal system of law. He also recognised the validity of the use of oral evidence to establish property rights, normally inadmissible, but a vital precondition for a successful land rights case, and he also acknowledged the claimants' ritual and economic use of the land

The Gove Land Rights Case led to the establishment of the Woodward Commission into Aboriginal Land Rights in the Northern Territory, and in 1975, shortly before he was dismissed, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam drew up the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act which was later passed (in a slightly diluted form) by the conservative Fraser government on 9 December 1976.

The court interpreter for the case was Galarrwuy Yunupingu, a young man with a Brisbane Methodist Bible College education and son of Gumatj clan leader, MunGalarrwuy, who was one of the Yirrkala plaintiffs. Galarrwuy had earlier helped his father draft the bark petition, and was now a key figure in the Gove Land Rights case. He later became chairman of the Northern Land Council and in 1978 became Australian of the Year for his work on Indigenous rights.

Gove land rights case

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