Customary Marine Tenure in Southern Australia

The aim of this annotated bibliography is to inform and guide future research for use in Native Title sea claims, particularly in southern Australia. While there is a plethora of scholarly literature in relation to traditional Northern Australian systems of marine tenure including Peterson & Rigsby 2014; Memmott & Trigger 1998; Gray & Zann 1985), there is a significant gap in relation to the country’s southern seas. Just as we expect to find regional differences in law, custom, and spirituality in land tenure, it is arguably reasonable to expect that regional differences might be found in relation to marine tenure. The purpose of developing this bibliography is not necessarily to construct a presumed ‘north versus south’ difference, but to focus on what is for southern Australia – or at least, how it has been interpreted and represented in academic, ethnographic, historical, and legal records. This bibliography was constructed over a limited three-week period at the Centre for Native Title Anthropology at the Australian National University in Canberra, from 12 February to 2 March 2018.