Professor Peter Sutton is an Australian Research Council Fellow at the University of Adelaide and the South Australian Museum, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He is an anthropologist and linguist. He has lived and worked with Aboriginal people in remote areas of Cape York Peninsula and the Northern Territory, but also in urban and rural centres, since 1969. Professor Sutton has assisted with over fifty indigenous land claim cases in many different parts of Australia since 1979. He is an author or editor of eleven books and has published over a hundred academic and other papers, mainly in the fields of Aboriginal land tenure, languages and art, and indigenous policy.

• List of figures; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Map; 1. Kinds of rights in country; 2. Local organisation before the land claims era; 3. Aboriginal country groups; 4. Atomism versus collectivism; 5. Underlying and proximate customary titles; 6. The system question; 7. Kinship, filiation and Aboriginal land tenure; 8. Families of polity; Notes; References; Index.

Review of the hardback: '… it is good to have this comprehensive oeuvre. Anthropologists engaged in native title work will find it indispensable.' Anthropos