Surface Rights: Sovereignty, Citizenship and the Question of Mineral Rights in the Woodward Commission

This article retraces the Woodward Commission on Aboriginal Land Rights in the Northern Territory, focusing on the question of mineral rights. Mineral rights were assumed in the Commission's terms of reference and expected by many Aboriginal people. Why, then, were they not recommended by the Commission? Looking at the submissions and the transcripts of the Commission's public hearings, I find that Woodward advanced the case against Aboriginal mineral rights, asserting that, when it came to minerals, Aboriginal people's relationship to the state as citizens must precede rights that arose from their status as First Peoples. Ever the pragmatist, Woodward anticipated strong public objection to the recognition of Aboriginal mineral rights and argued that Aboriginal rights were to be balanced with those of ‘the whole community’ if they were to be acceptable to the non‐Indigenous public.