Yanyuwa Law

Abstract

This chapter provides the contextual background for a case study of Yanyuwa Law and how this Law relates to the ownership of Country. Indigenous Law is explored through knowledge and practice that structures rights to and control over lands and waters, ecological understandings and processes, relationships between human and non-human kin, political structures and decision-making. Law is presented in this chapter not as liminal but as wholly attached to Indigenous peoples’ lands and waters. Too often popular notions of Indigenous Law reduce it to ‘folklore’, mysticism, fables and legends. Through an ethnographically rich account of Law, land/sea rights and succession in one remote Aboriginal communal context, this chapter invites the reader into a close encounter with Indigenous Law.