Native Title and Indigenous Cultural Heritage

HWLE’s Native Title team delivers strategic, commercially focused advice on native title and Indigenous cultural heritage across all Australian jurisdictions. We advise on the existence and extinguishment of native title, future act processes, native title compensation, cultural heritage obligations and compliance with Federal, State and Territory legislative frameworks. Our clients include governments, native title representative bodies (NTRBs) and service providers, registered native title bodies corporate (RNTBCs), corporate proponents and native title holders and claimants.

We are experienced in managing native title claims, indigenous land use agreements (ILUAs), cultural heritage management plans (CHMPs), future act processes and complex right to negotiate processes. Our team has acted in landmark High Court appeals, including Waanyi, Wik and Yanner v Eaton, and regularly advises on projects involving overlapping claims, complex heritage issues and regulatory investigations. We work closely with our Property, Corporate and Tax teams to provide seamless, cross-disciplinary advice in relation to land holding, leasing, structuring and taxation law implications.

HWLE is consistently recognised as a market leader in native title law by Chambers, Doyle’s Guide, Best Lawyers and Who’s Who Legal.

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Native Title and Indigenous Cultural Heritage

Our experience

  • A number of Pilbara traditional owner groups Negotiated comprehensive agreements and related ILUAs for Rio Tinto’s Pilbara iron ore projects (2007–2016) and advised traditional owner groups on benefit management structures, including securing favourable ATO rulings on income tax and GST treatment.
  • Multiple Property developers Advised clients in relation to the development of CHMPs and cultural heritage management agreements for their development projects.
  • Wajarri Yamaji People Negotiated ILUA, Project and Cultural Heritage Agreements for the Commonwealth and CSIRO’s involvement in the Square Kilometre Array project (2016–2022), and ILUA and Joint Management Agreements for 800,000+ ha of WA conservation areas (2022–2024).
  • Wik and Wik Way Peoples Advised on native title claims and a successful High Court appeal for the Wik and Wik Way Peoples, leading to five consent determinations of native title (1994–2012), Aboriginal land grants (2013–2015) and the landmark Western Cape Communities Co-existence Agreement (2001).
  • A range of oil, gas, mining, energy and resources clients Advised our clients on Consent Determinations, right to negotiate agreements, work area and heritage clearance arrangements, land access and compensation claims.
  • Indjalandji-Dhidhanu People Advised on native title claims and mediated with claimants, the State, pastoralists and local government authorities, resulting in a 2012 consent determination of native title and multiple ILUAs negotiated as part of the settlement (1996–2012).
  • Gangalidda People and Garawa People Advised on the conduct and management of their native title claims which proceeded to consent determination with a number of ILUAs negotiated with pastoralists and the Queensland Government as part of the settlement of the claims (2014 to 2019).
  • Commonwealth and State government departments and agencies Advised on native title matters, including preparing recognition reports for native title bodies, assessing funding options for RNTBCs and undertaking the first Ministerial investigation of a representative body under section 203DF of the Native Title Act.