The High court should have not decided on Terra Nellius and it shouldn’t have been applied to Australia. It recognised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people rights to the land that exisited before the British arrived. It was a turning point for recognition for peoples rightd…
Outline the importance of the Mabo Decision, Native Title Act and Wik Judgement for the Land Rights movement (5 marks) The Land Rights movement aimed to lead Aboriginal people towards regaining access and ownership to their sacred sites and traditional lands that were lost by European settlement. This movement was instigated by Charles Perkins through his Freedom Ride in 1965 and Vincent Lingiari, the elder of the Gurindji people, who promoted the Wave Hill Strike in 1966. In 1992, Eddie Mabo, on behalf of the Murray Island people, successfully overturned the concept of ‘terra nullius’ in the High Court as they ruled that Australia was occupied at the time of British settlement. In due course, this decision led to the creation of the Native…
The High Court of Australia decided that terra nullius shouldn't have been applied to Australia on the 3rd of June 1992, the Aboriginal Torres Strait islander people have land rights. The Mabo case was a turning point to history for the aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as it was a step closer for having equal rights. Unfortunately, Eddie Mabo died in January 1992, so he did not find out the results of his case which was 5 months before the High Court's decision. Soon after the Mabo case, there was a native title act in 1993 which also had a significance in helping to change the freedom and rights the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people…
In 1965 the freedom ride rode through western New South Wales towns as a way to draw attention to the racism that was absent. This was done by an Aboriginal student named Charles Perkins who drove a bus around protesting the discrimination against Aboriginal people in small towns in NSW. The freedom ride in Australia had a significant impact on Australians attitudes at that time towards indigenous rights. The main points being discussed will be how Charles Perkins and the Freedom Ride impacted society in the 1960’s.…
The Australian Strike at Wave Hill station(August 1966), commonly known as The Wave Hill “Walk off” symbolised a turning point in aboriginal rights, as Aboriginal workers abandoned their duties at the cattle station in protest of poor wages and working conditions. The strike soon shifted its motives and became an issue of humanitarian rights, as the Gurindji people were denied ownership of their stolen land. The issue swiftly became symbolic of maltreatment of Aboriginal people throughout Australian society and due to widespread campaigning of Aboriginal rights, the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act of 1976 was put into affect, which ultimately allowed Aboriginal tribes to reclaim land of historical and cultural significance.…
A significant event for the civil rights of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islander people was the Mabo Decision which occurred in 1982 and ended in 1992. The Mabo Decision a case for which Eddie Koiki Mabo fought for the tradition rights and ownership of the Island of Mer otherwise known as Murray Island. During 1788 Australia was claimed ‘Terra Nullius’ by the British and as a result all land that traditionally belonged to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders was taken away. Soon Aboriginals didn’t have the rights of the land that they lived on and were not counted as an Australian citizens. Eddie Koiki Mabo was an Indigenous activist that fought for the civil rights of Indigenous Australians and believed that the land he lived on belonged to his ancestors.…
Faith Bandler played an important role in promoting the civil rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people. The struggles and discrimination of the ATSI peoples was made evident to her during her childhood and she went on to co-found an organisation which supported their rights, making many public and private speeches. Bandler played a vital part in the 1967 referendum and has been acknowledged for her contribution with many awards. Bandler is in no doubt one of the most important civil rights activists of ATSI rights in Australia.…
Indeed, the Mabo decision shattered “the spirit of Terra Nullius” drafted in the Australian Constitution and appealed for constitutional reform which would acknowledge the Aboriginal people and reveal the new reality of the Australian society. As McKenna wrote, “At the 1998 Constitutional Convention, the preamble would become the only constitutional vehicle for advancing reconciliation” (2004, p.44). The Constitutional Convention helped to create the perception that the preamble was a necessity for the republican movement and reconciliation but the Howard-Murray preamble was an affront to the reconciliation movement because it did not recognized the legitimacy of the historical injustice suffered by Aboriginal people which was the basis of their political request. McKenna demonstrated that the use of language is a major factor to define the Australian identity in the…
Section 127 stated that: “In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives should not be counted.” In a video interview with Gary Williams, an Aboriginal elder who was 21 years old when the 1967 Referendum occurred he states that “Because we weren’t counted as part of the census, we were part of the flora and fauna so that we felt that after the vote came through we were recognised as people”. This shows how degrading and humiliating it must have been for Aboriginals as it suggested that indigenous Australians were regarded as animals instead of human beings by the federal government and therefore did not deserve human rights. Section 127 also made Australia’s Aboriginal population basically invisible to the federal government which resulted in the federal government only providing funding to the non-indigenous population as the federal government did not know the exact number of Aboriginals living in Australia or where the most populated indigenous communities were located. This meant that state governments could only provide limited funding and services to Indigenous communities thus lowering their quality of…
The policies of Assimilation and Protectionism had detrimental impacts upon the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) communities throughout Australia prior to 1965. While Protectionism aimed to be a ‘smooth pillow to die on’, the policy of Assimilation culturally mixed the races. Assimilation was a policy implemented by the Australian Government which integrated ATSI into the Australian Society, this policy aimed to make Aboriginals ‘similar’ to white Australians and culturally mixed. As a result, this policy would extend the language, culture, beliefs, clothing and manner of living of the ATSI race but would genetically ‘die out’ through natural elimination. The most tragic aspect of the policy of Assimilation was legalised kidnapping which contributed to the ‘Stolen Generation’, this event makes clear that the ATSI faced a loss of identity, beliefs/spiritual, connection, bonds/ties, culture, taken from family such as biological parents, and a disconnection to the Indigenous heritage and traditional knowledge.…
In the early twentieth century, Aboriginal peoples began to organize themselves politically, through demonstrations and petitions demanding equality and the social and political rights that had been denied them. By the second half of the century, the Aboriginal struggle gained momentum with the first land rights claims and the establishment of organizations for social advancement. Official recognition of rights to land was high on the Aboriginal agenda, the centrality of land to Aboriginal social and spiritual life being paramount. At the end of the century universal suffrage became a reality for Aboriginal people. Campaigns brought about fundamental changes in official government policy; in 1972 assimilation policies were revoked in favor…
Politics of Indigenous Recognition Analyse the broad shifts that have taken place in Australian society since the end of the Second World War, and how those historical changes have shaped the contemporary nation There has been an abundance of injustices suffered by the original owners of our land which still continue to this day but since WW2, which occurred from 1939-1945, Indigenous Recognition has been one of the rapidly changing important issues in Australian society. Although there has been a shift towards recognition, which has helped to shape this nation into a more diverse and accepting nation, we have still not come far enough to ‘Closing the gap’. Indigenous Recognition is defined as having a voice to parliament, treaties and truth…
The exclusion of Indigenous people from the nations constitution took place in the early nineteenth century. Henry Parkes the premier of the colony of New South Wales called for all six Australian colonies to unite and create a great national government for ALL of Australia. Parkes initiated a constitution based on common racial and British custom on which this nation was supposedly founded. Throughout her speech “Indigenous Exceptionalism and the Constitutional ‘Race Power’ Marcia Langton argues that any idea of race and the ability of the parliament to use race in law making should be removed from the Australian constitution. The detailed history of legislation applied to Indigenous peoples demonstrates this is many ways; Indigenous people…
Land rights are still bitterly contested, passionately fought over and, irrefutably, close to the hearts of thousands of Aboriginal people all over Australia. Land rights and the Land Councils, never far from controversy, are, once again in the political spotlight. While the critics change, their arguments have basically remained unchanged for nearly two decades. Land rights, one of the few positive outcomes to emerge for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory in the past 40 years, has slowly been turned into an unfulfilled obligation for the Australian government.…
SOCIAL CONTROL THROUGH SECTARIAN DIVISION The adoption of social control through sectarian division within the private sector can be evidenced both in the mines of the West of Scotland and in the shipyards of Glasgow. In his book ‘The People’s Referendum’ Geoghegan speaks of a conversation with former steelworker Jim MacDonald, a member of the Orange Lodge for some fifty years, in relation to the Baird family who owned the Gartsherrie pit in Monklands, Coatbridge. MacDonald’s paternal great grandfather, an Irish Protestant immigrant, from Ballynahinch in County Down, worked as a blast furnace filler at Bairds in Coatbridge.…