Terra nullius

The acknowledged traditional land owners of my area are the Gurung-Willam-Balluk people of the Wurundjeri tribe of the Kulin nation. History tells us that the Indigenous people roamed our lands long before Captain Cook declared Australia to be ‘terra nullius’ and claimed the land for the British Crown in 1770. It has been documented that prior to the first fleets arrival in 1788 there were 260 Indigenous communities and over 500 different dialects. But with the arrival of the European…

Multiracial people are often seen as “watered down versions” of their ethnicities, who do not quite fit into society’s images of each culture they represent. They are half this, half that, a quarter this; they are never labelled as “whole.” Frequently asked the question: ‘what are you?,’ by anyone who wants to know, multiracial human beings can have a difficult time figuring out and understanding their own identity. Does one ethnicity dominate the other, simply because the features are more…

discourses, ‘terra nullius’ was historically used to defend the justice of colonisation in Australia for the benefit of the European expansion (Fitzmaurice, 2007). It allowed settlers to claim territorial jurisdiction and was ultimately responsible for the dispossession of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples living on the land now known as Australia (Prokhovnik, 2015). The political ideology during federation revolved around British patriotism, therefore terra nullius bestowed…

Racism is usually defined as any form of discrimination that is based on either race, nationality, cultural contextual, or ethnicity. It is evident that its existence in the modern world is caused by imbalance whereby a certain group of people or community controls other groups in different ways that can be in accidental form or intended form. Racism is brought about and fueled by histories, culture, social, and disparities in within a society. Factually, racism in Australia and other countries…

Australia was once an undiscovered island inhabited by Australian Indigenous natives. That was before white settlement in 1788. For middle school students at Kimberley College, the unit for this term has been about the hidden Indigenous history and reconciliation. We studied the book, Deadly Unna? and its connection and relevance to young men and women of Australia. We studied the mockumentary BabaKiueria to help us step into the shoes of an Indigenous Australian and help in the understanding of…

The Dreaming is a fundamental tenet of Aboriginal spirituality which refers to their spiritual beliefs about creation and existence. The Dreaming encapsulates all wisdom and perception of reality in Aboriginal societies hence is crucial to all thoughts and actions of Aboriginal spirituality.The Dreaming is inextricably intertwined to the land because it is the medium through which the Dreaming and ancestral spirits is communicated to on a metatemporal plane. The Dreaming also holds an the…

prior to the assertion of British sovereignty and establishment Colonies across the continent from 1788.' As the new doctrine replaced the terra nullius which the British claims were justified as a wrongful legal presumption of how the indigenous people were not settled by law to use the land. ("Eddie Koiki Mabo",…

Flora and Fauna. In turn, they were granted no voting rights and were segregated from the white population through Government projects called missions or reserves. They were made to give up their traditional ways of life as European fleets assumed terra nullius and colonised on their land. The white population intended to end Aboriginal culture and this led towards what is known as the Stolen Generations, where children were ripped apart from their families, some never to see them again. They…

Eddie Mabo was a Torres Strait Islander born on Mer or Murray Island; he fought to change how British colonies believed that the land they had colonised was terra nullius (no man’s land) (Reconciliation Australia, 2014). The British colonies thought that because they could not see established aboriginal people, farms and houses which were all characteristics of the life back home in England, which they believed that the Aborigines had no connection to land (Korff, 2015). Because of this British…

Terra nullius is a term that means ‘no man’s land’. It was given to the Australian land as the British didn’t recognise the traditional ways indigenous people used the land by. Fortunately, by the removal of terra nullius and so this allowed indigenous people to own lands and hence practice their own traditions and customs on that land. However, to claim ownership…