Aborigines are 'locked into' a particular model which assumes
that their society was static. This may well hamper them in
the future.

This means reinterpreting traditional Aboriginal concepts of
the land and land use, but, so it is urged, this is inevitable.
Thus the NSW Select Committee on Aborigines ( 1980)
recommended that NSW Aborigines should be able to claim
land on the following grounds: (a) needs, (b) compensation,
(c) long association, and (d) traditional rights. Clearly these
grounds for the granting of land rights are very different from
those (centering on 'traditional ownership') recognised in the
Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act. Compared with
the latter, they are much less well-defined, but their advantage
is that they do provide a basis for a general land rights
movement. The difficulty, however, is that while Aborigines
who are not (in the traditional Aboriginal sense) owners of
the land may, under generalised legislation of the kind
envisaged by the NSW Select Committee, become owners,
this may do an injustice to traditional owners. No doubt it is
desirable that in an Aboriginal group as many people as
possible should have rights to land. But if doing this makes
secondary or minor rights--in the traditional Aboriginal
view--equivalent to primary or major rights, then clearly this
is an injustice to the primary holders of land rights. Again,
if it is the total community in a particular location (e.g. in a
reserve) which has rights to the land, then it becomes very
difficult to define criteria for deciding who is, and who is not,
a member of that community. Thus, Diane Bell has described
the difficult situation at Warrabri in Central Australia where
there is a community of Aboriginal people who do not all have
traditional ownership and managerial rights.

These are the Aborigines who have been forcefully resettled
for many reasons including assimilationist hopes and
administrative convenience. By bringing together people of
vastly different backgrounds and settling them in one area,
conflicts are immediately generated for which there are no
easy solutions in the traditional repertoire . . . Warrabri is an
unhappy place where the Warlpiri and Warramunga, whose
traditional country lies hundreds of kilometres to the west,
have, after three generations of institutionalisation, become
established inmates of the settlement. The Kaititj and
Alyawarra who have had a much briefer period of interaction
with the cash economy and settlements, until recently lived
more in accordance with precontact values, than has been
the case for most Aborigines. Warlpiri are thus the uninvited
guests of the Alywarra Kaititj.

The so-called 'Country camp' or 'Outstation' movement is a
consequence of just such a situation where Aboriginal groups

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