ceremony. I am always singing there and at Nyinkka Nyunyu with Kathleen Fitz. We are still holding sorry camp within the town at Tingkarli and Mulga camps.
14 Also before the Court in support of the application is a summary report (the report) based upon two expert reports of an anthropologist, Susan Donaldson, which were presented to the Respondent as evidence of the native title rights and interests held by the Patta Warumungu people in the claim area. The applicants are of the view, and I accept, that the report contains adequate evidence on which to base the making of a consent determination.
15 According to the report of Ms Donaldson, some practices of the Patta Warumungu people on land within the claim area have continued in the same way since before sovereignty. It states:
…the earliest extant records of the Aboriginal occupants of the application area provide indirect evidence that a society - early identified as Warumungu - existed before sovereignty, that is, prior to 1824. Evidence of land use and occupation practises employed just a generation after sovereignty coupled with details of stable societal characteristics, religious practices and use of a developed language recorded just to generations after sovereignty, lead the author to conclude that [practices] such as these were also exercised by the claimant's ancestors before sovereignty.
16 The report sets out in detail the laws and customs of the Patta Warumungu people, including their Dreaming, ceremonial life, social organisation, and systems of land tenure, acquisition of rights, punishment and permission to enter country. It refers to estates, often overlapping, which follow Dreaming tracks and focus on known water sources. In many places, the estate groups, the Patta Warumungu estate group being the relevant one, share the rights to own songs and designs for a Dreaming.
17 The full range of rights and interests which Ms Donaldson says exist in the Patta Warumungu estate group over the claim area include a number of rights to use and enjoy the claim area; the right to speak for and make decisions about the claim area; the right to protect significant sights in the claim area; a limited and non-exclusive right to control access to the claim area; the right to prevent disclosure of matters relating to the claim area; the right to be acknowledged as owners of the claim area; and the right to determine membership of the native title claim group. Most, but not all, of those rights are reflected in the proposed determination. The report also notes particular instances in current times of both junior and
senior members of the native title claim group continuing to observe customary rights and interests within the context of everyday practices and ceremonial occasions.
18 The material relied upon by the parties in support of the proposed consent determination, in my view, adequately addresses (inter alia) the requirements of ss 223 and 225 of the Act and the appropriateness of making the proposed consent determination. I accept their submission that the statements of the applicants and the report supports the recognition of native title rights and interests possessed by the native title claim group, as defined by s 223 and explained by the High Court in Members of the Yorta Yorta Aboriginal Community v Victoria (2002) 214 CLR 422.
19 I also conclude on the basis of the material before me that the parties likely to be affected by the proposed consent determination have had sufficient access to independent legal representation; and that the Territory, in providing its consent, has given appropriate consideration to the evidence and to the interests of the community generally; see Munn v Queensland (2001) 115 FCR 109 at [29]. Indeed, the material suggests that both the applicants and the Territory have carefully considered all that material and its significance.
20 I have also considered the terms of the proposed consent determination. In my view, it satisfies the requirements of s 225 of the Act. It is carefully worded. The native title rights and interests are in appropriately specific terms. And the nature and significance of the other interests in the areas of the proposed consent determination are also clearly spelled out, as is the consequence of those other interests, both as they presently affect the agreed native title rights and interests, and in the longer term as to how the native title rights and interests will become more enlivened as those other interests come to an end progressively over time.
21 Where the Court proposes to make a determination that native title exists it must determine whether the native title is to be held in trust and if so by whom: s 55 and 56(1) of the Act. A nomination in writing to the Court that the Patta Aboriginal Corporation (the Corporation) is to hold the rights and interests comprising the native title in trust for the common law holders pursuant to s 56(2)(a) has been filed. The Corporation is a body corporate which may be determined under s 56 to hold the rights and interests in trust for the common law holders (see s 59 of the Act and r 4 of the Native Title Prescribed Bodies Corporate) Regulations 1999). It has consented to act in that capacity. Consequently, the provisions of s 56 are met and justify the making of para 3 of the proposed consent determination.