ON THIS DAY

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3 June, 1992

Mabo

On this day in 1992, in a landmark decision, the High Court of Australia recognised that indigenous rights to land had continued after the British Crown acquired sovereignty and that the international law doctrine of terra nullius (empty land which could therefore be colonised) was not applicable to Australian domestic law. High court judges considering the case Mabo v Queensland (No 2) found in favour of Mabo, which led to the Native Title Act 1993 and established native title in Australia, officially recognising the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia.

Eddie Mabo died on 21 January 1992 of cancer at the age of 55, five months before the High Court announced its historic decision.

Three years after Eddie Mabo died, that being the traditional mourning period for the people of Murray Island, a memorial service was held. The next day, Mabo's gravesite was attacked by vandals who spray-painted swastikas and racial slurs on his tombstone as well as removing a bronze bas-relief portrait of him. His family decided to have his body reburied on Murray Island. On the night of his reinterment, the Islanders performed their traditional ceremony for the burial of a Meriam king, a ritual not seen on the island for 80 years.

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