Anthropology in court. The land claims of the Aborigines in Australia [L'anthropologie au tribunal. Les revendications foncières des Aborigènes en Australie]

The need to demonstrate « cultural continuity » as part of native claims before the courts has become one of the important tasks of anthropology in Australia. The article presents and discusses these claims procedures and underlines two problems connected with them : the value attributed to so-called ancient sources at the expense of contemporary observ-ations, and the inclusion in case law of an anthropological model poorly adapted to Australian cultural diversities.