Eddie Mabo: The Aboriginal Land Rights Movement

The land of the aborigines was robbed and exploited leaving them with nothing when the British arrived in the 1770. This all however began to be extinguished in 1966 with the beginning of the Aborigine land rights movement. Eddie Mabo/ the land rights movement played a substantially influential role in pushing exceedingly for the native title rights for the indigenous people and played a key role in the Native Title Act which extinguished terra nullius and acknowledged the land of the Indigenous people of Australia. This was consequently brought upon the people of Australia firstly by the Gurinhji strike, secondly by the Eddie Mabo case and lastly by the Wik case. These movements were intended to change the racial inequality in land rights
As source _ depicts in 1993 the high court of Australia granted the Native Title Act which meant that Indigenous Australians could, “succeed in a claim, Indigenous people have to prove they have had a traditional connection to the land since 1788 and that their interests have not been ‘extinguished’ by the granting of other rights.” (Darlington 2012). In 1996 the High court of Australia started giving out lessees which contradicted the Native Title Act. “This process showed that the leases in question did not give the leaseholders a right to exclusive possession of the land. Therefore, the granting of a pastoral lese did not necessarily extinguish native title.” (Government, 2001). The Wik people argued that leases were being given out which was extinguishing the native title act even though it was allowed to co-exist with each other. Conclusively, The Native Title Act allowed Indigenous people to make claims to land and the Wik case clarified that the patrol leases did not extinguish native
The main enemies to the movement were the mining and pastoral industry who wanted to use the Australian land to make profit from mining or farming and therefore due to their strong power the government wasn’t able to help the movement. “What happened to land rights was that the mining industry was too powerful, the pastoral industry was too powerful and the Commonwealth government didn’t have the will to stand up to those vested interest group.” (Korff & Spirits, 2016). The government of the time was the Hawke government and they were back up by the mining and pastoral industries and they proposed a new preferred National Land Rights Model. The new model had these new principles. “Required no Aboriginal consent for mining on Aboriginal land, prevented land claims over stock routes, reserves and Aboriginal-owned pastoral leases and Restricted eligibility for excisions.” (Korff & Spirits, 2016). This was against everything the Aboriginal Activists were fighting for. This however did not come to pass due to the Western Australian Labor Party withdrawing and the scare campaign by the mining industry. The Aboriginal land rights faced many hardships but in the end they succeeded and they took back their right land and inheritance.
In conclusion, the Gurindji strike, Mabo case and the Wik case had a great impact on th land rights for indigenous people. In