Learning in activism
Land + Heritage
Aboriginal people had been demanding their land back since the British invasion began in 1788. Learn more about those early campaigns
A new wave of land campaigning began in the 1970s, leading to the NSW Aboriginal Land Rights Act in 1983. This Act disappointed many with compromises and omissions, and the 1980s posed many challenges. But there still seemed to be cultural strength in the ‘Three-Tier Structure’ where decision-making power was located at Regional and Local Land Council level and in the inalienability of land, which meant that whatever could be successfully claimed would be in Aboriginal hands forever.
But amendments in the 1990s allowed land sales and shifted the demands on Land Councils to seek funding through development, drawing Aboriginal people into the regulatory methods of government far more deeply than any had expected. By 2000, the Land Rights Act had not delivered the self-determination and social justice that the campaigners of the 1970s had hoped. But some Local Land Councils had been able to use Heritage and Environment strategies to strengthen their communities.
Campaigning for Land Rights
Many of the organisers and spokespeople for that broad 1970s movement were involved with Tranby as staff, students or visiting teachers and often meetings were held at Tranby. They were campaigning for land as the basis for self-determination, cultural recognition and social justice...
Challenges for Land Councils
By the middle of the 1980s, amid rising panic about accounting demands, it was clear that Tranby’s adult learning programs in book-keeping and management would be important in supporting Land Councils to meet auditing and management demands...
Heritage + environment
Yet at least some Local Land Councils had been able to use the imperfect tools the Land Rights Act delivered to strengthen their communities and achieve some of their cultural as well as economic goals. Increasingly Indigenous environmental knowledge and strategies for sustainable management have risen in public awareness as a powerful argument for Indigenous management – and ownership – of land.