Terra Nullius History
History Essay on Terra Nullius
Terra Nullius, was how Cook described Australia and how it was officially viewed until the last 20 or 30 years of Australia’s history. In 1788 the First Fleet arrived, after this, the British took over all of the land in sight without any thought to its original ownership. They forbade the fact that there were Aboriginals in Australia and they declared it empty. Legally this meant that no one lived on the land and because of that no one could claim rights of it under English law.
This was not what had happened in other countries that Britain had colonised - in Canada and New Zealand treaties were signed with the Indigenous people in order to transfer over the land. Though these treaties were very biased towards …show more content…
When the Indigenous people were given reserve lands they had been told it would be theirs to keep, but by the 1960s the Commonwealth government had simply reclaimed much of the land for housing and commercial projects such as mining and agricultural use.
Indigenous protests over how reserve land was managed and how it was being taken away became more and more frequent, until in the 1960s it erupted into a country wide movement for land rights. Not only did the Indigenous population of Australia want to preserve the land they already had, but they wanted to be recognised as the legal owners of their traditional lands so that no one, not even the government could take them away in the future.
In 1966, at least 200 Aborigines left the cattle station in the Northern Territory. They were protesting about their living and working conditions on the massive cattle station. Part of the tribe had been used as virtual slave labor for the British company Vesteys since they had been established at Wave Hill. Instead of continuing to accept the low wages and terrible housing they walked off the station and set up camp at a nearby creek. Their strike lasted for over nine years and was a large role-model for other strikes and walkouts on big cattle …show more content…
The Wave Hill station was situated on land that the Aborigines had lived on for thousands of years before Vesteys had even been established, and even still they were denied any rights as to how that land was used. They were now campaigning to have their traditional, sacred lands returned to them. The Aboriginals eventually won their fight and in 1975 after one of the longest campaigns ever, their lands were officially given back to them by the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
It was in the early 1970s, the treatment of the Aborigines came to the front of importance, with key help from the Labor government. The main focus of the demonstration was about land rights and the return of land to its traditional owners with compensation for what had been done to the land. Strikes on farms and stations around the country continued to make headlines in Australia, but the land rights campaign was about to make headlines around the
Terra Nullius, was how Cook described Australia and how it was officially viewed until the last 20 or 30 years of Australia’s history. In 1788 the First Fleet arrived, after this, the British took over all of the land in sight without any thought to its original ownership. They forbade the fact that there were Aboriginals in Australia and they declared it empty. Legally this meant that no one lived on the land and because of that no one could claim rights of it under English law.
This was not what had happened in other countries that Britain had colonised - in Canada and New Zealand treaties were signed with the Indigenous people in order to transfer over the land. Though these treaties were very biased towards …show more content…
When the Indigenous people were given reserve lands they had been told it would be theirs to keep, but by the 1960s the Commonwealth government had simply reclaimed much of the land for housing and commercial projects such as mining and agricultural use.
Indigenous protests over how reserve land was managed and how it was being taken away became more and more frequent, until in the 1960s it erupted into a country wide movement for land rights. Not only did the Indigenous population of Australia want to preserve the land they already had, but they wanted to be recognised as the legal owners of their traditional lands so that no one, not even the government could take them away in the future.
In 1966, at least 200 Aborigines left the cattle station in the Northern Territory. They were protesting about their living and working conditions on the massive cattle station. Part of the tribe had been used as virtual slave labor for the British company Vesteys since they had been established at Wave Hill. Instead of continuing to accept the low wages and terrible housing they walked off the station and set up camp at a nearby creek. Their strike lasted for over nine years and was a large role-model for other strikes and walkouts on big cattle …show more content…
The Wave Hill station was situated on land that the Aborigines had lived on for thousands of years before Vesteys had even been established, and even still they were denied any rights as to how that land was used. They were now campaigning to have their traditional, sacred lands returned to them. The Aboriginals eventually won their fight and in 1975 after one of the longest campaigns ever, their lands were officially given back to them by the Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.
It was in the early 1970s, the treatment of the Aborigines came to the front of importance, with key help from the Labor government. The main focus of the demonstration was about land rights and the return of land to its traditional owners with compensation for what had been done to the land. Strikes on farms and stations around the country continued to make headlines in Australia, but the land rights campaign was about to make headlines around the