ASHLEY HALL: There is a new and significant development in the fight over the Commonwealth's plan to put a nuclear waste dump on Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory. Lawyers acting for one indigenous clan are now accusing the Northern Land Council of ignoring its earlier findings that the land belonged primarily to the Yapa Yapa clan.

The council is now backing another family, who will receive $12 million for agreeing to allow contaminated waste to be buried on the site. The traditional owners are now at war in court, and some locals say they will take direct action to stop trucks carrying nuclear waste onto their land.

Jacquelyn Hole reports.

JACQUELYN HOLE: Muckaty Station is a former pastoral lease in the Northern Territory. It's roughly halfway between Darwin and Alice Springs and now it's right at the centre of a major dispute between Aboriginal families over who has the right to say yes, or no, to the establishment of a nuclear waste dump.

Dianne Stokes, is a member of the Yapa Yapa group. Everyone in this case agrees there are seven families who all have a spiritual connection to Muckaty Station. However, Ms Stokes says her Yapa Yapa clan is the primary traditional owners over the four kilometre square piece of land that another family, the Ngapa, have nominated for the dump.

The powerful Northern Land Council is backing the Ngapa's claim which will bring one branch of that family $12 million in compensation from the Federal Government.

Now Ms Stokes has hired Melbourne law firm, Maurice Blackburn, and is suing the council and the Federal Government.

MARTIN HYDE: Well the Northern Land Council, its own anthropological evidence and its own written submissions to the Muckaty land claim in the mid-90s, confirmed that the proposed site, at a place called Karakara, that the traditional owners for that land are a group called the Yapa Yapa people. So the Northern Land Council's position was that in the mid-90's. 

JACQUELYN HOLE: Martin Hyde is the lawyer for the Yapa Yapa and says the Northern Land Council is overriding a previous finding by the Aboriginal land commissioner.

MARTIN HYDE: Now they say, for reasons that haven't been explained, that you've got a new mob who are the traditional owners, the exclusive traditional owners of that land, and who will benefit to the tune of $12 million if the nomination is accepted.

JACQUELYN HOLE: The Northern Land Council does not want to comment due, it says, to the court case scheduled for August. However the council does want it known that deciding who is the traditional ownership is a complex process. The land council says three anthropologists support its position that a single branch of the Ngapa family possesses the primary spiritual connection to the nominated site.

Mr Hyde says the council is keeping the details of that evidence to itself.

MARTIN HYDE: Now the Northern Land Council are saying ' well, we've got new evidence and on the basis of that we are going to take away your land'. Well I think our clients should be entitled to see that, they need an explanation and at present they haven't been given it.

JACQUELYN HOLE: The bill allowing the construction of a nuclear waste dump to proceed is expected to be voted on by the Senate in June. While the Government says the bills consent will not necessarily mean Muckaty will end up being the dumping site; so far, despite a national call out, no one else has nominated their place for that purpose.

Dianne Stokes says her family does not want a share of the millions on offer.

DIANNE STOKES: We never walked in those days where the ancestors walked to get paid for walking, collecting food, hunting and all that, digging holes for water. Our people never got paid. Why should we now, the young generations, get paid to sell our country?

JACQUELYN HOLE: Twelve years ago when he found that native title existed over Muckaty Station, the Aboriginal land commissioner, Justice Gray concluded : 

PETER GRAY (voiceover): I do not have any reason to believe that the members of the seven different groups will have serious difficulty in participating in the management of the land on a cooperative basis. This is something that should be encouraged.

JACQUELYN HOLE: Twelve years later and with $12 million in the balance, that cooperation is just a dream.

ASHLEY HALL: Jacquelyn Hole.