Land Rights for the First Australians

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Land Rights for the First Australians

Australian Aborigines have had a traditional relationship with their land since they first came to the Australian continent somewhere from 40,000 to 60,000 years ago to 120,000 years ago (9:9). Before Europeans came and settled the same land, the Aborigines had their own law system, trading systems, and way of caring for their land (12:1-2). Then the First Fleet of Europeans landed at Botany Bay in New South Wales in 1788. The expedition lead by the new Governor Phillip, but directed by King George the Third, was told to endeavor by every possible means to open intercourse with the natives, and to conciliate their affections, enjoining all our subjects to live in amity and kindness with them. And if any of our subjects shall wantonly destroy them or give them any unnecessary interruption in the exercise of their several occupations, it is our will and pleasure that you do cause such offenders to be brought to punishment according to the degree of the offense (9:2-3).

This policy was abandoned as land was taken from the natives without thought. Captain Cook termed the Australian land terra nullius, or owned by no one, when he landed and rediscovered the continent (9:9), and that was to be the rule for centuries. Later, European convict settlements started to bring more white men to Australia. Europeans used the Aborigines to track escaped convicts and told the convicts that the Aborigines were savages and would kill them if they escaped. As a result, Aboriginal peoples started distrusting the settlers, and the settlers started to fear and dislike the Aborigines (6:1-2). The Aboriginal population shrunk from an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 people throughout 500 different tribes in 1788, ...

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... 1992.

6. Kidd, Rosalind. The Way We Civilise: Aboriginal Affairs--The untold story. St. Lucia:

University of Queensland Press, 1997.

7. McLuhan, T.C. The way of the Earth: Encounters with Nature in ancient and

contemporary thought. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.

8. "Neither black nor white." The Economist. 3 May 1997: 28.

9. Riemenschneider, Dieter and Geoffrey V. Davis. Aratjara: Aboriginal Culture and

Literature in Australia. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997.

10. Wilmsen, Edwin N. We Are Here: Politics of Aboriginal Land Tenure. Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1989.

11. Young, Elspeth. Third World in the First: Development and indigenous peoples.

London: Routledge, 1995.

12. Yunupingu, Galarrwuy. Our Land is Our Life: Land Rights--Past, Present and Future.

St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1997.

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