Utopia is an Aboriginal homeland formed in November 1978 by the amalgamation of the former Utopia pastoral lease with a tract of unalienated land to its north. It covers an area of 3500 square kilometres, transected by the Sandover River

Sandover River

The Sandover River is a river in northeast Central Australia. It is the only major tributary of the Georgina River that does not rise in western Queensland. Instead it flows from the eastern Macdonnell Ranges in the Northern Territory northward to enter the Georgina near Urandangi...

, and lies on a traditional boundary of the Alyawarra and Anmatjirra people, the two language groups which predominate there today. The name is probably a corruption of Uturupa, which means ‘big sand hill’, a region in the north west extremity of the area.¹ It has a number of unique elements:

• It is one of a minority of communities created by autonomous activism in the early phase of the land rights movement
  Native title
  Native title is the Australian version of the common law doctrine of aboriginal title.Native title is "the recognition by Australian law that some Indigenous people have rights and interests to their land that come from their traditional laws and customs"...
  
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