Central Land Council Director David Ross: self-determination has been “bastardised and shoved into the closet” by governments. He issues a forceful call for Aboriginal people to reclaim the concept of self-determination on their own terms.

There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that some species are active promoters of fire in the northern Australian savannah landscapes, using small fire-sticks and embers to spread fire throughout the open grass and woodlands of the semi-tropical north.

Part Two of a conversation with Amadeo Rea, taxonomic ornithologist and ethnobiologist who has spent most of his life working with the Piman people of the greater south-western American deserts.

A friend of mine, who was just finishing the manuscript for Birds of Arizona with the University of Arizona Press said “Why don’t you find out from your old Indian friends what the river was like when it ran and what birds were there?”

In 1963 I signed the historic bark petition which opposed the Gove refinery and bauxite mine and started the land rights movement, and which is now displayed in Parliament House, Canberra. In 2011 I signed the historic mining agreement with Rio Tinto Alcan which guarantees the refinery and bauxite mine for another 42 years. How the wheel turns!

That head stockman and my father had a good go in the yard. He wanted to beat my father but my father been too good for him. After my father knocked that bloke out he got a rope and jammed that bloke in the bronco panel – made that head stockman squeal. (laughs) My father and I pulled out from there. Got his swag, put me in the saddle-bags and we went walking towards Larrimah way.

Yanyuwa traditional owners established the li-Anthawirriyarra (people of the sea) Sea Ranger Unit as a means for managing their vast estate. The rangers are employed to monitor and manage heritage sites such as Macassan camps; monitor and manage turtle and dugong populations and survey, map and eradicate feral animals.

What price can we put on the value of hunting & gathering skills and services? Justice James Henry of the Queensland Supreme Court provides some answers.

It is unsurprising that across Aboriginal Australia the Pleiades – and their heavenly companions in Orion’s Belt – are very much alive as actors in culture, life and the seasonal calendars that provided essential relationship between the lived here-and-now and the journeys and adventures of the heroic ancestors.

In December 1961 an important meeting took place in the sand hills at Lee Point in Darwin that led to the formation of the Northern Territory Council for Aboriginal Rights. Its first President was Jacob Roberts and first Secretary Davis Daniels, two Roper River (now Ngukurr) men. Two well known Darwin members of the Communist Party Brian Manning and Terry Robertson were also elected as Assistant Secretary and Vice President respectively.