Promised Land
It was supposed to be a gesture of national reconciliation -
Australia's s new law of Native
Title, allowing dispossessed
Aborigines to reclaim some of their ancestral lands. Instead it has created further bitterness, confusion and conflict.
Critics of the law say that in handingover millions of acres of valuable land, the miningand farming industries will be jeopardised. In mineral-rich Western Australia the Chief
Minister believes the exercise arises out of misdirected guilt.
Brian Barren traces the historical and cultural roots of the controversy, and examines the appalling conditions imposed on urban Aborigines in an atmosphere of racial tension. Producer Thea Guest
Editor Keith Bowers