Native Title
Reform Journal

Industry: Community

The artwork represents the themes and issues surrounding Native Title and Common Law.

While Native Title is a complex issue, this artwork depicts the fundamental elements and issues.

Native Title represents understanding and awareness of connection to country, and the significance and historical importance of specific geographic areas to certain language groups and their stories. This relationship to country is the theme that is explored throughout the artwork.

Native Title and Common Law are depicted by the two large circles at the top and bottom of the piece. The red circle, at the bottom, represents Indigenous cultures’ relationship to the land, to which Native Title is tied. The blue circle represents Common Law.

The smaller circles containing within these central circles represent the history and stories that surround these issues.

Relationship to and understanding of country is one of the most important elements explored in this piece. Specific geographic locations are depicted in the artwork, primarily through the brown circles situated in the centre left and right of the piece.

These also have a loose representation of water holes and gathering place. Surrounding both key elements (Native Title and Common Law) are a series of smaller, connected circles. These represent the many geographic locations that are important to certain language groups.

These smaller circles that surround the Native Title element are blue and red. These colours represent land and sea, two elements that are representative of, and critical to, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. Saltwater, and freshwater peoples.

Traveling from the bottom of the artwork through the centre to the top are kangaroo tracks. Kangaroo is widely hunted in Indigenous culture as hunting is an important cultural tradition. The kangaroo tracks represents the journey of cultural preservation and practices involved in the transfer of knowledge from one generation to the next.
To represent men’s law and women’s law in Indigenous culture, in relation to Native Title, there are a series of figures in the centre of the piece. The women are to the left of the central point of the artwork, the men to the right.

These people also represent the individual story lines and journeys that take place relating to Native Title.
The central circles are surrounded by a series of lines and elements that form an hourglass shape, converging in the middle and widening to the top and bottom of the artwork. This represents a journey of time and positive direction for the future.

Through understanding all elements within this hourglass shape (Common Law, Native Title, stories, and relationship to country), a positive future and understanding of Native Title.