Eddie Mabo had challenged the very ideological establishment of Australia and the first Australians. I am sure that these issues will resonate with many of you here today. This is an edited extract of the 2022 Mabo Lecture, delivered by Stan Grant on June 3, 2022, to commemorate 30 years since the Mabo decision. But he had to find words to speak a deeper truth even as he upheld the myth of terra nullius that Aboriginal people, he said, had a "subtle and elaborate system of law". In some ways our systems of governance is a defining feature of the oldest living culture on this planet. Document: 00003849.pdf 1 Page(s) Speech at the Gurindji Land Ceremony. I also acknowledge Meriam PBC Chair Mr Doug Passi. The assumptions were quite erroneous, of course, but Terra Nullius was set in unshakeable motion and stayed rooted in place for two hundred years, even though Aborigines had been in Australia for at least 40,000 years. [9] UN Development Programme, Human Development Index, UN Human Development Report. There was something of destiny in the air. Together yindyamarra winanghanha means to live with respect in a world worth living in. Alex Murdaugh jailed for life for double murder, Why the disgraced lawyer was spared death penalty, Saving Private Ryan actor Tom Sizemore dies at 61, The children left behind in Cuba's mass exodus, Xi Jinping's power grab - and why it matters, Snow, Fire and Lights: Photos of the Week. Eddie Koiki Mabo died of cancer on 21 January 1991, before the case was resolved. Nor did the judges intend that it should. According to accounts of the conversation, the two scholarly figures looked at each other and then, delicately, told Mabo that he didn't own the land and that it was Crown land. According to his daughter Gail Mabo, it 'fuelled his determination for recognition and equality in society'. Born in 1936, Mabo started life like so many other indigenous people, deprived of a meaningful education, denied access to whites-only buses, cinemas, even toilets. As the Broome Roundtable highlighted, this remains one of the key unresolved issues facing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their quest for ongoing economic development. [1] J Altman., (2014) Scullion Peddles pipedream reforms, Journal of Indigenous Policy, At: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/JlIndigP/2014/33.pdf (viewed 5 June 2015). But that's just 11% of Australia's land mass. The new Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, says there will be a referendum to enshrine a voice an Indigenous representative body in the Australian constitution. The Court also recognised that all Indigenous people in Australia have rights to their land. He had refused to surrender his interests, or those of his people, to the domination of others. Eddie Mabo was a staff member at JCU, working as a groundsman from 1967 to 1971. The courts had previously found that the Nguraritja had non-exclusive native title over certain parcels of land, but not over those where native title had already been extinguished. He spoke of impermanence: He knew things did not last and yet we do.
Tony Abbott thanks Eddie Mabo daughter 'Aunty Gail' for helping him Speech to the Native Title Conference celebrating the 20th - DSS Mabo : Working with Indigenous Australians Drama Biopic Inspiring. He's recorded as saying: "No way, it's not theirs, it's ours." And it was this; hardly any compensation has come our way despite all of the fear mongering over the years about the rivers of compensation that would flow from the realization of our rights under land rights and native title. The remarkable life story of Eddie 'Koiki' Mabo; a Torres Strait Islander who left school at the age of 15, yet spearheaded the High Court challenge that overthrew the fiction of terra nullius. Those cases resulted in the acknowledgment that Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had the right to claim the land they and their ancestors had lived on for thousands of years.
Mabo/The Man/Justice Moynihan's Findings Top 10 Amazing Facts about Eddie Mabo - Discover Walks Blog One of the people who attended the conference, a lawyer, suggested they should make a case to claim land rights through the court system. It is this issue of development that I will explore later in greater detail. This dispossession occurred largely without compensation, and successive governments have failed to reach a lasting and equitable agreement with Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islanders concerning the use of their lands.[12]. However, whilst the right to development is about improvements in economic and material outcomes, it is also about our rights as Indigenous peoples to self-determination and our rights to control our natural wealth and resources. Friends we are the First Peoples of this country and we are the oldest living culture in the world because of our ability to adapt to ever changing environments and circumstances. In 1994 the Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA) was established in response to Read More Realising these aspirations, is key to our economic development and prosperity as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples where our land is our ultimate asset.
Eddie Mabo Land Rights - 422 Words | Cram While working as a gardener at James Cook University, he found out through two historians that, by law, he and his family did not own their land on Mer. He was another victim of Terra Nullius, like so many of his fellow indigenous people had been before him. A case was made, and took 10 years to reach a decision. Eddie Mabo's legal pursuit of these issues resulted in one of the most significant legal cases in Australian history, in that it completely overturned the idea of terra nullius (land belonging to no-one) and challenged traditionally held beliefs about how Australia came into being, and about ownership of land. They ruled that the Mabo decision in no way challenges the legality of non-Aboriginal land tenure. While he believed the Murray Island belonged to the Torres Strait Islander people, Australian law stated that the Government owned the land. Eddie Mabo's dream had come true; a meeting of minds to address the issue of Aboriginal land . It would most likely still be in place had it not been for Eddie Koiki Mabo. But alongside . We acknowledge Aboriginal People and Torres Strait Islander People as the first inhabitants of the nation, and acknowledge Traditional Custodians of the Australian lands where our staff and students live, learn and work. The Mabo decision was handed down on June 3, 1992 in the High Court's grand courtroom in Canberra. Until that day, the legal fiction of terra nullius, the land belonging to no-one, had characterised Australian law and land titles since the voyage of Captain Cook. So, in many ways, the victory has been more symbolic than practical. First, they ask me to pass on their greetings and their thanks for allowing me on your lands. Eternal. Mabo rejected the more militant direct action tactics of the land rights movement, seeing the most important goal as being to destroy the legal justification for what he regarded as land theft. We cross rivers and we are changed like the water itself. active, free and meaningful participation in development; self-determination and full sovereignty over natural wealth and resources. We leave base camp and start our trek across this vast country. The second key theme that was raised at the roundtable was the issue of financing economic development within the Indigenous estate. It remains a collection of canvas and tin, but it has grown in those years since a handful of young Aboriginal activists planted a beach umbrella and wrote the word Embassy on a manila folder, to shake a fist at the power on the hill. However, in the lead-up to these hearings, the Parliament of Queensland passed the Queensland Coast Islands Declaratory Act 1985, which asserted that, upon being annexed by the Queensland Government in 1879, 'the islands were vested in the Crown freed from all other rights, interests and claims'. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites. Choose from the list of topics on the left and then choose 'Click to Play'. Court cases in the mid-19th century challenged the idea of British settlement at the time the rulings were in favour of the Crown. The new conversation that we need to be having around our rights to land and resources has been captured in the thematic areas I have just spoken about. The Roundtable was held after there was significant interest on this issue when Commissioner Wilson and I undertook some consultations around the country last year. The commitment to a land fund; and importantly, participation in decision-making underpinned by the concept of free, prior and informed consent and good faith. This push for economic independence has sought to move away from models of government dependency and have been premised largely on the use of our land as the basis to achieve this. Born on 29 June 1936 in his village of Las on the island of Mer in the Torres Strait, Eddie Koiki Mabo was the fourth child of Robert Zesou Sambo and Poipe (Sambo) Mabo. In 1981, Eddie Mabo delivered a speech at James Cook University in Queensland, where he challenged the widely accepted belief of ownership and inheritance of land on Murray Island. In 1959, he moved to mainland Queensland, working on pearling vessels and as a labourer. So today it is indeed an honour for both my people and myself to be presenting this year's Edward Koiki Mabo Lecture. It commemoratesEdward (Eddie) Koiki Mabo (1936-1992), a Torres Strait Islander whose campaign for Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land rights led to a landmark decision in the High Court of Australia on 3rd June 1992 that overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius, which had characterised Australian law with respect to land and title since the voyage of Captain James Cook in 1770. It was during a stint as a gardener at the James Cook University at Townsville in Queensland, that his eyes were opened to the greatest injustice his people had ever been subjected to.