The Effectiveness of the Law in Achieving Justice for Indigenous People

“Banishment from the homeland, the diaspora of a nation, the exile of a people, and ongoing colonization- these are the legacies Minnesotans and Americans have left” (waziyatawin 17). As a society, our wrongdoings towards the Native American people are irreversible. Yet, it is important to do as much as we can as a society to justify our wrong doings. Gaining knowledge about the injustices society and colonialism has committed on the Native American way of life in Minnesota, brings a responsibility of awareness and action to achieve justice for the Native American community.

There is recurrent tension between the maintenance of Indigenous culture and essentially assimilating to the rules and regulations of the predominantly white society in Australia (Dockrey, 2010). Australia’s Aboriginal culture represented the oldest surviving culture in the world (Aboriginal culture, 2017). The traditions include having at least 270 different language groups and 500 dialects in the indigenous community (Shareourpride.org.au, n.d). The vast amount of languages and dialects were present to represent the intellect of Indigenous Australians. Language is a strong aspect of Indigenous culture as it connects and influences many Indigenous tribes as it is their form of communication. The environment also connects aboriginal people spiritually to their land and provides them with a sense of identity (Jackson 1999). Although there were many different groups and clans in the past, the tribes fighting over the land was a rare occurrence (Treatyrepublic.net 1996). This showcases the connection and respect they exhibited for the land and maintaining structure was their main priority. Additionally common law was a way that Indigenous Australians could preserve the ecosystem and cultural integrity, through their spiritual and emotional connection with the land (Langton 1996, p.10). However due to the colonization, there was less formal acknowledgement for Indigenous

Despite the Terra Nullius, the question of indigenous land ownership was not addressed by the Europeans for at over 50 years after the arrival of the first fleet. In fact, in 1850 it was established by the New South Wales government that there would be no formal recognition of Aboriginal customary laws at all. As a summary, although land ownership has been the most complex and disputed law conflict, the aboriginal people have suffered under bias and unjust European laws since the settlers first

Under the ‘terra nullius’ law, the Aboriginals lost their land, which is now known as dispossession. To justify this dispossession, the English followed the set of beliefs that are now identified as social Darwinism. “Social Darwinism, with its powerful racially based doctrines, ranked Indigenous Australians as inferior to Europeans and provided a rationale for dispossession by drawing on the ‘laws’ of natural selection to justify the ‘inevitable’ extinction of Indigenous Australians in the face of the arrival of the ‘superior’ white race” (Psychology and Indigenous Australians, Foundations of Cultural Competence, 2009, pp. 75). By having their land taken away from them, the Aboriginals lost part of their spiritual connection and their sense of belonging and identity because Aboriginal culture is based heavily on the spirits of the land. These connections that bonded the Aboriginals to the land were never understood by the English settlers, who only saw the land as possible income (Psychology and Indigenous Australians, Foundations of Cultural Competence, 2009.). They also lost a lot of their sacred areas, spiritual areas and meeting places because they were on the land that the white people had divided and fenced of the land that these areas were on and if an Aboriginal was trying to

Aboriginal people, since British settlement, have faced great inequalities and much racial discrimination on their own soil. Aboriginal Australians through great struggle and conflict have made significant progress in the right to their own land. To better understand the position of the Aboriginal Australians, this essay will go into more depth about the rights that Aboriginal people had to their own land prior to federation. It will also include significant events and key people who activated the reshaping of land rights for Indigenous Australians and how that has affected the rights Aboriginal people now have in the 21st Century, in regards to their land.

The impact of British colonisation resulted in Australia being declared 'terra-nullius' 'land belonging to no-one' and Aboriginal peoples were subject to policies of dispossession and protectionism in a bid to the eventual demise of all facets of their traditional culture. (http://www.bookrags.com/essay-2005/3/2/5583/41950, 2005) The policy of 'terra

Since the time of the first fleet until now, Australian law has been divided between two types of Australians, the settlers and the indigenous. Since the time of the first fleet, the settlers put into place English law to rule the land known as Australia and make laws on the rights of the people, the indigenous and the land. Since then, Australian law has come a long way in the development of a fairer constitution and enacting laws for the indigenous to close the gap between them and the settlers.

The Indigenous land rights was a significant social justice issue in modern Australian History because indigenous people were treated very unfair because they couldn’t use their own land for what they wanted to such as the Tent Embassy. The Aboriginal Land Rights Act in 1976 was the first attempt by an Australian government to legally recognise the Aboriginal system of land ownership and put into law the concept of inalienable freehold title. “Terra Nullius was how James Cook described Australia and how it was officially viewed up until the last decades of the 20th Century.” When the First Fleet arrived in 1788 the British took over the land without a second thought as to its ownership. They discounted the fact that there were original inhabitants

Colonisation was justified and expedited on the grounds of terra nullius, whereby the First Settlers claimed the land from an ethnocentric and an ignorant standpoint of there not being a sovereign they could deal with, in addition to the land’s perceived lack of use, development or cultivation (McCorquodale, 1986). Fforde, Bamblett, Lovett, Gorringe, & Fogarty (2013) attest that this initial assumption and justification, has aggressed cultural relations in Australia since first contact, and is a fundamental element of racism and prejudice due to its situating of Indigenous peoples within constructed notions of deficiency and deficit. As noted by Dodson (1994, p. 4), rather than characterising Indigenous peoples in positive terms, they were defined in terms of what they were perceived to lack, such as being ‘primitive’ or ‘backward’, inclining their portrayal as being problematic. This deficit discourse assists governments to apply the policies of authority, subjection and assimilation in addition to wider social processes of legitimation and

Whether or not Aboriginal people had left the land to dry for itself is not our concern here. Nor is the aim of this paper to prove the English were right in claiming sovereignty over Australian land, since there is much proof they hadn't even been the first Europeans to meet with "terra nullius". Nevertheless, as history speaks for itself, there's clear evidence Aboriginal people endured immense changes during colonization years, on the land where they stood, cultures unshaken, for thousands of years, before Europe had a say in that. Indeed, what we aim for is to examine some ideas perpetrated along the years in regards to the devastating effects that emerged once the first ship of colonizers arrived.

When European settlers arrived they did not understand the Aboriginals land ownership system as it was very different from their own. Upon European arrival the settlers declared the land as ‘terra nullius’ (land belonging to no one) and took ownership of the land. The colonial government sold and leased land to the settlers completely ignoring the deep spiritual connections the Aborigines had with the land. By 1870s all fertile areas were taken from the Aboriginals and given to the white settlers. The Europeans built fences, which prevented movement of native fauna and introduced hard hoofed animals that destroyed the waterways and much of the plant life; this impacted the Indigenous greatly as it reduced their access to resources.

The experience of Aboriginal Australians since European settlement is replete with suppression of their cultural practices and knowledge by the dominant cultural groups in Australia. In the first century of settlement, these included land dispossession by force, theft of women, slavery and war, introduced diseases, and the missionary zeal for Aboriginal people to embrace Western religion and reject their own spiritual beliefs such as the dreaming. Moreover, settlement brought with it the assertion of British sovereignty and law, which effectively displaced indigenous customary law in the 20th century, further intervention into Aboriginal culture and life was evidenced in the Government’s White Australia Policy and an explicit strategy of indigenous

Incorporating just one culture’s ideology while ignoring another also challenges Australia’s commitment to cultural diversity (Calma, 2007). The fact is every Australian has different cultural views and practices a chosen cultures values in their day to day life which can at some level can be considered when an individual encounters the Australian criminal justice system (Calma, 2007). Moreover, some individuals are concerned about incorporating indigenous customary law is that recognition may lead Indigenous people to lose control over their laws leading to further alienation. Concerns of having to expose secret pieces of law to outsiders who may aim to change them (ALRC, 1986; Law Reform Commission, 2006). Recognition of Indigenous law today

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people occupied Australia before the British arrived in 1788. The United Kingdom depended on this principle to claim possession of the Australian continent. It was declared that before the arrival of Europeans Australia was Terra Nullius, a Latin term meaning “land belonging to nobody”, they deemed the continent as a tract of territory unoccupied, lacking settled inhabitants and settled law. Under the British colonial law, Aboriginal Australians did not obtain a recognisable legal system which included fundamental concepts about property rights. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are two distinct Indigenous Australian cultural groups, they obtain definite rights as Australia’s First Inhabitants. This

The British sought to extend their laws to the land now called Australia and its Aboriginal inhabitants. The Laws of England were imported to the colony of New South Wales to the extent that they were applicable to those times and conditions. Despite Aboriginal resistance, England declared itself the sovereign or ruler of Australia. The established legal doctrine that enabled it to do this is known as terra nullius. The Euro-pean legal view at the time was that the Crown had absolute title to all land. Under the doctrine, colonising power such as England could ap-ply their own law to land which they peacefully occupied, if the land was uninhabited or was occupied by a people without settled laws and customs. Australia was declared to be a land