Comprehensive Settlement: Heads of Agreement

Comprehensive settlement agreements have emerged as a key tool in the negotiation and navigation of Indigenous-state relations in settler colonial countries, including somewhat recently in Australia. While calls for comprehensive-style agreements by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples are not new, the willingness of State and Territory governments and the maturing of negotiations and resulting agreements has developed momentum. In particular, governments have recently endorsed in-principle National Guiding Principles for Native Title Compensation Agreement Making.

With the failure of native title to deliver what many had hoped it would, comprehensive settlement agreements have been posited as a new way forward for carving out social, political, economic and cultural spheres of autonomy for Indigenous peoples.

Successive Australian governments have resisted labelling such agreements ‘treaties’, however, some commentators have applied the term to recent comprehensive settlement agreements which they consider meet the description in all but name.

Regardless of terminology, such agreements reflect significant changes in the relationship between Indigenous peoples and governments, and are negotiated within a framework which recognises the inherent rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.