Eddie Mabo's Fight for Indigenous Sovereignty (Book Review)

Peter Russel's book, Recognizing Aboriginal Title: The Mabo Case and Indigenous Resistance to English-Settler Colonialism, is a meticulously thorough overview of Aboriginal rights in Australia since the inception of British Colonialism in Australia in the sixteenth century. Today, a time when, in Canada, Aboriginal rights are still at odds with our legal system, Russell's story of how one man, Eddie Koiki Mabo, managed to instil key Aboriginal rights in Australian law provides an uoplifting ray of hope.

The first half of the near-400 page book provides a background of Indigenous history in Australia. Not too surprisingly, it is 200 pages of extensive research on how the Natives on the British occupied land mass come to be at the mid-point of the twentieth century. It is a wealth of information to take in, beginning with the onset of colonisation and the threat it created on non-British culture. Much like in Canada and the United States, the Native peoples of Australia intended to work together with colonisers.

But, also like in North America, there were many injustices done to the original inhabitants of Australia by colonisers over the past 500 years. More or less, the many unrecognized land claims and Aboriginal rights treaties were left to rot, and be forgotten, until the famous Mabo case.

Eddie Mabo was a descendent of original inhabitants of Mer Island, an offshore land mass north of Australia. Mabo's life consisted of countless political endeavours in order to decolonize Native life in Australia. In other words, he wished to see Native culture persist despite the assimilation, and oppressive techniques, of the British Crown.

All this came to a head in the Mabo vs. Queensland case, beginning in 1982 and ending in 1992. In the end, the High Court of Australia deemed that Native title to lands, cultural practices and lifestyles are a fundamental right of Native Australians. Not to sound to promising, the second half of Russell's book looks at how the government of Australia, like Canada and the US's, found loopholes to further challenge Aboriginal title rights for its own economic and political agendas.

I cannot give it all away in one small blog, because the story of Aboriginal sovereignty in Australia is a long, and still unfinished tale. However, Russell has managed to tell the story in a captivatingly interesting way. A real page-turner that any history buff should find hard to put down.

Originally published on campusintel.com