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- Publisher
- Oxford University Press
- Copyright
- © 2007 by The American Society of Comparative Law, Inc.
- ISSN
- 0002-919X
- eISSN
- 2326-9197
- DOI
- 10.1093/ajcl/55.1.47
- Publisher site
- See Article on Publisher Site
Abstract
BERNHARD GROSSFELD AND JOSE F HOELTZENBEIN* This article is a story tracking recent developments in Australian land law. Since 1992, Australian courts started using Aboriginal songs as oral land registers when attributing particular pieces of land to particular tribes. The story began more than 100 years ago, when Lutheran missionaries in Central Australia started to recognize the songs as valuable cultural products, mapping the Australian landscape. Besides elaborating the geographical and semiotic background of this indigenous poetry, the emphasis in this article is on the difficul ties the pioneers had to overcome when praising the artistic, anthropo logical and legal value of these old "documents." They engaged the foreign culture not as an object of study but as their partner in under standing human concepts of ordering: a great lesson for comparative law and comparative legal semiotics. I. POETRY AND LAW And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy grey eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams - In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams. * Bernhard Grossfeld is Professor of Law, University of Minister; Josef Hoeltzenbein is Professor of Medicine, University of Minister, and Chief Surgeon EM., St. Francis Hospital, Mtinster.
Journal
American Journal of Comparative Law – Oxford University Press
Published: Jan 1, 2007