8 8.9 Interviewee story summaries Coral King, QLD Coral King is a Kungardutyi Punthamara woman from the south-west of Queensland. The boundaries that she knows as her Country overlap with multiple other native title claims. Coral’s father William (Bill) Booth is the son of an Aboriginal woman named Toney (Tonie, Antonia), who was the first wife of her grandfather, Frank Booth. Frank Booth’s mother – Coral’s great grandmother – was an Aboriginal woman named Clara. Coral told her story of attempting to correct the record regarding where her grandmother Toney and her great-grandmother Clara, were from, after other groups secured native title determinations over much of her family’s Country, excluding her and her family in the process. Coral was angry that in one determination her grandmother Toney and her great-grandmother Clara were removed from country and were given identities by the court, based on third hand evidence via anthropologists, that contradicted everything she and her family knew of their identities and Country. Coral explained that her father, her father’s brother, Lindsay Booth, and her grandfather, Frank Booth, were initiated men and despite being removed from their Country ‘they maintained connection by returning to country and telling their children and grandchildren about it, and visiting it, or places close to it, later in life’. Coral’s grandfather Frank Booth, who was removed from country in 1930, returned there in 1963 with his daughter from his second marriage and her children to introduce them ritually to country. Coral’s uncle, Clancy Booth, returned regularly to country, taking his wife, children and other relatives with him. Coral King herself went on one of those visits. Since that visit with her Uncle Clancy, Coral ‘has returned to Country on at least four occasions, collecting bush medicine, and paying respects to her ancestors buried on Nocatunga’ until she ‘felt the Court’s recognition of other native title claims on her country prevented [her] from accessing her Country’. Coral described how when the first NTRB-funded researcher doing the connection research for native title claims in southwest Queensland spoke to Coral and her sisters, he appeared completely disinterested in what they had to say. Coral said that this researcher also visited her relatives in Rockhampton, but her relatives had felt that he had ‘an agenda in his questioning’ and was ‘disinterested’ in anything else they were saying. He was even disinterested in information from her Aunty Ivy Booth (by marriage) who was considered an ‘encyclopedia of knowledge’ about her husband’s (Coral’s Uncle Clancy’s) family. From that time, the native title claims in southwest Queensland were progressed by the NTRB without her family. Coral had never seen the connection reports that were written about them in relation to those original meetings and does not know what evidence from her family is, or is not, included in those reports, or their accuracy. Anthropologist Dr Fiona Powell has been assisting Coral on a pro bono basis. Dr Powell accompanied Coral for some of her interview and said that she herself was given access to some of the relevant native title connection reports, but not given an opportunity to submit a full responsive report in relation to Coral’s recent attempt to become a respondent to one of the native title claims on Coral’s country. The chronology of Coral’s native title experience is complex, and Coral (and Dr Powell) were at pains to ensure it was understood so that the errors they believe have been made, and the barriers to getting them corrected, are made clear. Australian Human Rights Commission 83