Under the Native Title Act of 1993, IndigenousAustralians have the right to reclaim land that wastraditionally regarded as their country. Of primaryrelevance in this endeavour is the requirement forclaimants to prove that their connections to claimedcountry have existed since before colonisation. Inorder to establish this connection, various sourcesof evidence have been used, including anthropology,history, archaeology, geography and oral evidencegiven by the claimants. This chapter examines therole of language and linguistics in native titleclaims. After a brief introduction to Aboriginalviews on the links between language, country andpeople, I turn my attention to how linguisticevidence can help claimants demonstrate a prolongedconnection of their Traditional language to theclaimed country, particularly through the study of‘old’ elements of language, such as archaic elementsin place names and ethnonyms. I will then examinethe Miriuwung–Gajerrong native title claim andconsider negative outcomes as well as possiblebenefits for language revitalisation flowing fromnative title proceedings.

Aboriginal people have testified through stories,literature and lived experience to a strongconnection between people, country, culture andlanguage. Such connections have also beenestablished by non-Aboriginal researchers (see, forexample, Berndt and Berndt 1979, 8). Interestingly,it is not the case that a group of people is definedby the language they speak and the country theyoccupy. This is actually a Western way of thinking.Leaving aside the factor of increasing mobility in aglobalised world, a German person principallyidentifies herself as German because she lives inGermany and speaks German (see Figure 1a). Such aninterpretation of the language–people–country triadis not shared by Aboriginal people. First of all,one language cannot so easily be connected to onepopulation, because each Aboriginal person,traditionally, is competent in more than onelanguage. Hudson and McConvell (1984, 24–25) reportrepertoires of two or three or up to five or sixlanguages, including sign languages (qtd. in Blytheand Wightman 2003, 72). On the other hand, partialor non-speakers easily identify with a languageunder the right circumstances, such as havingrelevant links through kinship relationships (Ringel2018).