Remembering Koiki and Bonita Mabo, pioneers of Indigenous education

Twenty-six years have now passed since Australia’s High Court recognised the continuation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples rights of ownership and free enjoyment of their ancestral lands. Prior to 1992, land laws enacted by the British parliament and subsequent Australian legislatures were grounded in the presumption that the British Crown acquired sovereignty over the continent of Australia and its coastal islands by occupation (or settlement) of terra nullius - land without existing owners. This is not to say that British and Australian governments ignored the presence of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. On the contrary they acknowledged the longevity of Indigenous occupation and land usage, but they held that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples did not have forms of social organisation that enabled the exercise of sovereignty and thus forms of title to land which under English Common Law that the British Crown was obliged to recognise.