The Kunja People
6 The Kunja People are described in Schedule 1 of the Draft Orders. They are descendants (including those descended by rearing up) who are recognised and accepted in accordance with traditional law and custom of the following ancestors:
(a) Killamunda (including her children, Margaret Turner (Granny McKellar), Annie/Nannie Widgell and Jack Brennan);
(b) Unnamed mother of Flora Maranoa;
(c) Maria Major (including her children, Jack Oliffe, Ron Wyman, Walter Wyman and Lila Lynett); or
(d) Jimmy Nyngan.
7 The submissions before the Court provide that the Connection Material establishes:
(a) that the Kunja People were a group that belonged to a regional society comprised of groups that shared and observed a similar system of laws and customs. Tribal groups within the regional society were linked through marriage, trading networks, a common system of kinship, moiety and section divisions, totemism and ceremonial gatherings.
(b) that the Kunja People today are descended from the identified apical ancestors who were the people occupying the area at first contact and are the 'old people' who held the inalienable rights and interests in the communal land and waters of Cunnamulla and its surroundings;
(c) that early ethnographic records characterised the Kunja people as what is today known as a 'language name tribe', which is a territorial and social group that takes its tribal name from its own language. The Kunja identity plays a significant role in Kunja People distinguishing themselves as separate from others within the regional society such as Budjiti, Kooma, and Muruwari. Language identity is related to territorial recognition with membership descended from forebears who were members of the same 'language name group' or otherwise affiliated with that territory;
(d) although transmission of identity was traditionally patrilineal, post-colonisation the system has been adapted to a more flexible system and Kunja descendants of the apical ancestors obtain their identity rights and interests in the Application area through either their mother or their father or both. Adoption, 'rearing up' or 'growing up' children is also a mechanism for membership to the group and consequently the inheritance of rights and interests in country;
(e) filiation has continued to be how people acquire rights and interests to land and knowledge of country;
(f) despite the impacts of colonisation and removal from Kunja country, the Kunja People have retained their common identity and have demonstrated continuity in the observance and practice of their traditional laws and customs, the knowledge of which has been passed from generation to generation. This includes effective maintenance of: beliefs in the mythological era as the ultimate source of Aboriginal law and custom; filiation as the mechanism for the acquisition of identity along with rights and interests in land and transmission of knowledge; the sacred nature of people's connection to country; the land belongs collectively to the language-named tribe; elders hold ultimate authority in the community including to make decisions about country;
(g) Kunja People continue to have knowledge of myths and associated sites, and their relationship to country continues to be mediated by their spiritual beliefs. These include their relationship with the 'old people', which mandates behaviours such as addressing, talking to, and introducing themselves to the 'old people' when visiting sites, and knowing the Moondagutta 'rainbow serpent story' and the Gulliemudgin and Goongarnie Dreamtime story;
(h) ceremony is key to holding the network of the regional society alive and corroborees and ceremonies involving groups within the regional society were widely practised within the 20th century;
(i) pre-sovereignty, the Kunja People had a system of matrifilial moiety totems of which one version has survived. Kunja People today recognise the bilby as the totem of the tribe as a whole and continue to observe the regulatory proscriptions against eating or harming their own totem;
(j) the Kunja People hold the right to possess, occupy, use, and enjoy the Application area to the exclusion of all others under their traditional laws and customs. It is expected that non-Kunja People will seek permission from Kunja People before accessing and using Kunja country with their being consequences for breaching the permission system;
(k) in relation to traditional land and waters, the Kunja People continue to exercise: the right to occupy, move about, and travel over it; to camp and build shelters on it; to hunt, fish, and gather on it; to take natural resources from it; to conduct ceremonies on it; to bury native title holders within it; to maintain places of importance and protect them from physical harm; to teach the physical, cultural, and spiritual attributes of it; to hold meetings on it, and to light fires on it.