8.12 Avelina Tarrago, QLD Avelina Tarrago is a Wangkamahdla woman from central-west Queensland, and a barrister. At the time of her interview, Avelina was the President of the Indigenous Lawyers Association of Queensland and a Legal Member of the Mental Health Review Tribunal, as well as other roles additional to her paid job. At the time of her first engagement with the native title system, Avelina was still at law school. She understood the system sufficiently and was able to participate, but she found the process disempowering because of the lack of control that First Nations groups have over the process and over their own information in that system. Avelina described how her family did not want to claim native title, but they were ‘forced’ to engage in the system by applying to join as a respondent to the ‘BWW claim’,78 because it was encroaching on their Country. Avelina explained that the NTRB was unwilling to help and sided with the other families. This left Avelina to try and address the incorrect boundaries of the application on her own. So, I filed an application on my own in the Federal Court to join as a respondent on BWW, to try and alert the Court to the fact that there was an overlap and that nothing was being done about it. I didn’t know what I was doing at all. I wasn’t even admitted, but I managed to be successful. Eventually, during the process of contesting the boundaries as a respondent in the BWW claim, Avelina had to hire a solicitor herself, with her own money, and then luckily a barrister agreed to work for them pro bono. The whole thing took a huge toll on Avelina’s mental health. Avelina talked about having to eventually withdraw as a respondent because the anthropologists came to an agreed position which she knew was incorrect, and which she knew would mean they couldn’t ‘win’. She remains angry about the way those professionals conducted themselves and believes they knew they were doing the wrong thing. At the time of interview, Avelina had heard through the ‘legal grapevine’ that the NTRB had sought advice about reopening the determination. Avelina was not surprised at all given the way the case was run and the errors she knew had been made in the connection evidence, though she was surprised that there was open discussion about it. Avelina also discussed how she was acutely aware of the importance of ensuring governance structures are established carefully and thoroughly from the outset to avoid PBCs being compromised and to minimise the conflict that comes with that. Once the Wangkamahdla had their native title determination, Avelina did her best with the system they have to ensure safeguards for traditional decision-making and to prevent conflicts of interest. For example, Avelina knew from her legal training and years of involvement in the native title system by then, that provisions relating to conflict resolution in PBCs were critical, and that issues of conflicts of interest needed to be addressed explicitly. So, for instance, their PBC Rule Book provides that an individual can only be on the PBC board if they are not already a director of another PBC in Queensland. 90 Women in Native Title: Native Title Report 2024