Native title claim being progressed through Victorian system

Victoria’s Taungur­ung have taken the first step on a historic journey towards recognition and a restored cultural identity.

(L-R) Mick Harding, Lawrence Moser and Corlene Button are with the Taungurung people who were meeting at Marysville to map out strategy for the first native title claim in Victoria filed under the state rather than federal system.

In the misty mountain town of Marysville, 100km northeast of Melbourne, Victoria’s Taungur­ung people took the first step this weekend on a historic journey towards recognition and a restored cultural identity.

The ancestors of the Aboriginal people who lived in a great swath of the central and mountainous parts of Victoria will become the first group to advance a native-title claim purely under the state system.

The move highlights the difficulty that federal native-title legislation poses to Aboriginal groups that suffered the most — those who were the most heavily dispersed upon white settlement.

Under a process championed by Aboriginal land-rights lawyer and scholar Mick Dodson, the Taungurung people will begin formal negotiations with the state of Victoria over this territory.

“It gives us the opportunity to participate in land management and the ability to practise cultural elements on country, and it might generate some economic gains for indigenous and non-indigenous people around cultural and ecological activities,’’ said Lawrence Moser, the chief executive of the Taungurung Clans Aboriginal Corporation.

“It will enable us to be engaged culturally in a way that we have not been able to be before.

“The other thing is it provides confidence and surety for non-indige­nous people living on Taungurung land. It’s not as if we are after people’s backyards.”

Mr Moser said the country was home to cultural sites, including fire hearths near Yea, that pre-dated the construction of the pyramids. He praised the role land owners had played in guarding sites, including birthing trees, rock art and stone axe finds.

He said about 300 people identified as Taungurung and the group had compiled a dictionary of 3000 Taungurung words.

“It’s given me a strong sense of cultural identity and purpose. It’s given me a place and I can go sit at the table and say I am Taungurung person,’’ Mr Moser said. “For some of us, we are reconnecting with country and reconnecting with our cultural birthright.’’

While some Taungurung live in area in question — which runs from the Campaspe River in the west to Mount Buller in the east, and Heales­ville in the south north towards Shepparton — the group is dispersed across Victoria.

“The impact of colonisation has been felt by our people and the dispersal of our mob was the result of that,’’ Mr Moser said.

The problem for Victorian Aboriginal groups in the past has been meeting the threshold test of “continuous connection” to the territory under the federal Native Title Act, with the courts rejecting the Yorta Yorta people’s claim in northern Victoria in 1998.

Victoria became the first state to adopt its own native-title system in 2010 to allow for a non-­adversarial process.

Victorian Attorney-General Martin Pakula said the state hoped to reach an outcome that gave the Taungurung “a fair and lasting outcome as the recognised traditional owners”.

Mr Moser spent the weekend with a group of Taungurung people and native-title lawyer Nick Testro planning their approach to the negotiations, which could take 18 months to be finalised.