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For those people, including Aboriginal people who have no knowledge of Aboriginal society in its purest form, the following is something that should be read. It will provide a real understanding of how Aboriginal society existed at the time of sovereignty (prior to contact), and the difference between Sovereignty and Native title.
Traditional Aboriginal society was a complex system divided into clan, tribe and nation as well as dialect and language and moiety.
Firstly, I will talk about ground zero, in terms of what is a clan, as opposed to the tribe, and nation. The clan is made up of the local descent group, that is, the extended family who live in what could termed, as a village or hamlet, depending on the number of people living there. In my view a hamlet contains at the most 200 people, whereas the village could contain from 200 to a couple of thousand residents.
The competition for natural resources meant that, generally Aboriginal people lived in hamlets, though there may have been larger groups in other places, where the environment could sustain a larger population. In this case then, they could be referred to as villages, however this does not change the status of the clan as being a clan only.
The five tribes of Gippsland made up the Gunai/Kurnai nation or language group.
The tribe on the other hand was generally made up of several clans. The thing, which generally connected the clans to the tribe was the dialect, not language, as clans are part of tribe, the dialect is part of a language group. Hence, in Gippsland the 'wuk wuk' and 'wai-ung’ clans were part of the Brabulung tribe who spoke Muk-thang or excellent speech, a particular dialect of one of the five Gunai/Kurnai tribal groups.
The conception of Native title is a non-Aboriginal vice that is, as foreign to Aboriginal society as the people who invented it.
The reality of who owned what land, is etched in oral tradition, and historical evidence cited throughout history. The local descent group or clan resided in and hunted/gathered natural resources within a define region, which usually covered an area of 10 to 20 square miles, depending on the availability of natural resources.
People living in desert regions usually owned a largest area, due the availability of the natural resources in their particular region, for example a 100 hundred square mile region, known as the clan domain. The clansmen living in the desert would usual travel lightly, over greater distances, and were more lightly framed than those in Gippsland, as environment also played a part in the stature of local clansmen and women.
Ownership of land was vested in individuals, who had religious obligations to their clan, in regard to the maintenance of clan sacred sites. Though they were the guardians of particular sacred sites, they actually inherited the estate, therefore like non-Aboriginal people, land was passed down to successive generations, and universally recognised as being so by all.
Sovereignty, therefore is inherent in the clan, not in the tribe or nation as ascribed to in Native title.
The removal of people from their clan lands in WA is in fact the continued dispossession of the sovereign owners from their traditional sovereign lands. By destroying the sacred sites, as what usually happens, they are wilfully and knowingly breaking the connection that the people have to the land, culture, stories, songlines, ceremonies etc.
To put things into perspective, think of a sacred site as a church, a place where a ceremony is held, where people socialise, and connect with their god. The difference in European society, is that a priest is a specialist position, however, the priest may not have hereditary or spiritual connection to the land, or hereditary spiritual connection to the church. However, in Aboriginal society, the priest is the hereditary owner of the land, guardian of the particular sacred site, and has connection to the particular deity.
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