A narrative of Native Title reports

Native title connection reports have evolved in a fairly haphazard manner over the last two decades since the introduction of the federal Native Title Act in 1993. Accordingly, connection report structures vary widely and are, on many levels, contextually specific to each native title claim. Given the extended periods that claim research spans and the multiple researchers that may work on a claim (particularly in an NTRB), there is a danger that these reports can become disjointed in both structure and content as they pass from one hand to another.

Additionally, where researchers from different professions author reports on different aspects of the same claim (as is the case historically at Native Title Services Victoria (NTSV), problems of overlap and conflicting interpretation of material may arise. This paper outlines a collaborative native title research and report writing methodology developed by the authors to address such problems.