The ‘atomic approach’ (Sutton 1995: 1) to outstations evident amongst Bardi is reflective of their local organisation (density of estate groups), but I argue that this has been augmented in the current intercultural context. Many of the groups gaining outstations in this region have done so within their own buru, and they tend to see the establishment of their outstation as an outsider recognition of their traditional connections to that country. While outstation groups often reflect estate groups or their membership, they are not of themselves equivalent to them. The typical unit of outstation incorporation tends to be the extended family group, and Bardi either do not form incorporated groups on the basis of including all estate affiliates within those corporations or, if they do, they are usually unable to sustain such corporations (see Martin and Finlayson 1996: 7; Mantziaris 1997: 9). In these and other cases, as outstation groups have competed over control of outstation resources and the corporation, the groups have fractured and formed further outstations within the same buru. Over time, these choices people make about living arrangements (vis-à-vis the statutory arrangements that make funding for incorporated outstation groups possible) have the possibility of becoming naturalised. For example, Rigsby (1998: 35) has observed that ‘individuals and groups may sometimes transform secondary rights into primary property rights over time in a variety of circumstances relating to succession, regencies and even land claim actions’. Sutton (1978: 126) makes the point that ‘as the nature of secular property changes, corporate life will change, since it appears to be secular property which provides the most powerful constraints on fragmentation and unification’.

The outstation movement is considered as a ‘decentralisation trend’ (Coombs 1974) in spatial terms, since it involves the movement of people away from larger communities into smaller satellite communities. However, it can also be considered a decentralising movement in terms of the multiplication of Aboriginal corporations it has produced, each negotiating separately the institutional and administrative arrangements that are necessary to fund and develop outstation infrastructure. Although my discussion of native title incorporation has been on the processes preceding such incorporation (since this has not currently been realised among the Bardi and Jawi claimant group), the parallels and juxtapositions between these two processes should be apparent. Both the outstation movement and native title can be considered as providing new conditions of possibility for indigenous relationships to country to be formally expressed and recognised outside the indigenous domain, and both require incorporation.

However, one of the effects of decentralisation within the outstation movement, as I have argued, has been to consolidate notions of autonomy attaching to the outstation groups. This, along with differentiation within the claimant group consolidated by different historical experiences, and exacerbated by economics associated with resource use, has meant that it has been difficult for the claimant group to act as a corporate group. Rather, much claimant attention has focused primarily on either their own buru (estate) or on their own outstation. Particular rights in buru are embedded within a larger system which gives form to these local entitlements: an estate group could not reproduce itself but is system-dependent. Sutton (1996: 8) describes this as a ‘whole-part dependency’ in which the dependency is, on the one hand, ‘between particular rights and interests and the wider system of jural and cultural practices in which they are embedded’, but on the other hand, is ‘between the rights and interests held in land or waters by subgroups or individuals, and the communal native title out of which they are “carved”’ (see also Rigsby 1998: 24). While patrifiliates are considered to have the ‘final say’ with respect to estate matters, this is not generally considered to mean that they are able to deny matrifiliates, for example, their existing rights in those same areas. However, to the consternation of many other Bardi, at least some outstation groups were, during the period of my research, speaking and behaving as though their outstations were equivalent to private property, erecting fences and gates around them, effectively preventing (and denying) access by other Bardi to these areas. In addition, the persons who were preventing access during this time were not always patrifiliates.