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Terra Nullius In Australia

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Prior to the European settlement of Australia (1788), indigenous Australians inhabited the continent and had recognised laws within their clans. However, as documented in the case of the Yirrkala community, due to the notorious laws being unwritten, the doctrine of terra nullius enabled the European power to claim the discovered land as part of its empire despite their being evident inhabitants. The British adapted the international law concept of terra nullius to govern the situation in “settled” colonies, which is how the law regarded Australia.

The first test of terra nullius in Australia occurred with the decision of R v Tommy 1827, which indicated that the native inhabitants were only subject to English law where the incident concerned
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However, this was completely disregarded by Australians. ' The native inhabitants of any land have an incontrovertible right to their own soil, however, which seems not to have been understood ‘ was a statement by House of Commons select committees report on Australian Colonies in 1837. This lead to Australians using the concept of ' Terra Nullius’ implying that Australia was unoccupied at the time of ‘discovery’. We now rightfully recognise that there were others here before us that should have rights to their own land that we wrongfully took

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When the Europeans first arrived in Australia, Indigenous Australians lost all their land rights. This was mainly due to the Europeans claiming that Australia was Terra nullius. Terra Nullius was a international law stating that if territory was not owned, it was to be given to the first nation to discover it and entitled to take over. The Europeans did not recognise the Aboriginals and Torres Strait islander people as the traditional owners of Australia and therefore took all there land rights. The indigenous people were then constricted by the terra nullius rule from 1788 to 1991.

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On 3 June 1992 the High Court of Australia handed down its decision in Mabo vs The State of Queensland, ruling that the treatment of the Indigenous property rights based on the principle of terra nullius was wrong and racist towards the Aboriginals. The court ruled that indigenous ownership of land has survived where it has not been extinguished by a valid act of government and where Aboriginal people have maintained traditional law and links with the land. This legal recognition of Indigenous ownership called Native Title. The court ruled that in each case native title must be determined by reference to the traditions and customary law of Indigenous owners of the land.

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Eddie Mabo, full name Edward Koiki Sambo, devoted a great deal of time in his life to fight for the land rights of his people. He is now a central figure and household name for advocating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land rights and traditional ownership, but the story of his success, and how it changed Australia, has many heroes. Along with Mabo, plaintiffs Flo Kennedy and David Passi were geared up to launch a test case in the courts to dispute the doctrine of terra nullius; the existing law that stated Australia was officially considered empty land before British settlement. However the process of carrying out a test case proved to be difficult and compelled some of the plaintiff’s to withdraw. Later in the year of 1989, Mabo and James Rice was the only plaintiff’s left

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Before that, it was simply a collection of 6 British colonies. They partly self-governed but they were under the law-making power of the British Parliament. Many people had wanted Australia to maintain the British heritage which means only white people can be allowed into Australia, creating the ‘White Policy’. Because of this, non-Australians could not help in the war, no matter how much they wanted to.

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Boyd’s affiliation with his Indigenous heritage evokes an attempt to redeem history. Boyd challenges the opposition between the history of Australian colonisation, the law of Terra Nullius, and the discarded and overlooked culture and history of the Indigenous populations. Furthermore, questioning the definition of history and the distorted collective memory and documentation. Boyd brings to attention that the record of Australia’s origin is corrupted and romanticised by the early European settlers that is sustained to be nurtured in modern society. Boyd practices the concept of an Indigenous resistance to address the forgotten perspective on the subjective circumstances of the

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The Commonwealth was completely unprepared, and as the Mabo story gained traction, apathy started to fade away, knocking down any political policy the government had set out to conquer at the beginning of its term. On 3 June, 1992, the High Court of Australia rejected the doctrine of terra nullius and recognised Indigenous land rights for the first time. In doing so, the Commonwealth had admitted that the Indigenous peoples had lived in Australia for thousands of years, that their land had slowly dissolved into the colonies as they grew, underwriting the Australian identity. This lack

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‘The Tampa Decision: Examining the Australian Government’s prerogative power to detain and expel unlawful non-citizens in 2001’ The executive power of the Commonwealth has largely been neglected, both by the High Court and by commentators, receiving scant attention in comparison with the Commonwealth 's legislative and judicial powers. However, it was just fourteen years ago, in 2001, when a Norwegian cargo vessel MV Tampa being denied entry into Australia after rescuing 438 asylum seekers sparked one of the most controversial yet illuminating civil cases in Australian legal history. The result was a civil suit (Ruddock vs Vadarlis 2001) in which the Federal Government successfully appealed the initial ruling to the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia, where it was found that the government does indeed possess a prerogative power to prevent the entry of non-citizens into

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'If there existed any lingering doubt as to the applicability of the principles enunciated in Mabo to mainland Australia, that doubt is, as a matter of practicality, dispelled by the statement of Mason CJ in Coe v The Commonwealth (1993) 118 ALR 193. In the context of an application to strike out a statement of claim, his Honour said (at 200): 'Mabo [No.2] recognised that land in the Murray Islands was held by means of native title under the paramountcy of the Crown. The principles of law which led to that result apply to the Australian mainland as the judgments made clear. ' Mason v Tritton (1994) 34 NSWLR 572 at

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As the world grew more populated, to many Australians it seemed that Great Britain was both a physically long way and also very different to Australia. The Australia of pre World War II was now very different to the Australia colonised by the British so many years earlier. In 1919, Australia had, for the very first time, been considered a fully self-governing nation and was asked independently of Great Britain to be a part of the Treaty of Versailles (Carrodus, Delany and McArthur, 2012). Prior to this, Britain was responsible for all political agreements for Australia (Museum of Australian Democracy).

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His activism and leadership in the land rights movement helped to bring about important changes in Australian law and society, and his legacy continues to inspire Indigenous people around the world. One of Mabo's most significant contributions was his role in the landmark Mabo v Queensland case, which was decided by the High Court of Australia in 1992. This case overturned the legalism of terra nullius, which had been used to justify the dispossession of Indigenous peoples' lands by European colonizers. The court recognized that Indigenous peoples had a pre-existing system of land ownership and that this system had not been extinguished by British colonization. This decision paved the way for the recognition of Indigenous land rights in Australia and helped to establish a legal framework for the negotiation of land rights agreements between Indigenous peoples and the Australian government.

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In 1992, the High Court of Australia rejected the notion of terra nullius, and legally recognised the occupation of Indigenous People’s before and during the process of British colonisation. It was the first time, in the eyes of the law, that Aboriginal people had been acknowledged as the traditional custodians of the land.

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It is evident that tension and conflict grew between the Aboriginals and the British colonists in the early stages of British settlement because the two different cultures did not understand each other’s ways of life. The Aboriginals lived in harmony with the land- often moving around and living without buildings or weapons. However, when the British settlers arrived in Australia they built large buildings and brought in foreign animals. They also fenced off land originally owned by the Aboriginals through the process of Terra Nullius. However, because of the lack of cultural understanding between the natives and the settlers, many conflicts broke out.

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The history of scarification is an ancient tradition of cutting the skin in a specific way and manipulating the cut to form a scar, usually attempting to form a keloid scar, which is when the scar is raised. It is unclear as to when scarification originated, but it is generally thought to be as old as tattooing, which potentially dates back over 10,000years. Scarification is most prevalent in Indigenous Africans and Australians, as tattoos would not show as clearly on darker skin, and instead led to scarification being the main form of body modification. Most scarification result within individual tribes and families, and therefore it is important to note that scarification differs greatly around the world, and no two tribes are the same, and even scarring within a singular tribe can differ from person to person. For that matter,

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