A key differend area in which Warumungu/Alyawarra senior men sought to retain their frame of reference - their assertion to their place in the scheme of things - was largely drowned by the views of non-indigenous land claim professionals in the preparation, presentation and processing of the subsequent 1985 verions of a Warumungu land claim.

The original 1982 research team was sidelined (one way or another). The Central Land Council 'failed' to ensure that the senior men were provided with a male researcher to assist and enable them.

The new players assembled again in Tennant Creek in 1985. They would all get back on the right script. It was simple enough, how could those others have got it wrong? "Aboriginal land claims" were to be cultural monologues posing as cross-cultural dialogues.

Following the one-sided scripts of the modern Anglo-Australian nation-state, many of the professionals involved in key roles in the subsequent 1985 Warumungu land claim were creatively engaged in acts of constructing an acceptable version of that nation-state - as a monolithic One marked by better treatment of the original Australian peoples. There was no head-room for alternative arrangements which enable First Peoples by recognising their sovereignty and working towards some kind of bi-culturally balanced sharing of sovereignty.

The notion of a coexisting indigenous sovereignty must be handled very carefully. This is so not because there can be any doubt about the right of First Peoples to live by their law (which must be part of the complex covered by the term 'sovereignty') but because 'sovereignty' itself may be part of a cluster of modern notions which smuggle in much life distorting intellectual baggage.

The relationship between 'sovereignty' 'modernity' 'exclusive notions of ownership' 'the individual' must be very carefully teased out with an eye to avoiding the introducing exaggerated boundaries into the flow of lifes energies to create unhealthy concentrations of power.

We need an understanding of precontact indigenous forms of 'sovereignty' which appear, on the evidence available, to resist the distorting effects of concentrated power by means similar to those which make for a separation of powers in the otherwise monolithic modern state.

Co-existing sovereignty would be like a post-modern pendulum, capable of moving around more than one attractor. A better analogy is that of the twin balls which act as governors on some kind of steam engines, working to ensure that things don't run out of control.

And things are greatly out of control with the present modern system which is insists on a monopoly of sovereignty even as the ecosystem around us sends urgent messages to find a new way of relating to each other and the rest of life.

While so many talented people remain locked into the life-paths which reinforce the modern state, we can only wonder what kind of catastrophe will be required to bring people to their senses and start of examine the real options for moving beyond the limits of modern states to keep life balanced. (That rules out globalisation of the kind pushed by free trade.)

There have been many successful Aboriginal land claims under the ALR Act, resulting is recognition of "grants" to "trusts" in order to attempt to accommodate the realities of First Peoples rights in land within the 'tenure' framework the modern State inherited from common and statute law in Great Britain (via the Feudal system).

First Peoples, in my experience, do not seek mere recognition of their 'land ownership' to areas of vacant crown land. They stake a claim on the core of the treasure which the Anglo-Australian state seeks to hoard for itself - a fair share of sovereign power in their own country.

One of the prime duties of anthropologists is to the peoples they represent. Another prime duty is to ensure an adequate definition of the realities of those peoples.

When we, in Australia, uncritically accept the state's definition of the realities of "Aboriginal land claims" we fail that test of duty. These complexes of behaviour - in many cases in my estimation - are not merely about gaining state recognition of 'land ownership' as defined in Western terms.

And when land claim professionals measure their success or failure entirely in terms of how much land they have helped First Peoples retain, they are missing a key point. First Peoples know that winning a land claim on the terms set down in advance by the state is second best.

They also know that their own best interests, as captives within a state, are served by being able to establish some kind of diplomatic relations with the state by gaining a degree of acceptance of their world view. This acceptance is not a matter of words, but of putting things into practice - including the practices of "Aboriginal land claims".

My experience of "Aboriginal land claims" in the Northern Territory in the 1980s was that what First Peoples brought to the process was factored out by a one-sided cultural script in which they were merely extras.

Hence their claims - for the sorts of things which their senior authorities deemed necessary for life - were simply ignored. They might gain some degree of recognition of rights to land (if the hostile CLP government, miners and pastoralists could not stop them exercising their rights) but at what cost?

These costs include a vast array of factors vital for life to be lived fully and at the highest level. Acknowledgement of 'land' ownership itself, when this takes place within the unmodified and unbending framework of the State, is not sufficient for restoring full balance to the lives of First Peoples.

The senior Warumungu/Alyawarra men in the original Warumungu land claim certainly understood this. They had no need for a non-indigenous stranger, in the form a Judge/Aboriginal Land Commissioner, to tell them who they were; how they relate to country and whose country it is. They know this already!

What they were seeking to achieve was a transformation in the character of the beast who had invaded their lives - by inducing some higher level understanding.

This is exactly what their Grandfathers had attempted to do when they mentored Spencer and Gillen in 1901. Remarkable consistent these senior lawmen.

Part of the message of the senior men in the Warumungu land claim was that the form of the State would have to change - to modify itself in significant ways - if it was to coexist on Warumungu/Alyawarra country.