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.
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.
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…
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 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