Native title claimants, while not required to have any particular form of social organisation, need to be able to show that they are a part of an organised society which derives at least substantial elements of its organisation and its relevant rules from those which obtained in the same area presovereignty. While claims may be made on individuated bases and on many other bases other than those mediated by relations between kin, they still need to rest on a shared normative system. A defining element of distinctively Aboriginal societies is the centrality of kinship as an organising principle. In this chapter I focus on Aboriginal systems of genealogical relationships in relation to the transmission and recognition of customary rights and interests in land and waters. There is no suggestion here, however, that such transmission is always and wholly mediated by genealogical relationships.

THE KINSHIP POLITY

Those sets of Aboriginal people who hold the same or neighbouring countries under traditional forms of connection are normally kin, or relations, and address and refer to each other as such. This is certainly true where classical cultural traditions persist strongly, but it is also true of many groups, perhaps most, that have undergone cultural transformations as a result of their colonial and postcolonial histories.

Nevertheless, as a result of these transformations, and especially because of population displacements, some descendants of former landholders from a single area do not now necessarily know or regularly interact with certain others.