RATSIB Areas: Representative Indigenous Body Jurisdictions

Representative Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander Body (RATSIB) areas are defined under section 203AD of the Native Title Act (NTA). These bodies perform statutory functions including facilitating native title applications, certifying agreements, resolving disputes, and notifying constituents about land and water matters. The dataset provides the geographic boundaries for these representative bodies.

Use Cases

• Mapping legal jurisdictions for native title claim facilitation based on RATSIB statutory functions.
• Identifying the responsible representative body for consultation on future acts within a specific area.
• Resolving disputes between constituents by referencing the defined RATSIB area of responsibility.
• Notifying native title holders of land and water notices as required by the NTA.

Strengths

• Sourced from the authoritative National Native Title Tribunal (NNTT).
• Explicitly defined by Commonwealth law under the Native Title Act.
• Available in multiple geospatial formats including GeoJSON and ESRI Shapefile.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, column names, and specific spatial attributes are unknown.
• The dataset's update frequency and historical versioning are not described.
• Relies on inference for its geospatial nature; no explicit geometry type is stated.

Provenance

Source

National Native Title Tribunal

Collection Method

Legally defined and maintained by the statutory authority.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-05-13 according to one source.

Geography

Australia