A. P. Elkin felt as though Radcliffe-Brown’s model did not reflect the relationships to the land that he initially observed in the southeast of the continent or in the western Arnhem Land that did not seem to be based on patrilineal descent groups. In regards to his field work in 1962 L. R. Hiatt brought up the fact that many of the field reports from the first half of the century did not match up with the ‘orthodox model’. In his chapter "Control of the Means of Production", Ian Keen references the fact that men of more than one patrilineal group lived in the same residence group in the Kimberley region and the fact that individuals moved between their own and neighboring countries along the Daly River for food-gathering and ceremonial purposes to further the argument Radcliffe-Brown’s model did not encompass the flexibility found between …show more content…
E. H. Stanner made the key distinction in his defence of Radcliffe-Brown that although there could be the patrilineal group or clan with its ‘estate’ of land on one hand there could also be a residence group living together occupying a ‘range’. ‘Range’ meant the land area (and occasionally waters on some parts of the coast) that were used by a ‘band’, the land using group that actually lived on the land. A range usually encompassed a number of neighboring ‘clan’ estates. (2004: 276)
Radcliffe-Brown highlights men’s connection to land, but does not really address nor identify the role that women serve in land tenure. Anthropologist Marcia Langton does so however in her chapter “Grandmother's law, company business and succession in changing Aboriginal land tenure systems.” In 1994, Langton’s research in the Palm Valley Land Claim in central Australia as well as in the Lakefield National Park Land Claim in Cape York found that in both scenarios women’s knowledge was fundamental in cases trying to prove traditional ownership and affiliation to