Last month, Native title holders in South Australia’s north welcomed a High Court win over their right to a portion of land near Oodnadatta previously left out of their original claim.
This article has been copied from the National Indigenous Times, and the image is from ABC News/Luke Stephenson.
The Arabana people argued they held native title over an area of land near Oodnadatta in South Australia in 1993 within section 223(1) of the Native Title Act 1993 and before the current act was in place.
A formal claim was lodged in 1998, and granted in 2012, over an area of land that takes in cattle stations across the north of the state. However, an “Overlap” area was left out of the claim as it was due to be handed to a local Indigenous organisation.
When the handover didn’t occur, the group lodged their claim with the Federal Court, who rejected it, arguing at the time that the group had not maintained physical and cultural connection to the land and therefore couldn’t assert native title rights.
On Wednesday 9 April 2025, the High Court said the judge in the case had applied the principles of connection to land under the act correctly.
They said the judge erred in his application of the principles by focussing on if physical acts of acknowledgment and observance of traditional laws and customs in the Overlap Area demonstrated had a ‘connection’, rather than asking whether the Arabana people, as per their traditional laws and customs, had a ‘connection’ with the area.
“Where the relevant laws and customs demonstrate that ‘connection’ for the purposes of [the act] … may be established other than by physical acts of acknowledgment or observance within the relevant area, physical acts may not be necessary to demonstrate such ‘connection’,” the High Court said.
Arabana man Aaron Stuart told the ABC outside court on Wednesday that as “an Aboriginal person, my mind goes back to those we lost on the journey”.
He said no one had ever “moved away and come back”.
“There wasn’t no extinction of people … we were always there, we are there, and we’ll always be here,” Mr Stuart said.
“Boundaries might change with the states and territories, Arabana land is always Arabana land, as with every other tribe in Australia.”
The case will now return to the Federal Court to make a final ruling as per the High Court’s decision on whether the Arabana people hold native title rights and interests in relation to the Overlap Area.