Terra nullius

Part A-Timeline of Significant Events in the Changing of Rights and Freedoms of Indigenous Australians: 1948- It is stated on the Youth for Human Rights webpage After the Second World War, wife of Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, led a committee of people to write up a special document that stated the basic human rights that everyone in the world should have. This Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the general assembly of the United Nations (UN) on the 10th of December,…

The Ainu people were not only victims of the Japanese encroachment of their culture but also on their land, which resulted in a huge decrease in the Ainu people. When the Japanese, specifically the Matsumae, established themselves in the south of Hokkaido, the demand of gold and the products from the forest and ocean led to the Japanese encroachment. Due to the encroachment, many Ainu people were very dependent on Japanese rice and sake. In return for the rice and sake, the Ainu people were…

The Mabo Case was a decision made by the High Court on whether Australia was terra nullius (empty land – or land that belongs to nobody) as the British declared when they settled here, or whether it did/does in actual fact belong to the indigenous peoples. The High Court decided that terra nullius should not be applied to Australia, which was yet another huge turning point for the ATSI people as it recognised Aboriginal and Torres Strait…

known as the Mabo decision. Although they had been taken away from their main land the Torres Strait Islanders and Aboriginals still continued their traditional way of life on the Murray Island. Taking place after their land bad been declared terra nullius by the European settlers, the connection that the aboriginals had developed with their land had become unrecognised and was immediately in use by the British. As an act of retaliation the islanders and aboriginals developed a challenge to…

Intertwined in the complicated history of the discipline of anthropology are the concepts of primitivism and unilinearism. These concepts appeared in the analysis of many different ethnicities described as less technologically and culturally developed than that of their Western European counterparts. The trouble with this concept being applied to anthropology is that when peoples are labeled as less developed it becomes easy to consider them less than human or primitive, thereby ranking another…

matters. Aboriginal ownership of land has always been recognised by Britain; however, despite British recognition, the colonists in Australia managed to officially disregard this recognition by creating Australian law on the concept of ‘Terra Nullius’. Terra Nullius is the fiction that Australia was unoccupied at the time of colonisation. Many land councils and aboriginal organisations throughout Australia lobbied the Federal Government to protect any native title and fought for a more flexible…

all Australians voting ‘Yes’ for Aboriginal people to be counted in the census. However, Aboriginal people still struggled to gain their full rights and freedoms. When Australia was colonised by the British, it was declared that the land was “terra nullius”, although there were Aboriginal people living on the island. This displayed the ethnocentric attitudes of the British which gave indigenous Australians no rights to their traditional land. This issue was highlighted when Eddie Mabo was told…

Aboriginal protest movements have exceptionally developed over the twentieth century to improve overall lifestyle for all Indigenous Australians. Injustice and inequality for Aboriginals were common and dated back to the first settlement in 1788. Momentous protests, Day of Mourning and the Freedom Ride successfully promoted against the prejudice and discrimination towards the Aboriginals. Other memorable events of protest include Eddie Mabo Land Rights. All of these events successfully made…

1972: The Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra is started on Australia Day due to land rights claims. 1984: The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Act is Passed. 1981: A land rights conference is held at James Cook University where Eddie Mabo makes a speech outlining the land ownership and inheritance system on Murray Island. A lawyer at the conference suggests there should be a test case on claiming land rights through the court system. 1981: A land rights conference is held at…

The British-Europeans blood-thirsty civilization in the nation of Australia was jeopardous to the Indigenous natives in the 18th-20th century in many implications. Firstly, it caused the outbreak of chronic diseases, such as tuberculosis, measles, chickenpox, smallpox and influenza. Yet, little did the Europeans know that the harsh syndromes were introduced to the nation, as a result of their arrival. It also made the nation more and more susceptible to the dramatic decline in the Indigenous…