Cabinet papers reveal the extent to which the Keating government was torn between concern for fiscal responsibility and a desire to tackle Indigenous disadvantage and pursue meaningful reconciliation.
The Tent Embassy in Canberra has for decades been symbolic of the tensions in Australian cities about recognition, reconciliation and land justice.
Dylan Wood/AAP
Few in Australia understand the context and true meaning of customary law. Denials of its validity are often based on ignorance or on specific examples devoid of context.
Bradshaw rock paintings near King Edward River, Kimberley region of Western Australia.
Wikimedia Commons
Last week Liberal Democrats Senator David Leyonhjelm was widely reported as suggesting that people other than Aboriginal Australians may have occupied the Australian continent in the past. At a doorstop…
In some parts of Australia, cattle properties have been hand over to the traditional owners, but for others the return of their land seems further away than ever.
AAP/Jordan Baker
The company built by ‘Cattle King’ Sidney Kidman is for sale. He enjoyed good relations with the Indigenous inhabitants, but proper recognition of their rights to their land seems ever more elusive.
Tim Wilson has advocated for native title reform at the National Press Club.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
Aboriginal Australians are being denied the freedom to exercise their property rights under native title, Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson has said. Wilson said that, in meeting Indigenous leaders…
Martha Koowarta, her late husband John and her Wik people have had to fight since the 1970s for their land rights in north Queensland to be properly recognised.
AAP Image/David Sproule
This week’s Federal Court ruling that the Wild Rivers declarations introduced by the former Queensland Labor Government were rushed and invalid was the long-awaited result many Cape York Indigenous groups…
The High Court has ruled in favour of extending native title rights to a 44,000 square kilometre area of the Torres Strait Sea - the largest sea claim in Australian history.
AAP/Jordan Baker
It may have been 21 years since the landmark Mabo judgment recognised native title in Australia for the first time, but historic legal native title decisions are still taking place. The High Court of Australia…
Litigation surrounding current Noongar land title claims is convoluted and limiting, but will there be an adequate solution?
AAP/Cortlan Bennett
The current negotiations over the Noongar native title claim in the south-west corner of Australia reflect an important maturing of the native title resolution process. Beneath the photo opportunities…
Successful negotiations at James Price Point have been drowned out by the voices of protest.
AAP/Cortlan Bennett
Professor Marcia Langton opened this year’s Boyer Lectures with an observation that William Stanner’s 1968 Boyer Lectures had “given credence, perhaps inadvertently” to the idea that Aboriginal people…
Eddie Koiki Mabo (left) and Jack Wailu on the Torres Strait Island of Mer during the High Court challenge.
AAP/National Archives of Australia
Australians have just celebrated Mabo Day – this year marking the 20th anniversary of the landmark High Court decision that changed the course of land rights in Australia The case has special resonance…
The Canberra Aboriginal tent embassy. Should the protest in Musgrave Park be seen in the same light?
AAP/Alan Porrit
This weekend, South Brisbane will play host to the Paniyiri Festival, one of Australia’s largest cultural events. From May 19 to 20, thousands are expected to join the celebrations and delight themselves…
Mining companies are finally sharing the benefits with the native owners of the land.
AFP/Christian Sprogoe/Rio Tinto
Aboriginal Australians living in remote areas have, for the past five decades, experienced at close quarters the ill-effects of large scale mining, while receiving few of the benefits. From Cape York…
Indigenous Australians find great difficulty in gaining official tribal recognition.
AAP
Indigenous difference has been “recognised” in the public law and policy of the western settler states of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States since the earliest days of colonial government…
Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University