Last week's AIATSIS Summit heard a call for cultural authority, family knowledge and community voice to be placed at the centre of Native Title processes during a session on restoring authority within recognition systems.

The session Our Truth. Our Power. Our Future: Restoring Cultural Authority Within Native Title, was presented by Juanita Johnson and Jean Moran.

Ms Johnson is a Birri Gubba and Widi Elder with ancestral ties to the Gungalu, Kukatj and Tagalaka peoples, with community connections through Cherbourg, Palm Island and the Magandjin Aboriginal community.

Ms Moran is a First Nations Yuin, Worimi, Cammeraygal and Barada-Barna woman, descending from King Boco and grounded in enduring cultural and community connections.

Their presentation explored the gap between the intent of Native Title and the lived reality for families who have had identity, records and authority shaped by systems outside their communities.

Native Title was framed as a process intended to recognise Lore, Law and connection to Country, but the presentation argued legal recognition does not always reflect lived identity, family knowledge or community acceptance.

Ms Moran said the session came from personal experience, family history and cultural responsibility.

"Our presentation was about our truth, our power, our future and restoring cultural authority within Native Title," she said.

"We wanted, from grassroots Elders, to speak about our family and what we had to face.

"There were so many layers that we had to overcome."

The presentation traced how colonial systems disrupted Aboriginal families through protection and assimilation policies, forced marriages, removals, renaming and reclassified identity.

Their session argued exclusion was not incidental, but systemic.

They also described how records can be incomplete or disrupted, with archives sometimes overriding oral history, lived truth and cultural knowledge passed through families.

Many families now face a gap between administrative identity and lived identity, where documentation may not match kinship, Country, cultural responsibility and community recognition.

Ms Moran linked that issue to her own family's experience in Native Title processes.

"We had to stand up for our identity," she said. "We had to stand up to the corporation.

"There were so many hurdles, so many gates that you've got to walk through just to get your foot at the table."

The session also raised concerns about the way Native Title determinations are shaped.

One slide showed 672 Native Title determinations across Australia, with 530, or 79 per cent, listed as consent determinations, 57, or 8 per cent, listed as litigated court trial determinations, and 85, or 13 per cent, listed as unopposed determinations.

Those figures were used to question whose voices shape agreements and whose voices are missing.

The presentation did not reject Native Title. Instead it argued recognition systems should work alongside community truth, rather than replace it.

The slides said culture was often present but not leading, Elders were included but not always empowered, and decision-making often centred systems instead of community.

Ms Moran said the process could become costly and difficult for families seeking recognition.

National Indigenous Times previously reported on Ms Moran's journey to trace her family ties, including her discovery that her lineage connected back to King Bocoo of Saltbush Park, in the Mackay region, and her fight to have him included on the BKY Native Title Apical List.

The experience later led her into Federal Court, where she represented herself in her push to be part of the inner circle of decision-making.

"If you're not happy with what you hear at the end of that gate, you have no choice but to go and spend money out of your own pocket and get yourself a lawyer and a barrister," Ms Moran said.

"That's exactly what I did, to be recognised and to stand up to get my grandfather resurrected on his own Native Title.

"When you run out of money, the fire in your belly is still there, but you've got no money."

The session ended with a broader message about truth, accountability and future generations.