ABSTRACT
With its decision of 3 June 1992 that Australia was not terra nullius when settled by the British in 1788, the High Court of Australia rewrote Australia’s law on the impact of colonization. The decision is known as the Mabo case. Eddie Mabo, from Murray Island in the Torres Strait, began in 1982 with three other Islanders action in Queensland courts seeking confirmation of their traditional land rights. This chapter investigates one example of what the Court considered the basis for native title, namely the ‘traditional law and customs of people having the relationship with the land’. It stresses that the case, that of the Wurgigandjar clan of the Djinang-speaking people, does not stand for Aboriginal Australia as a whole and that there are many variations of indigenous relationships with the land throughout the continent.
