A Tension Between Atomism and collectivism appears at more than one point in the processes by which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people seek to achieve legal recognition of their title to traditional land and sea areas.

Where small landed groups belong to larger congeries, and also may overlap considerably in memberships and geographical scope, subgroups may pursue their interests rather atomically unless convinced that their interests are better served by some form of coalition. This will usually be true before a land claim is begun, and its pattern may be fairly well entrenched. The ultimate form of atomism is the individual pursuit of control. Some attempts at control by individuals may be masked by their public description as the actions and beliefs of a group. Some small informal groupings in an indigenous context are basically the pluralisation, some of it fairly fictive but nevertheless highly customary, of the persona of a single focal individual, without whose existence the group itself would not exist. Most, however, have a more widely distributed basis. Ultimately, as I suggest below, this basis is typically regional rather than local, although locally manifested.

Once the native title claim process begins, the devising of a list of named applicants or the determination of the membership of a claimant group will often throw the atomist/collectivist tension into some relief.