Re-Centring First Nations Knowledge and Places in a Terra Nullius Space

Abstract The encounter of Aboriginal Australians with European settlers led to appalling injustices, in which Christian churches were in part complicit. At the root of these injustices was the failure to comprehend the Aborigines’ relationship to the land. In their mythic vision, known as The Dreaming, land is suffused with religious meaning and therefore sacred. It took two hundred years for this to be acknowledged in British-Australian law (Mabo judgement, 1992). This abrogated the doctrine of terra nullius (the land belongs to no-one) and recognized native title to land, based on continuous occupation and ritual use. But land disputes continue, and at a deeper level, there is little appreciation of the Indigenous spirituality of the land and the significance it could have for reconciliation with First Nations and the ecological crisis. Aboriginal theologies can help Christians to appreciate the riches of this spirituality and work towards justice.

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Settler-Colonial Violence and the ‘Wounded Aboriginal Child’: Reading Alexis Wright with Irene Watson (and Giorgio Agamben)

International Journal for Crime Justice and Social Democracy ◽

10.5204/ijcjsd.1689 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 9 (4) ◽

pp. 45-60

Author(s):

Joanne Faulkner

Keyword(s):

Juvenile Justice ◽

First Nations ◽

Indigenous Peoples ◽

Child Protection ◽

Giorgio Agamben ◽

Terra Nullius ◽

Aboriginal Child ◽

Colonial Violence ◽

A Site ◽

Aboriginal Children

Drawing on Alexis Wright’s novel The Swan Book and Irene Watson’s expansive critique of Australian law, this article locates within the settler–Australian imaginary the figure of the ‘wounded Aboriginal child’ as a site of contest between two rival sovereign logics: First Nations sovereignty (grounded in a spiritual connection to the land over tens of millennia) and settler sovereignty (imposed on Indigenous peoples by physical, legal and existential violence for 230 years). Through the conceptual landscape afforded by these writers, the article explores how the arenas of juvenile justice and child protection stage an occlusion of First Nations sovereignty, as a disappearing of the ‘Aboriginality’ of Aboriginal children under Australian settler law. Giorgio Agamben’s concept of potentiality is also drawn on to analyse this sovereign difference through the figures of Terra Nullius and ‘the child’.

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Apologies and the Legacy of an Unlawful Application of Terra Nullius in Terra Australis

The Denning Law Journal ◽

10.5750/dlj.v32i1.1922 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 177-190

Author(s):

Stephen Pitt-Walker

Keyword(s):

First Nations ◽

Legal System ◽

Political System ◽

Legal Doctrine ◽

Terra Nullius ◽

Legal Fiction ◽

Direct Violence ◽

British Colonial

The use of the legal fiction, terra nullius, as it was erroneously applied to Terra Australis, Australia, as a legal doctrine, supported the British colonial power’s right to settle that territory. Since then, many unspoken (as well as acknowledged) acts of structural and direct violence have been perpetrated against the First Nations population in Australia via the imposition, and later ‘reception’, of the legal system and laws of England, as well as the dominant socio-political system, that represented the British Crown.

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Aboriginal relationships to the natural world: colonial ‘protection’ of human rights and the environment

Journal of Human Rights and the Environment ◽

10.4337/jhre.2018.02.01 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 9 (2) ◽

pp. 119-140 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Irene Watson

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

First Nations ◽

Life Forms ◽

Natural World ◽

Self Determination ◽

Future Generations ◽

Terra Nullius ◽

The Face ◽

Protection Of Human Rights ◽

Colonial Policies

Colonialism has challenged Aboriginal obligations and relationships to the natural world. This article describes the efforts of First Nations on the continent now known as Australia to maintain their authority and existences in the face of neoliberalism and colonialism, which the British initially inflicted and under which we still survive. The colonial policies of Australia denied our existence and at the same time attempted to demolish our languages and cultures, and to assimilate the consequences. This article asks the questions: what underpins state claims to the title to Aboriginal lands? Does Australia renounce terra nullius and the racist principles and beliefs which make up such a doctrine? And finally does Australia acknowledge and support all ‘Peoples’ as having an inherent right to self-determination, and as a component of such a right, that all ‘Peoples’ have a right to collectively care for their country and to benefit from a relationship to the land which sustains future generations of all Peoples? The possibility of a future for all life forms on earth lies in the responses states might deliver to these questions.

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First Nations Cultural Loss: Whiteness and the Timber Creek Judgment

Legalities ◽

10.3366/legal.2021.0007 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 68-90

Author(s):

Greta Bird ◽

Jo Bird

Keyword(s):

First Nations ◽

High Court ◽

Native Title ◽

Terra Nullius ◽

First Time ◽

Meaningful Sense

The Ngaliwurru and Nungali Peoples of the Country known in white law as Timber Creek commenced three proceedings under the Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) (NTA) in 1999 and 2000. The final judgment in the High Court was hailed as progressive. It was the first time that the Court had awarded damages inter alia for cultural loss under the NTA. The article contends that the compensation awarded was inadequate, being based on white, neo-liberal notions of property that do not acknowledge Aboriginal sovereignty, the depth of connection to country and loss suffered. The case also denied that a fiduciary obligation existed on behalf of the Crown, a possibility that was raised in Mabo and other cases but allowed to atrophy. Given this, it is argued that the judgment is a continuation of the colonial project based on the ‘ terra nullius’ doctrine and can be critiqued from the perspective of the white cultural privilege embedded throughout. The judgment does not disturb the skeleton of white Australia's claims to sovereignty: the taking of the land without consent, the failure to recognise First Nations sovereignty, the neglect to enter into treaties or to provide compensation in any meaningful sense.

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Divided Against Itself

The Oxford Handbook of Australian Politics ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198805465.013.12 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Paul Muldoon

Keyword(s):

First Nations ◽

Indigenous Peoples ◽

Political Community ◽

Terra Nullius ◽

Indigenous Sovereignty ◽

Governing Institutions

This chapter examines how the prior occupation of Indigenous peoples compromises the acquisition of sovereignty over Australia and undermines the integrity of its governing institutions. It explains why the principle of terra nullius provides an unstable basis for the polity and how an adherence to conventional notions of sovereignty prevents it from developing a lawful relationship with First Nations. The chapter concludes by arguing for a more relational conception of political community in which Indigenous sovereignty is not suppressed out of fear of division.

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