Were the claimant groups ‘fully determined’ in the sense I have used? With the Wopkaimin, it is possibly surprising that we cannot say for certain. On the one hand Hyndman (1994: 7) says that a Wopkaimin parish is a ‘clearly bounded, territorially discrete unit’, but on the other he describes the cognatic Wopkaimin as having far-flung connections of kinship across the wider Min cultural region. Thus the Wopkaimin could be characterised as the ‘proximate owners’ among an indefinitely extended network of ‘underlying’ Min owners, all of whom are, at least in theory, secondary right holders anywhere in their cultural region (Welsch 1987: 129). The many informal settlements around Tabubil known as ‘corners’ and built by immigrants from other Min areas may be a symptom of this. Analysis of the flows of mine-related benefits from the Wopkaimin to non-Wopkaimin relatives, such as occurs between landowners and their relatives at Porgera (Banks 1994, 1997), might also cast light on the situation. Unfortunately we have little information on the subject.

The Dauan and Meriam people are ‘well determined’ as groups. A short distance beyond their shores there were traditionally no more Dauan or Meriam people. The only ambiguity is posed by drawing a line between them and their neighbours: for Dauan, this was Saibai and Boigu Islands, and for Mer, Erub (Darnley Island) and Ugar (Stephen Island). Beyond these places there were no further speakers of their respective languages, Kala Kawaw Ya and Meriam Mir. Genealogically speaking, the lines were quite easily drawn, with the exception of some families with shared Dauan and Saibai ancestry. The situation did not resemble that of a seamless net of kin extending into a hinterland.

The ‘Nauti’ are not ‘determined’ at all, which underscores their problem. The name represents a composite of many descent lines and, while the core lines are arguably ‘determined’, in the sense that the agnatic descendants of particular apical ancestors are knowable, there are many competing histories which could have placed — or could yet place — an ancestor from a different descent line in the same position.

The Wopkaimin parish boundaries, as indicated by Hyndman, have the integrity of a local organisational type^[23] where main ranges and large rivers form land estate boundaries.

Being islands, Dauan and Mer have external boundaries which give the native title areas a ready integrity such as is much harder to come by on the mainland of Australia.

This configuration of land estate is ostensibly found in the 25 km long valley formed by the headwaters of the Watut River above Nauti village where principal ridges and creeks draining from the high ranges form the boundaries of family landholdings. But it is hard to portray this as an absolute boundary of ‘Nauti’ because of the indeterminacy of the group. The map of the ‘area of common interest’ at Hidden Valley (Figure 9-1) does show a boundary — it follows the crest of the dividing range for the most part and is completed by a straight line at latitude 7°27” south — but it is an artificial line created by prospecting authority maps in the 1980s. ‘Nauti’, the entity discussed in court, is not bounded after all.

In no case were internal boundaries surveyed. At Dauan and among the Wopkaimin, as I have discussed, internal boundaries are purported not to have existed or, if they did (as in the case of Wopkaimin ‘neighbourhoods’), they were not seen as relevant to the main issue of community identification.

Around Nauti village, as noted, principal ridges and creeks delineate the family landholdings of residents, but it took me several years to ascertain which families matched with which ridges and creeks.^[24] Nauti leaders were reluctant to disclose information that might enable family heads to bypass them in relation to lease and compensation payments (see Figure 9-2). My view was that maintaining their positions as signatories was a burden upon leaders that stood to poison their relationships with community members and obstructed them from representing community viewpoints effectively. It was also leading them to make extremely inequitable distribution arrangements. Surprisingly, these did not always advantage the principal families; in 2000 an obscure cousin lineage of five men shared K17,000 while 62 men in a main lineage had to divide up K20,000. This was just bad arithmetic; I sought to move benefit distribution to a fairer census-based formula along the lines already being used for the mining company’s discretionary assistance schemes, such as housing improvement and school fee payments. I devoted a section of my socio-economic impact study (Burton 2001) to how this should be done, but the project was sold to a new company shortly afterwards and neither I nor my PNG counterpart have been contacted since to see how this formula should be implemented.

At Mer, the internal differentiation of landownership and maintenance of boundaries is a key element of Meriam culture and identity. The colonial response to Meriam landownership was to commission an immediate land survey of the island and to create an island court — both accomplished by 1892. The court’s records contain many sketches of land portions and boundaries (Murray Island Court 1908–1983; Sheehan 1987–89). But as time went by, Mer’s internal boundary problems were taken less and less seriously by the Queensland Government. Since the 1970s it is probably true to say that hundreds of thousands of dollars have been expended on survey work for infrastructure improvement, but not a single garden, patch of bush, deup (traditional boundary bank or line of piled volcanic rocks), or customary house block has been surveyed in the same period. I did sufficient social mapping in 2003–04 to scope out the problems, but my work ran against the trend of a policy blank in the area of assisting PBCs to sort out internal governance issues. At Mer, as I have said, these are severe (Burton 2004, 2005).

It would be rare indeed if there were not competing claimants to a land estate, but at Dauan, Mer and among the Wopkaimin, the position of the primary claimants is not seriously challenged by others from the same language group.

A qualification at Mer is that a current land dispute concerns whether a disputant’s ancestor was from Mer or Erub, a neighbouring island; it is thus about group membership, not whether non-Mer people claim bits of Mer.

Among the Wopkaimin, people whom residents of Iralim parish and outsiders alike might not see as Wopkaimin — because they were born and reside elsewhere — might believe otherwise. Although they would not contest Wopkaimin title, on the grounds that they already believe themselves to be inside the claim group, this is an encumbrance on ownership by people of the same ethnic group.

On the other hand, the ‘Nauti’ were and are vigorously contested in their rights to land by other speakers of their language. Competing claims take the form of assertions by men of distant lineages that their ancestor preceded any other on the land and that they alone know the hidden history of the area (even though they do not live in it). As with the preceding, this is an encumbrance on ownership by people of the same ethnic group. However, the challengers repeatedly fall down because they cannot — and it does not occur to them to do this — form a claim group representative of a putative resident population 50, 100 or 150 years ago. The ‘Nauti’ are safe from challenge from a tribe-like or clan-like entity from among other Hamtai speakers because the problem of determinacy besets the challengers as much as it does the incumbents.

At Dauan and Mer there are no effective secondary claimants from neighbouring ethnic groups, mainly because the main candidates living to the north are politically cut off by the international border between Australia and PNG.

The Wopkaimin are subject to political challenge from Ningerum and Awin speakers to the south from time to time. For example, a councillor of Mongulwalawam village, in the Ningerum council area, in 1984 claimed a billion kina a fortnight compensation on the grounds that Mt Fubilan was not a Wopkaimin place (Burton 1997: 42). This kind of claim is ineffective, and the Wopkaimin have been defended both by government officials and anthropologists — Welsch said none of the Ningerum ‘have any obvious claim … on Mount Fubilan’ (1987: 121).

Welsch discusses the claims to the mine area made by the Faiwolmin, Tifalmin, Telefomin and other northern neighbours with considerable cultural affinity with the Wopkaimin. He says the Wopkaimin did not dismiss the claims in principle, but also did not entertain the idea of sharing their royalties with what would potentially have been another 20,000 people (ibid: 129–130). Politically, these broad area sentiments had a certain amount of traction, because the Mining (Ok Tedi Agreement) Act 1976 granted the Kiunga (including Awin and Ningerum) and Telefomin people ‘preferred area’ status for employment and business development. Ambit claims were floated between 1978 and 1980, when Kopiago and Tari people (in another province and separated from Ok Tedi by impassable geographical barriers), and the OPM (Organisasi Papua Merdeka) in West Papua, each claimed ownership of Mt Fubilan (Welsch 1987: 126–7). None of these claims made any political headway for obvious reasons.

I have already mentioned the court settlement reached in 1987 between the ‘Nauti’ and their eastern neighbours, the Biangai villages of Kwembu and Winima, now joined in the Nakuwi Association. This also now faces new claims. Candidate claimants include the Manki, a relict enclave of distantly related Anga speakers in the Upper Watut; and the Taiak, Galawo, Kapin and Sambio people generally called ‘Middle Watuts’. It would seem unlikely that claims from distant places would make political headway, but a salutary lesson is that the Buang Mai-i clan from Mumeng did succeed in claiming Bulolo township in 1999 and continue to grumble over Bulolo and Wau landownership to this day.^[25]