Story of Mabo

Eddie Mabo, a Torres Strait Islander from the island of Mer in the Torres Strait, while working as a gardener at Townsville University in the mid 1970’s, realised what was being taught at the University was legal fiction because he knew he and his family owned land on Mer. Here is some background on the Mabo case in Australia.

Article by Joe Toscano, originally appeared in the Anarchist Age Weekly Review, Number 978, 28th May – 3rd June 2012.

Mabo, the background

Despite the importance of the Mabo 1992 High Court decision that found indigenous Australians had rights to land in law, few Australians are aware of the background to this struggle. When the British monarchy claimed the “Great South Land” for itself in 1788, it did it by elying on the legal fiction of “Terra Nullius” – the land was uninhabited. Terra Nullius gave the colonisers the legal right to take the land by force from the original inhabitants without paying compensation for it. The genocide and atrocities that accompanied the colonisation process never legally happened because the land was not officially inhabited.

Despite the Australian people deciding in the 1967 referendum to give the Commonwealth government the power to legislate on behalf of indigenous Australians, it did not change their legal status in elation to the land.

Eddie Mabo, a Torres Strait Islander from the island of Mer in the Torres Strait, while working as a gardener at Townsville University in the mid 1970’s realised what was being taught at the University was legal fiction because he knew he and his family owned land on Mer.

For thousands of years before white colonisation families on the Island used stone markers to mark the boundaries of their land. He started using the University library and started talking to interested academics at Townsville University about the possibility of legally challenging Terra Nullius. At the height of the powers exercised by the racist Bjelke Peterson Queensland government, Eddie Mabo began a series of legal challenges that took over a decade to wind through the Queensland Courts and eventually the High Court which on the 3rd June 1992 led to the High Court recognising that indigenous Australians, both Torres Strait Islanders and Aborigines had rights to land in law because of their prior occupation of this land.

Eddie died five months before the judgement. He, his wife and family paid a tremendous personal cost for his defiance of the Bjelke Peterson government. Even in death he was not allowed any peace. His grave site at Townsville was vandalised by racist graffiti. His family fearing further attacks transferred his body to Mer, his original birthplace, where he now rests in peace. Today, Mabo Day, the 3rd June is celebrated with a public holiday in the Torres Strait.

When will it be celebrated with a public holiday in the rest of Australia?