The myth of terra nullius

In 1770 Captain James Cook landed in Botany Bay, home of the Eora people, and claimed possession of the East Coast of Australia for Britain under the doctrine of 'terra nullius'

According to the international law of Europe in the late 18th century, there were only three ways that Britain could take possession of another country:

• If the country was uninhabited, Britain could claim and settle that country. In this case, it could claim ownership of the land.

• If the country was already inhabited, Britain could ask for permission from the indigenous people to use some of their land. In this case, Britain could purchase land for its own use but it could not steal the land of the indigenous people.

• If the country was inhabited, Britain could take over the country by invasion and conquest- in other words, defeat that country in war. However, even after winning a war, Britain would have to respect the rights of indigenous people.

Strangely Britain did not follow any of these rules in Australia. Since there were already people living in Australia, Britain could not take possession by "settling" this country. However from the time of Captain Cook's arrival the British Government acted as if Australia were uninhabited. So, instead of admitting that it was invading land that belonged to Aboriginal people, Britain acted as it were settling an empty land. This is what is meant by the myth of terra nullius.

read more: http://treatyrepublic.net/content/terra-nullius-0

The frontier wars

The Australian frontier wars were a series of conflicts that were fought between Indigenous Australians and European settlers that spanned a total of 146 years. The first fighting took place several months after the landing of the First Fleet in January 1788 and the last clashes occurred as late as 1934.[citation needed] The most common estimates of fatalities in the fighting are at least 20,000 Indigenous Australians and between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans. However, recent scholarship on the frontier wars in what is now the state of Queenslandindicates that Indigenous fatalities may have been significantly higher.[citation needed] Indeed, while battles and massacres occurred in a number of locations across Australia, they were particularly bloody in Queensland, owing to its comparatively larger pre-contact Indigenous population.

Far more devastating in their impact on the Aboriginal population, however, were the effects of disease, infertility, loss of hunting grounds, starvation, and general despair, loss of pride, and the alcoholic 'remedy' for this devastation.[citation needed] There are indications that small-pox epidemics may have impacted heavily on some Aboriginal tribes, with depopulation in large sections of what is now Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland up to 50% or more, even before the move inland from Sydney of squatters and their livestock.[3] Other diseases hitherto unknown in the Indigenous population—such as the common cold, flu, measles, venereal diseases and tuberculosis—also had an impact, significantly reducing their numbers and tribal cohesion, so limiting their ability to adapt and resist invasion and dispossession.[4]

read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_frontier_wars

victimisation under terra nulius...This picture tells a million words


referendum of 1967

In 1967, voters were asked to approve, together, changes to both of the provisions in which Aboriginal People were mentioned in the Constitution—sections 51(xxvi) and 127.

Section 51 begins:

The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:

And the extraordinary clauses that follow (ordinarily referred to as "heads of power") list most of the legislative powers of the federal parliament. The amendment deleted the text in bold from Clause xxvi (known as the "race" or "races" power):

The people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws

This gave the Commonwealth parliament power to legislate with respect to Aborigines (read: "Indigenous") living in a State as well as those living in a federal Territory.[6] The intent was that this new power for the Commonwealth would be used beneficially, yet despite several opportunities, the High Court has never resolved that it cannot also be used detrimentally.[7]

Section 127 was wholly removed. Headed "Aborigines not to be counted in reckoning population", it had read:

In reckoning the numbers of the people of the Commonwealth, or of a State or other part of the Commonwealth, aboriginal natives shall not be counted.

This section should be read in conjunction with Section 24 and Section 51(xi). The section related to calculating the population of the States and Territories for the purpose of allocating seats in the lower house of the federal parliament and per capita Commonwealth grants. The context of its introduction was to prevent Queensland and Western Australia from using their large Aboriginal populations to gain extra seats or extra funds. The 'statistics' power in Section 51(xi) allowed the Commonwealth to collect information on Aboriginal people.

It is frequently stated that the 1967 referendum gave Aboriginal people Australian citizenship and that it gave them the right to vote in federal elections, but neither of these statements is correct. All Australians, including aboriginal people, first became Australian citizens in 1949, when a separate Australian citizenship was created; before that time all Australians rather were British subjects. The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1949 gave Aborigines the right to vote in federal elections if they were able to vote in their state elections (they were disqualified from voting altogether in Queensland, while in Western Australia and the Northern Territory the right was conditional), or if they had served in the defence force. The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1962 gave all Aborigines the option of enrolling to vote in federal elections. It was not until the Commonwealth Electoral Amendment Act 1983 that voting became compulsory for Aborigines, as it was for other Australians.[8]

read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_referendum,_1967_(Aboriginals)

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The tent Embassy
In the 1970s, inspired by the Black Power movement in the US, Aboriginal people were politically very active. In Sydney, Australia’s first Aboriginal legal and medical services were founded. Aboriginal people demanded land rights for the areas that they lived on since millennia.Land rights were considered the key to economic independence, and land the base to generate resources and employment.To many it came as a shock when in April 1971 the Northern Territory Supreme Court decided against Aboriginal people and in favour of a mining company to have access to Aboriginal land. Australian common law, the justice concluded, did not recognise Aboriginal land rights [4].Aboriginal people travelled to Canberra to ask the Prime Minister of the time, William McMahon, to give them title to their land, royalties from the mining operations, a right to consent to or reject further development on their land, and the land to be returned once mining operations finished.The Prime Minister promised to look at ways to protect Aboriginal interests, but 9 months later, on the eve of Australia Day 1972, announced that, instead of granting Aboriginal people title to their land, his government would ask Aboriginal people to apply for new 50-year general purpose leases over such land. They would also have to prove that they put that land to ‘reasonable’ economic and social use. Aboriginal people had no title to mineral and forest rights [4].Angered by this announcement, Aboriginal people gathered in Sydney and decided that on Australia Day 1972 four representatives would travel to Canberra to protest against this decision.They were Michael Anderson from Walgett, Billy Craigie from Moree, Bert Williams from Cowra, and Tony Coorey from Tweed Heads.The four erected a beach umbrella surrounded by placards in front of Parliament House proclaiming it an ‘Aboriginal Embassy’.If people think this is an eyesore, well it is the way it is on government settlements. The place is beginning to look as tired as we are… we all wish we were in other places doing other things. But we know we have to stay here until we get what we want.—John Newfong [8]

 

Why we set up the tent embassy

Wiradjuri woman Jenny Munro remembers how the tent embassy came about [13]:“Remember that any gains we have won, we fought for. We got out on the streets, on the land and marched and protested for those gains. Land Rights had been discussed, argued, protested for generations but the 1971 court decision [Milirrpum people vs Nabalco] gave extra impetus to the Land Rights campaign.“1971 was the first time Aboriginal people took the issue of ownership of land to the courts. The Milirrpum people in the Northern Territory were resisting a bauxite mine opening up on their territory at Gove [Peninsula, NT], the Milirrpum versus Nabalco case. The Supreme Court judge, [Richard] Blackburn, found that we Aboriginal people didn’t have any rights of ownership of our land under common law, particularly in relation to mining claims.“Then on the 25th January 1972, the liberal prime minister at the time, Billy McMahon, issued a press statement saying that land rights for our people would never exist. All that we would ever get from any government was a system of perpetual leases on land we already owned and occupied.

Source: http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/history/aboriginal-tent-embassy-canberra#ixzz45zXxUYAY

 

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Redfern Speech (Year for the World's Indigenous People) – Delivered in RedfernPark by Prime Minister Paul Keating, 10 December 1992
Ladies and gentlemenI am very pleased to be here today at the launch of Australia's celebration of the1993 International Year of the World's Indigenous People.It will be a year of great significance for Australia.It comes at a time when we have committed ourselves to succeeding in the testwhich so far we have always failed.Because, in truth, we cannot confidently say that we have succeeded as we wouldlike to have succeeded if we have not managed to extend opportunity and care,dignity and hope to the indigenous people of Australia - the Aboriginal and TorresStrait Island people.This is a fundamental test of our social goals and our national will: our ability tosay to ourselves and the rest of the world that Australia is a first rate socialdemocracy, that we are what we should be - truly the land of the fair go and thebetter chance.There is no more basic test of how seriously we mean these things.It is a test of our self-knowledge.Of how well we know the land we live in. How well we know our history.How well we recognise the fact that, complex as our contemporary identity is, itcannot be separated from Aboriginal Australia.How well we know what Aboriginal Australians know about Australia.Redfern is a good place to contemplate these things.Just a mile or two from the place where the first European settlers landed, in toomany ways it tells us that their failure to bring much more than devastation anddemoralisation to Aboriginal Australia continues to be our failure.More I think than most Australians recognise, the plight of Aboriginal Australiansaffects us all.In Redfern it might be tempting to think that the reality Aboriginal Australiansface is somehow contained here, and that the rest of us are insulated from it.But of course, while all the dilemmas may exist here, they are far from contained.We know the same dilemmas and more are faced all over Australia.That is perhaps the point of this Year of the World's Indigenous People: to bringthe dispossessed out of the shadows, to recognise that they are part of us, andthat we cannot give indigenous Australians up without giving up many of our ownmost deeply held values, much of our own identity - and our own humanity.Nowhere in the world, I would venture, is the message more stark than it is inAustralia.We simply cannot sweep injustice aside. Even if our own conscience allowed usto, I am sure, that in due course, the world and the people of our region wouldnot.There should be no mistake about this - our success in resolving these issues willhave a significant bearing on our standing in the world.However intractable the problems seem, we cannot resign ourselves to failure -any more than we can hide behind the contemporary version of Social Darwinismwhich says that to reach back for the poor and dispossessed is to risk beingdragged down.That seems to me not only morally indefensible, but bad history.We non-Aboriginal Australians should perhaps remind ourselves that Australiaonce reached out for us.Didn't Australia provide opportunity and care for the dispossessed Irish? The poorof Britain? The refugees from war and famine and persecution in the countries ofEurope and Asia?Isn't it reasonable to say that if we can build a prosperous and remarkablyharmonious multicultural society in Australia, surely we can find just solutions tothe problems which beset the first Australians - the people to whom the mostinjustice has been done.And, as I say, the starting point might be to recognise that the problem startswith us non-Aboriginal Australians.It begins, I think, with that act of recognition.Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing.We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.We brought the diseases. The alcohol.We committed the murders.We took the children from their mothers.We practised discrimination and exclusion.It was our ignorance and our prejudice.And our failure to imagine these things being done to us.With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human responseand enter into their hearts and minds.We failed to ask - how would I feel if this were done to me?As a consequence, we failed to see that what we were doing degraded all of us.If we needed a reminder of this, we received it this year.The Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody showedwith devastating clarity that the past lives on in inequality, racism and injustice.In the prejudice and ignorance of non-Aboriginal Australians, and in thedemoralisation and desperation, the fractured identity, of so many Aborigines andTorres Strait Islanders.For all this, I do not believe that the Report should fill us with guilt.Down the years, there has been no shortage of guilt, but it has not produced theresponses we need.Guilt is not a very constructive emotion.I think what we need to do is open our hearts a bit.All of us.Perhaps when we recognise what we have in common we will see the thingswhich must be done - the practical things.There is something of this in the creation of the Council for AboriginalReconciliation.The Council's mission is to forge a new partnership built on justice and equity andan appreciation of the heritage of Australia's indigenous people.In the abstract those terms are meaningless.We have to give meaning to "justice" and "equity" - and, as I have said severaltimes this year, we will only give them meaning when we commit ourselves toachieving concrete results.If we improve the living conditions in one town, they will improve in another. Andanother.If we raise the standard of health by twenty per cent one year, it will be raisedmore the next.If we open one door others will follow.When we see improvement, when we see more dignity, more confidence, morehappiness - we will know we are going to win.We need these practical building blocks of change.The Mabo Judgement should be seen as one of these.By doing away with the bizarre conceit that this continent had no owners prior tothe settlement of Europeans, Mabo establishes a fundamental truth and lays thebasis for justice.It will be much easier to work from that basis than has ever been the case in thepast.For that reason alone we should ignore the isolated outbreaks of hysteria andhostility of the past few months.Mabo is an historic decision - we can make it an historic turning point, the basisof a new relationship between indigenous and non-Aboriginal Australians.The message should be that there is nothing to fear or to lose in the recognitionof historical truth, or the extension of social justice, or the deepening ofAustralian social democracy to include indigenous Australians.There is everything to gain.Even the unhappy past speaks for this.Where Aboriginal Australians have been included in the life of Australia they havemade remarkable contributions.Economic contributions, particularly in the pastoral and agricultural industry.They are there in the frontier and exploration history of Australia.They are there in the wars.In sport to an extraordinary degree.In literature and art and music.In all these things they have shaped our knowledge of this continent and ofourselves. They have shaped our identity.They are there in the Australian legend.We should never forget - they have helped build this nation.And if we have a sense of justice, as well as common sense, we will forge a newpartnership.As I said, it might help us if we non-Aboriginal Australians imagined ourselvesdispossessed of land we had lived on for fifty thousand years - and then imaginedourselves told that it had never been ours.Imagine if ours was the oldest culture in the world and we were told that it wasworthless.Imagine if we had resisted this settlement, suffered and died in the defence ofour land, and then were told in history books that we had given up without afight.Imagine if non-Aboriginal Australians had served their country in peace and warand were then ignored in history books.Imagine if our feats on sporting fields had inspired admiration and patriotism andyet did nothing to diminish prejudice.Imagine if our spiritual life was denied and ridiculed.Imagine if we had suffered the injustice and then were blamed for it.It seems to me that if we can imagine the injustice we can imagine its opposite.And we can have justice.I say that for two reasons:I say it because I believe that the great things about Australian social democracyreflect a fundamental belief in justice.And I say it because in so many other areas we have proved our capacity overthe years to go on extending the realms of participation, opportunity and care.Just as Australians living in the relatively narrow and insular Australia of the1960s imagined a culturally diverse, worldly and open Australia, and in ageneration turned the idea into reality, so we can turn the goals of reconciliationinto reality.There are very good signs that the process has begun.The creation of the Reconciliation Council is evidence itself.The establishment of the ATSIC - the Aboriginal and Torres Strait IslanderCommission - is also evidence.The Council is the product of imagination and good will.ATSIC emerges from the vision of indigenous self-determination and selfmanagement.The vision has already become the reality of almost 800 elected AboriginalRegional Councillors and Commissioners determining priorities and developingtheir own programs.All over Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are takingcharge of their own lives.And assistance with the problems which chronically beset them is at last beingmade available in ways developed by the communities themselves.If these things offer hope, so does the fact that this generation of Australians isbetter informed about Aboriginal culture and achievement, and about theinjustice that has been done, than any generation before.We are beginning to more generally appreciate the depth and the diversity ofAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.From their music and art and dance we are beginning to recognise how muchricher our national life and identity will be for the participation of Aboriginals andTorres Strait Islanders.We are beginning to learn what the indigenous people have known for manythousands of years - how to live with our physical environment.Ever so gradually we are learning how to see Australia through Aboriginal eyes,beginning to recognise the wisdom contained in their epic story.I think we are beginning to see how much we owe the indigenous Australians and how much we havelost by living so apart.I said we non-indigenous Australians should try to imagine the Aboriginal view.It can't be too hard. Someone imagined this event today, and it is now amarvellous reality and a great reason for hope.There is one thing today we cannot imagine.We cannot imagine that the descendants of people whose genius and resiliencemaintained a culture here through fifty thousand years or more, throughcataclysmic changes to the climate and environment, and who then survived twocenturies of disposession and abuse, will be denied their place in the modernAustralian nation.We cannot imagine that.We cannot imagine that we will fail.And with the spirit that is here today I am confident that we won't.I am confident that we will succeed in this decade.Thank you
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Apology to the stolen generations...

 

SYDNEY, Australia — Prime Minister Kevin Rudd opened a new chapter in Australia’s tortured relations with its indigenous peoples on Wednesday with a comprehensive and moving apology for past wrongs and a call for bipartisan action to improve the lives of Australia’s Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

“The Parliament is today here assembled to deal with this unfinished business of the nation, to remove a great stain from the nation’s soul, and in a true spirit of reconciliation to open a new chapter in the history of this great land, Australia,” Mr. Rudd told Parliament.

This was “Government business, motion No. 1,” the first act of Mr. Rudd’s Labor government, which was sworn in Tuesday after a convincing electoral win over the 11-year administration of John Howard, who had for years refused to apologize for the misdeeds of past governments.

Mr. Rudd’s apology was particularly addressed to the so-called Stolen Generations, the tens of thousands of indigenous children who were removed, sometimes forcibly, from their families in a policy of assimilation that only ended in the 1970s.

In some states it was part of a policy to “breed out the color,” in the words of Cecil Cook, who held the title of chief protector of Aborigines in the Northern Territory in the 1930s.

“We apologize especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country,” Mr. Rudd said as hundreds of members of the Stolen Generations listened in the gallery, some with tears in their eyes. “For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry....

 

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/world/asia/13aborigine.html?_r=0

 

 

 

From Fr Frank Brennan

...

Giles made it clear that the amendment would be aimed specifically at young property offenders. He said:

Enough is enough. We give rogue youth every chance, but they still break in to our homes, smash up our cars and cause trouble. They commit crimes, then they get bail, they commit more crimes, then they use diversion and it goes on and on … but we still end up getting our houses broken in to and our cars smashed up, and everything else.

His attorney general, John Elferink, said under the provisions of the Bail Amendment Bill 2016 “a presumption against bail will extend to persons that are arrested and have previously been convicted of two or more serious property crimes within the preceding two years”.

This is just cheap politics. The latest statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveal that while the national imprisonment rate in 2013 was 170 prisoners per 100,000 adult population, the NT rate was a staggering 821 per 100,000, with Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders making up 86% of the NT prison population.

The NT Bail Act already requires a court or police officer considering the grant of bail to take in to account “the risk (if any) that the accused person would (if released on bail) commit an offence, a breach of the peace, or a breach of the conditions of bail”. It’s not as if a court considering a bail application for someone on a property charge would disregard the risk of re-offending if the applicant had been convicted of two or more serious property offences in the previous two years.

...

 

It was only last month that Patrick Dodson, the elder of reconciliation, told the National Press Club:

For the vast bulk of our people the legal system is not a trusted instrument of justice; it is a feared and despised processing plant that propels the most vulnerable and disabled of our people towards a broken bleak future.

Dodson pleaded, “Surely as a nation we are better than this.”

The elected representatives in the Northern Territory should stop beating the election drum ever so briefly and listen to the cry of those who seek “a future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have failed”.

After the new parliaments are in place in Canberra and Darwin, let’s hope that our elected representatives can work constructively to reduce the scandalous imprisonment rates in the Northern Territory while providing greater security for all persons and property. This will require much more than a cheap and nasty, rushed amendment to the Bail Act.

 

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/31/the-scandal-in-the-northern-territory-is-not-youth-but-imprisonment-rates

 

“This is a big day for us,” Kenbi traditional owner Jason Singh told the crowd. “At last we have waited and we get our land back.

“Thank you all for coming and welcome to our country.”

A crowd of several hundred, including Malcolm Turnbull, sat at Mandorah facing Darwin harbour, the city’s skyline in the distance. For 37 years the people of this land have looked across to the seat of power of the Northern Territory government, which for four decades fought against them and their rights to their country.

In April an agreement was finally reached. On Tuesday the title deeds to the 55,000 hectares of the Kenbi land claim, covering the Cox peninsula on the western side of Darwin harbour, were officially handed back.

At almost four decades since it was officially lodged, the Kenbi claim was one of the longest running in Australian land rights history. It has been particularly fraught, with three challenges in the federal court and two in the high court. It was awarded to just six individuals, known as the Tommy Lyons group, and a separate group of Larrakia people have maintained their claims of ownership and unhappiness at the decision.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jun/21/at-last-kenbi-land-returned-to-aboriginal-owners-after-37-year-fight

 

Despite the controversy of who "owns" the land, we should be happy for the locals. But after 37 years or so, when the "decision" was made in April, should the "caretaker" Malcolm do an official duty? NO way. Malcolm breached the caretaker's convention. The Kenbi land owners could have waited another two weeks AFTER THE ELECTION. But Malcolm wanted to collect kudos along the way... Illegal under the convention of "election mode".

 

 

Australia's most prominent Indigenous music artist Dr G Yunupingu has died aged 46 and is being mourned by family and friends as a "genius and wonderful human being".

The singer — from the remote community of Galiwin'ku on Elcho Island, 500 kilometres east of Darwin — shot to stardom in 2008, winning an ARIA Award for his namesake album.

The album hit triple platinum in Australia, silver in the UK and charted in multiple countries worldwide.

Dr Yunupingu's record label Skinnyfish described him as "one of the most important figures in Australian music history, blind from birth and emerging from the remote Galiwin'ku community ... to sell over half a million copies of his albums across the world, singing in his native Yolngu language".

His friend Vaughan Williams told the ABC the artist had been staying in Darwin.

 

...

Mr Williams said he was particularly devastated because he felt his friend's death was "preventable".

"Questions need to be asked about how this could happen. It's a failure of all of us that we have lost such an amazing human being," he said.

"I feel he was trapped in the same cycle of bad health that so many Indigenous people are trapped in."

The family has requested that Dr G Yunupingu's image not be published.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-26/dr-g-yunupingu:-world-famous-indig...

 

May the generous music of the great man lives on in the silence of our mourning hearts.