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Edward
Koiki Mabo (19361992)
Selection from his papers
relevant to native title 19821992
National Library of Australia
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Papers
of Edward Koiki Mabo
19881992
Edward
Koiki Mabo (19361992) was born on Mer (Murray
Island) in the Torres Strait, which lies between
Australia and New Guinea. In 1982, he and four
other Torres Strait Islanders began legal proceedings
to establish their traditional ownership of their
land. The five plaintiffs were Eddie Koiki Mabo,
Celuia Mapo Salee, James Rice, Sam Passi and his
brother Father David Passi. The lawyers who acted
for the plaintiffs were Bryan Keon-Cohen, Ron
Castan, Greg McIntyre and Barbara Hocking.
The
Mabo litigation lasted ten years, from 1982 to
1992. In June 1992, six months after the death
of Eddie Mabo, a landmark High Court ruling gave
legal recognition to the fact that Indigenous
land ownership existed before European settlement,
and that in some cases this land tenure was not
subsequently extinguished by the Crown.
The
ruling refuted that aspect of the legal concept
of terra nullius which might have denied
the existence of native title. The terra nullius
concept was based on the international law principle
that an uninhabited country, or a country which
did not have a recognised social or political
structure, was in effect ‘no one’s land’, and
could therefore legitimately be occupied by another
power. When James Cook claimed possession of the
east coast of Australia for King George III of
Great Britain in 1768 he was unaware of the complex
social structure of the Indigenous inhabitants.
In
July 2001 the Mabo Papers (personal and legal)
were recorded in UNESCO’s Memory of the World
Register.
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