Recognition of the Aboriginal law system in Australia
In 1971 Justice Blackburn dismissed the Yolngu claim but importantly did acknowledge for the first time in an Australian higher court the existence of a system of Aboriginal law
The Yirrkala Bark Petitions. How an old typewriter helped change the course of Australian history, Crikey BOB GOSFORD | JUL 07, 2013 “………In a small display case in a dimly lit room in Australia’s Parliament House in Canberra – cheek by jowl with a facsimile of the Magna Carta and Australia’sConstitution – sit three panels of richly painted stringy-bark.
It is significant that these documents, all of which inform contemporary law in this country, can be found within metres of each other. The Magna Cartaand The Australian Constitution are fundamental elements of European law in this country. Few Australians know of the content, importance and continuing relevance of the Magna Carta and our Constitution and even fewer know, let alone realise the significance of, these three small pieces of bark, each with ancestral images wrapped around a sheet of yellowing paper with faint text.
The first two of these petitions were presented to the Commonwealth Parliament 50 years ago in August 1963 and represent the first documents received by that parliament that recognised the existence – but not the primacy – of Aboriginal law and claims to ownership of their ancestral lands.
The petitions were unsuccessful – the first was the subject of an extraordinary technical challenge by then Territories Minister Paul Hasluck – but that did not deter the Yolngu traditional owners, who in December 1968 issued writs in the Supreme Court of the Northern Territory against the Nabalco Corporation, which had secured a bauxite mining lease from the Federal Government. In that claim the Yolngu claimed unextinguished communal native title to their lands.
In 1971 Justice Blackburn dismissed the Yolngu claim but importantly did acknowledge for the first time in an Australian higher court the existence of a system of Aboriginal law. In his judgement Justice Blackburn used the following words that have rung down through the years.
If ever there was government by law rather than government by man then this is it.
By 1971 the rest of the country had taken note of the Yolngu persistence for justice and their clamour for constitutional change, which had already resulted in the amendment of the Australian Constitution in 1967 to give the Federal Government a clear mandate to implement policies to benefit Aboriginal people.
In 1976 the Commonwealth recognised Aboriginal land rights over some land the Northern Territory. Terra nullius, the odious philosophical basis of the non-Aboriginal invasion and occupation of Australia, was finally despatched to the dustbin of history by the High Court in Mabo’s Case in 1992.
But in 1963 Yirrkala and north-east Arnhem Land were in turmoil. It is important to remember – and how quickly we forget – that in 1963 the Aboriginal people of Arnhem land were subject to the provisions of theWelfare Ordinance 1953, which under Hasluck’s authorship enshrined the assimilationist and paternalistic approach that had characterised much of government approaches to Aboriginal issues for many decades………
How significant are the Bark Petitions?
Northern Land Council Chairman Wali Wunungmurra, who signed the petitions as a 17 year-old, was last week asked by the ABC’s 7.30 program if land rights as we know them today would exist without the petitions.
His response points to the importance of these pieces of bark, ochre and paper.
No, I don’t think so … what had happened in 1963 was a totally different thing.
We had to change the method as to how we would approach the Commonwealth Government.
And we did it by the bark petitions.
And it was through that approach that we kept the attention of the Parliament House.
It was then … from then on, 1963, it followed on until we got the Land Rights.
* You can read the full text, in English and Yolngu Matha, of the 1963 Bark Petitions here. You can see and read the 1968 petition here……
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