THE CONNECTION OF THE TAEPITHIGGI NATIVE TITLE GROUP TO THE DETERMINATION AREA
34 In his 2017 report, and supplementary 2018 report, Dr Redmond presents connection material in relation to the areas he was briefed to report on. That material is informed by the historical, anthropological and archival record, a range of environmental and linguistic data, and on-site field research and interviews with people who claimed a traditional connection to the relevant areas.
35 Dr Redmond describes how the ancestors of the native title group members used, occupied and enjoyed what Dr Redmond describes as a "lawful jurisdiction" over the determination area prior to effective sovereignty. His report describes their continuous use and occupation of the determination areas across succeeding generations to the present day, under a body of shared traditional laws and customs. The 2017 Redmond report makes clear the significant post-colonial pressures imposed on the ancestors of the Taepithiggi People, and the severe impacts of European colonisation.
36 Despite these impacts, the native title groups Dr Redmond reported on (including Taepithiggi) were able to "maintain knowledge of traditional places of significance, to regulate access to the Report Area to some degree and to observe and adapt many of the laws and customs which govern and reproduce their society". Dr Redmond describes the nature of these laws and customs, and the way in which these have been passed down generation to generation. Dr Redmond describes these as including stories, traditional knowledge and a set of practices acknowledging spiritual presences in the landscape. In summarising his findings on the continuity of law and custom, Dr Redmond concludes (at [630]-[632] of his 2017 report):
The occupation and use of the Report Area is practiced under a historically transformed system of laws and customs rooted in the traditions of the original occupiers of these lands as documented in Sec. 4 of this report. This is indicated by the fact that the people who make up the groupings identified as having a traditional association to the Report Area, like their predecessors who were residents of the missions, stations and small townships across this area, have continued to not only use the area for practical economic and social activities such as fishing, camping and hunting, but also participate in the observation of important aspects of law and custom rooted in the traditions of the regional society.
This report has discussed in some detail laws and customs relating to the Report Area's language-labelled groupings and their associated territories, contemporary enactments of laws and customs regarding language identities of persons and country, the relationship between the at-sovereignty patriclans and localised family groupings in the contemporary period, laws and customs regulating kinship and marriage, kinship and naming practices, kinship and normative "demand sharing" practices, kinship and the authority of elders, laws and customs governing decisionmaking and dispute resolution practices, laws and customs relating to country succession, coalescence and legitimate group membership, laws and customs regarding ceremonial performances, including initiatory ceremonies, increase ceremonies and mortuary ceremonies, laws and customs regarding spirit conception and birth-places, country, laws and customs regarding food prohibitions, laws and customs regarding sorcery and medicines, cosmology and normative social practices, the Chiveri/Kwoiyam Ancestral Hero myths, as well as narratives and beliefs concerning the Rainbow Serpent and other Ancestral Spirit Beings.
This report has also documented continuities and systematic transformations in regard to the traditional and contemporary land tenure system, kinship and ritual practices, decision-making processes, the inheritance and disposal of rights and interests in land and also in the enactment and promulgation of the body of traditional beliefs and cosmogonic stories which underpin those practices. These include the beliefs concerning the Rainbow Serpent and a host of other elemental and ancestral spirits which are seen to permanently reside in the landscape and which are perceived as continuing to exert a powerful influence in maintaining normative rules governing group and individual interactions with each other and with the lands and waters across the region.
37 The applicant submits that the connection material, including the reports of Dr Redmond, Dr McKeown and Dr Thompson, establishes a credible basis for the proposition that the Atambaya, the Central West Wik, the Taepithiggi, the Umpila, and the Weipa Peninsula People native title groups have maintained their connection to their respective determination areas, under their respective traditional laws and customs since prior to sovereignty. The State supports that submission, and I accept it.
38 The evidence supporting the Taepithiggi People group descriptions, and the identification of apical ancestors, is found throughout the reports prepared by Dr Redmond and Ms Waters. Ms Waters' work concentrates on the correct identification of apical ancestors, and is, like her other work for other determinations in this proceeding, thorough and careful. The State accepts this material, and there is no objection from the other parties to the present determinations.
39 Finally, it is appropriate to set out some extracts from Mr Bond's statement provided to the State and the Court. As I noted in the 2021 determinations, it is the group members who "live and understand their law and custom, and how it connects them to their country": Kuuku Ya'u determination at [68]; Uutaalnganu determination at [59].
40 Mr Bond is a Taepithiggi man because his mother and old people were Taepithiggi. His clan, the Narupan/Batavia clan, speaks for the southern part of Taepithiggi. He explains that he chose to follow his Taepithiggi line because he felt closer to his mother's country.
41 He describes his family being forced to move from Old Mapoon to New Mapoon when he was about 8 years old:
I grew up in New Mapoon, after my parents were made to move from Old Mapoon. I was about 8 years old when they came and forced us to leave Old Mapoon. Many people can't stop talking about it, even though it makes them sad. We had no choice. The police from Thursday Island came down, with white police, and told all the people to grab what they could. They took us all out into dinghies, and then they burned all our houses; all the belongings, all the houses. They said if they burnt the houses the people would not come back.
It was very sad. Some people went back to Old Mapoon after a while. If they had not sent us away from Old Mapoon, I think we would have stayed there and I would probably still live there now. I think Old Mapoon would be a different place if they had not moved everyone on. It would have had many things going for it. Old Mapoon has good bottom [sea floor] and muddy water for crab, prawns, barramundi, oyster farms and all those fish. It also has good cattle country.
42 He recounts his childhood spent shooting crocodiles with his father on his mother's Taepithiggi country, and time spent as a young man mustering cattle, learning about his country:
When I was a kid, a young boy, probably around 9 or 10 years old, I would travel through Narupan and Wenlock, with my Dad. I would go with him in the school holidays when he went croc shooting. My father took us up the Wenlock and Ducie Rivers and to Delhunty River. We would go by boat to around Stoney Crossing on the Wenlock River … Once you pass Narupan, that's the deepest part of the Wenlock River. Sometimes you need to wait for the tides to come in to get past Narupan landing. My dad used to say that that is all my mother's country.
…
I knew I had connections to Taepadighi country when I did [stock] work as a young man. My brothers and some of the older fellas said that when we crossed the Wenlock, we were going into Batavia and that this was my great grandmother's area. Uncle Benny Fletcher, Uncle Edgar, would always tell me and my brothers that the area around Batavia was my mother's country. They were Taepadighi, and had interests south of the Wenlock River, and North to the Ducie River.
I learned about country travelling around with my father and my brothers, and from the old fellas, including when we did mustering. I also learned from grandfather Donald and grandfather Andrew Archie.
43 It was from old grandfather Donald, a Taepithiggi man, and grandfather Andrew Archie, that Mr Bond learnt traditional knowledge and stories about his country:
When I was just a young boy I used to go and sit with old grandfather Donald Fletcher who was a Taepadighi man. He was an old man, one of the oldest people from the Taepadighi area. His family's country comes over to the south side of Wenlock river. Old grandfather Donald lived near Old Mapoon for a time, they moved around a bit back in those days.
…
I would always sit with old grandfather Donald. He taught me how to make things, like traditional spears. He taught me how to flatten the head of the spear and find the bush gums and pastes, the sugarbag wax. They use the sugarbag wax on a flat piece of the spear, after it has been really smoothed out. The flat piece of wood that you roll the spear onto to smooth the gum is called 'forma', it is a language term.
…
Bushman's Lagoon is a story place. Bushman's Lagoon is near Wenlock, but on the south side of the River. It's past Stoney Crossing …
I learned that story when I went mustering as young man. The Lagoon there, it bends like a boomerang. The story involves a bushman who was walking in that area and he went to the lagoon and he could only see across the lagoon, not end to end. Because he could only see across the lagoon, he thought it was the Wenlock River. So he built a canoe and he paddled out across the lagoon, what he thought was the river, and when he got to the other side, he found out that it wasn't the river. It was just a lagoon. That's why they call it Bushman's Lagoon.
Grandfather Andrew Archie told me that story and many of the old stockman too. Everybody keeps away from that story place; they don't go and drink water, or do anything there. We don't know what would happen if you did go and get water or anything like that. Maybe if the older people who could talk language could have done something there, but not today, not the people that I know.
44 In his statement, Mr Bond emphasises the importance of the Taepithiggi people working together to protect their country and of following rules regarding interests in land:
Sometimes we disagree with the other Taepadighi clan about who is responsible for areas within Taepadighi, however we still respect everyone, including the elders, and call them aunty and uncle. This business is between the families here, within the clan group. It is nothing to do with anyone else. It is most important that we are all recognised as Taepadighi with interests in all our country and we all sit down as a whole.
…
I cannot speak for other people's country because I don't know their country. It doesn't belong to my old people and I am not close to it. We can't just go into someone else's country unless we are invited by the right people for that country. My old people and my grandfathers told me this. It is an important rule. If someone breaks the rule they get severely punished; in old custom, they would have taken him out, killed him. Today, the owners get very angry at trespassers.