A considerable amount of anthropological work conductedin Australia is different from what I as a Germananthropologist expected when I first arrived therein 2011. In Germany, I was trained in a variety ofmethods to contribute to academic discourse throughethnographic writing. There are of course a numberof academic anthropologists and anthropologicaluniversity institutes throughout Australia, but Ilearnt that other important employers foranthropologists are government and industry.

These employers require that anthropologists turn theso-called lay language of Indigenous andnon-Indigenous people into scientific reports andother forms of evidence that qualify for use innative title claims. Indigenous people themselvesbecome somewhat sidelined in this process. AsStephen Muecke puts it: ‘Indigenous people provideevidence as witnesses called to the Court, but theirknowledge has no standing on its own; it has to beinterpreted by Anthropologists and articulatedwithin the legalities of the [Native Title] Act’(Muecke 2017, 136). This chapter offers a critiqueof such processes of translation and the underlyingfalse assumption within the native title claimsprocess that everything in and of the world can beunderstood, described in relationships andultimately be decided upon by subsuming it to acommon narrative that conforms to the findings ofWestern law and science.

My argument here is based on ethnographic examples fromparticipant observations made at a native titlecourt hearing in Perth in April 2017 and onethnographic fieldwork I have conducted since 2011in the Kimberley region of Northwest Australia. Icame to Australia to research Indigenous tourismexperiences as a possible means for fostering betterunderstanding between local Indigenous andnon-Indigenous populations. The field site I chosewas the town of Broome and the Dampier Peninsula.The region is characterised by a distinct Creolehistory fostered by ongoing migration from Europe,Asia and other parts of Australia. Anotherhistorical factor in this regard has been theregion's pearling industry and Broome's exemptionfrom the White Australia policy due to the need forexperienced pearl divers from Japan as well as theforced labour of Aboriginal men and women.