​​​​Message from the President

 

Check our Calendar of Events online to register your attendance for upcoming events.

 

ASWA Sundowner at the Local Hotel in South Fremantle, 6 pm Tuesday, 19 May 2026

2026 Wilson-Locke Lecture: "It's the end of the world as we know it" ...should we feel fine? State Library of WA, 08 June 2026 06:00 PM - 07:30 PM

 AAS Conference in Alice Springs, Wednesday 10 Jun 2026  09:00 AM - Friday 12 Jun 2026

Rights in Water: the law, pathways to management, and the anthropological lens (draft title, venue and time to be confirmed): Wednesday 15 July 2026

Professional Standards Workshop: details to be advised soon ....

 

 

February 18: ‘Power in the process: leveraging environmental legislation & relationships to protect people & Country’ Workshop, State Library of Western Australia

This (extremely well-attended) ASWA event at the State Library of Western Australia was presented by anthropologist, Aboriginal Lawman and activist Kado Muir and anthropologist Dr Anna Fagan. It explored ways in which anthropologists can support First Nations people in using environmental legislation to strengthen heritage protection, Indigenous engagement, and agreement-making. We asked Anna to summarise some of the key points from the workshop for ASWA members who were unable to attend…

 

Vacancy - ASWA Professional Committee Member - Expressions of Interest

 

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New Publications (Books, Articles and Online)

At 2:00 pm on Tuesday 12 May 2026, Justice Burley of the Federal Court will deliver judgment in Yindjibarndi Ngurra Aboriginal Corporation RNTBC v State of Western Australia (WAD37/2022) at the Peter Durack Commonwealth Law Courts Building in Perth. For context read Kado Muir's background article on 30 March 2026 around Fructus Nullius: the freehold proxy and the invisible economy of Country, where he "..names the second legal fiction in Australian native title law — the fiction that what Country produces for the people who hold rights in it has no economic reality the law needs to measure".  

The article linked below "..is the analytical follow-through. The Yindjibarndi Ngurra judgment will be the first major test of the fructus nullius analysis at scale, and the gap between the parties tells us why":

Fructus Nullius on trial: What the Yindjibarndi Ngu... | National Indigenous Times

Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!

Please note we have limited time to manage a Jobs Board or follow up on advertised vacancies, but please feel free to send us any jobs you are advertising and we will do our best to add opportunities in the next newsletter before they are filled.

Cape York Land Council: anthropologist position based in Cairns

Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation: senior heritage adviser

In Memoriam

We are very sad to share the news that Katrin (Kati) Wilson, aged almost 90, died peacefully on the morning of March 5, 2026, after a short illness. She is survived and sadly missed by her daughters Bu and Beck, her grandchildren, great-grandchildren and extended family.

Kati was a young child when her family escaped from Nazi Austria and after a tumultuous journey made it to Australia, where she grew up in the Nedlands area.

Kati, together with her husband-to-be, John, who died in 2021 aged 91, were among the first students of Anthropology at the University of Western Australia in 1956, joining Ron Berndt following his appointment to the Psychology Department, and later move to the newly founded Anthropology Department in 1958. They completed their Honours that year with complementary studies at ‘Cooraradale’ (aka the Allawah Grove Aboriginal Reserve), with Kati focusing on kinship. At this time, she and John were foundation members of the Anthropological Society of Western Australia (ASWA). In 1958 Kati was appointed to the State’s ‘Special Committee on Native Matters’ which recommended universal citizenship rights. This was something she continued to advocate for over the following years, though this goal was not to be achieved in Western Australia until 1972, when the Tonkin Labor Government finally abolished all discriminatory legislation restricting Aboriginal people’s rights.

Kati completed her MSc in 1961, again with a complementary study to John in the Pilbara on the Pindan Aboriginal group which had emerged from the 1946 Pilbara Strike by Aboriginal stock workers. There, Kati investigated the allocation of ‘sex roles in social and economic affairs’, whereas John focused on ‘authority and leadership’.

John pursued an academic career and began teaching Anthropology at the University of Western Australia in 1966, where, among other things, he lectured on social change. Meanwhile, Kati carved out a career in social research, working in the Health Planning, Medical Statistics and Epidemiology Department and in 1972 started work on the now famous longitudinal cohort study, the Busselton Health Survey, which focused on issues such as cardiovascular disease, pulmonary function, diabetes, and cancer. This engagement led her to enrol in a doctorate at Murdoch University, which, however, for a variety of reasons she did not complete.

Kati and John moved into fulltime consultancy in the early 1980s, working in various places in the NT and at Argyle in the Kimberley. They were pioneers in social impact assessment in Western Australia. Following John’s withdrawal from consultancy for health reasons for an extended period, Kati returned to paid employment with stints in the Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission and in the Environmental Protection Authority before they both retired in the 1990s.

Throughout their lives, Kati and John were always extremely generous with their time and supportive of students, those seeking a career in anthropology or those with related interests. After their retirement, they continued to contribute to anthropology and Aboriginal studies, supporting and mentoring students and researchers, especially in relation to Aboriginal issues in the Pilbara region. Their input is evidenced and acknowledged in a range of works, for example, in Jolly Read’s (1999) biography of Kangkushot/Peter Coppin, Jan Richardson’s (2016) PhD thesis ‘They couldn’t break me’: Don McLeod, champion for Aboriginal justice in the Pilbara, Anne Scrimegeour’s (2020) book On Red Earth Walking on the Pilbara Aboriginal Strike 1946-1949, and numerous other studies.

Kati and John’s contributions to anthropology, together with that of their colleague the late Ralph Locke, are acknowledged in ASWA’s annual Wilson-Locke Lecture.

Kati will be greatly missed by those who knew her both personally and professionally.

Dr Edward M. McDonald

Palmyra, WA.

 

 

 

Professional Practice

Where to after the McArthur River compensation case?

Compensation for cultural loss is gaining increasing attention, and ASWA will be maintaining a strong focus on this critical area. Three anthropologists (David Trigger, Gareth Lewis and Callista Barritt) here reflect on the potential role of Australian applied anthropology in the wake of the groundbreaking McArthur River compensation case.

Professor David Trigger provided expert evidence in the McArthur River case:

The McArthur River Mine case is the first litigated determination to arise from a native title compensation claim involving a large-scale mining development. Justice Banks-Smith made orders and published reasons on 27 February 2026. The judgment is now publicly accessible.

In summary, her Honour ordered that the claim group is entitled to $743,408 for compensation for economic loss, plus interest, and $54 million for cultural loss. Professor John Bradley, Mr Gareth Lewis and I produced the anthropology reports.

There are some implications for future anthropological research and professional involvement in native title compensation claims. The decision covers a wide range of legal and anthropological issues.  See also this ABC News story on this landmark decision. [NH1] 

In terms of implications for future anthropology work in compensation cases, the following issues arose in my report, and were key parts of the Terms of Reference for my research: 

1. A comprehensive review of available ethnographic and other relevant literature and materials, including addressing the anthropological reports that were filed in relation to the determination decision (Ngajapa v Northern Territory [2015] FCA 1249, 23);
2. A review of available ethnographic and other relevant literature and materials then addressed publications and reports prior to and after the Ngajapa Determination, including research completed over a period of some 45 years prior to the compensation claim studies and carried out by a number of anthropologists;
3. David Trigger's fieldwork results: addressing the topics of Dreamings, estate groups and holders of traditional rights across the mining interest area and the gas pipeline route;
4. David Trigger's fieldwork results: addressing the effects by way of loss, diminution, impairment or otherwise of the Compensable Acts on native title rights and interests;
5. Further fieldwork results: also addressed briefly native title holder views on money, property, goods & services as compensation for effects of the Compensable Acts on native title rights and interests. 

The report of anthropologist John Bradley in relation to the mine port development was completed during the same period as my own research, which focused on the mine location developments, including a diversion of some 5km of the McArthur River by the construction of a bund wall and related structures. 

Examples of possible matters for future discussion:

• Overall, it is the cultural impacts of compensable acts that the anthropological work addressed. Economic loss was not a matter that the anthropologists were asked to consider in detail.  

• Issues of native title holders' decisions about the structure and arrangements for the operation of any Trusts that come to hold compensation monies are likely to arise in future anthropology work. 

• A professional focus on the realities of cultural change is important when investigating 'cultural loss', as required in the legal proceedings.  

• It will commonly be important to pay research attention to a range of native holder views about 'compensable acts'. The researcher is likely to encounter complexities of involvement in some development activities by native title holders.  

• Furthermore, investigating 'cultural loss' and the possibility of compensation inevitably can prompt diverse views about how narrowly or broadly the loss has been experienced and relatedly how such compensation ought to be distributed.  

• Prior to the decision of the Court regarding the Northern Territory Government liability for compensation, a formal agreement (ILUA) was made between the native title holders and McArthur River Mining. Some internal complexities among native title holders arose during that process.  

Gareth Lewis is a Darwin-based consultant anthropologist with extensive experience working with Top End traditional owners and custodians on behalf of the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority and the Northern Land Council. He was recently awarded a PhD scholarship at the University of Queensland to carry out research on the application of anthropology to compensation claims.

I was involved in a limited sense in the McArthur River Mine (‘MRM’) compensation case by providing a report of opinion evidence to the court based on my experiences of working with Gurdanji people and their neighbours and supporters. Much of my report was redacted during the court process on the grounds that it was considered interpretive of other primary evidence already available to the court (including some of the preservation evidence which I had worked on and on which I had partially based my report). I was not cross-examined on my report. Since the case I have worked closely with the community in their ILUA negotiations with the mining company which, concluded at the end of 2025. 

My PhD research project through the University of Queensland seeks to investigate Indigenous people’s experience of the impact of major mining projects across comparative community case studies. I am interested in documenting Indigenous experiences and responses to external impacts as shaped by Indigenous normative values and rules, internalised as impacts, and generative of a complex spectrum of responses which include loss, grief, survival, endurance, resistance and defiance.

My interest is based upon my own experience of working over extended periods in the NT on major projects and incidents of site damage, prosecutions and compensation. Shaped by normative law and custom, complex social responses to these projects and incidents determine causality and culpability and a flow of repercussions beyond the reach of a victim impact statement and are challenging to draw out in interviews. Included in these responses are ongoing internal community processes of redress or restorative action for dealing with wrongdoing which include intra-societal forms of punishment and compensation.

I hope that my longer-term research can build on the currently underdeveloped anthropological language and materials detailing loss and compensation in Australian native title research, which appear to have been (at least partially) limited by Australian applied anthropology’s understandable long-term preoccupation with documenting connection to country in land rights and native title claims.

I also seek to question the application of the concept of “cultural loss” which itself seems semantically inadequate, limiting and possibly incongruent with Indigenous epistemologies of survival, cultural maintenance, resistance and revival. By extension, my research will hopefully provide data and contribute to Australian anthropology’s role in ensuring that the courts (and hopefully “society” more generally), are better informed when assessing the nature, extent and compensable value of cultural loss.

Callista Barritt is a Kimberley Land Council anthropologist. Like Gareth Lewis, she was recently awarded a PhD scholarship at the University of Queensland to carry out research on the application of anthropology to compensation claims. 

In my PhD research, I hope to build on my experience working on a negotiated compensation claim for the Kimberley Land Council with an East Kimberley Aboriginal group. I am hoping that my work will contribute to Dr Richard Martin’s aim of refining research methodologies for future compensation claims, to better enable anthropologists to answer the question of what constitutes cultural loss and how it can be evaluated.

Research in the area of compensation for cultural loss is indeed going to be a growth area in Australian applied native title anthropology. From my perspective gained from working for the KLC, there is increasing demand from native title groups to pursue potential compensation claims. It is an emerging space for anthropological research, with very few examples tested in the Australian courts so far. So, I do think it is the perfect time to explore potential approaches with an open mind, and to consider what methodologies and concepts within the discipline of anthropology could fruitfully be applied to this space. This is why I have chosen at this moment to take on this PhD project, to build my anthropological research skills and expertise to better apply them in future compensation claims, and to take a step back from the busyness of full time work in a land council to reflect on these broader questions, as well as what is happening in contemporary global debates in anthropology that might have useful applications. 

In building on concerns which arose from my previous field experience, I am currently exploring anthropological work on the body, to consider how cultural loss is felt in an embodied way. I’m starting to think about how “cultural loss” can be felt as a real and direct impact on people’s sense of individual and social health and wellbeing, while also considering concepts of shame and trauma in different cultural contexts. 

Further themes that are coming out of my current engagement with the Kimberley group I have been working with, and which seem important to them and which I’d like to explore are around ideas of what receiving compensation for cultural loss means to the group now, and their aspirations for what it will mean into the future. Do those affected feel that justice has been done, and that they have adequately received proper “payback” for the wrongs committed to them? Do they feel compensation represents a recognition and respect for their position of authority over their lands? Will it further the aims of reconciliation within post-colonial Australian society? Does compensation offer the possibility for greater understanding by non-Indigenous Australians in of Indigenous culture, and what is important for Indigenous people? Is there a sense that the amount paid was adequate to repair the hurt, or does it depend on how it is used? Are there other, non-monetary things that together with the payment might give some sense of satisfaction that there has been an exchange of reciprocity, that the relationship with non-Indigenous Australia and a sense that the right moral order has been restored? And, if compensation to date has been experienced as inadequate, is there a way to address this through the compensation scheme?

Thank you for being part of the ASWA community.