Back to the full dot-point answer
NSWAboriginal StudiesQuick questions
Core Part 1: Aboriginality and the Land
Quick questions on The Mabo decision and terra nullius in HSC Aboriginal Studies
2short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is overturning terra nullius?Show answer
The deepest significance of Mabo is that it overturned terra nullius, the legal fiction that the continent had belonged to no one. For more than two centuries this fiction had been the foundation of dispossession, justifying the taking of land without treaty, consent or compensation. By rejecting it, the High Court recognised in law what Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had always known: that they held the land under their own law before colonisation. This was a profound symbolic and moral shift, not only a legal one.
What are the limits?Show answer
A genuine evaluation must weigh the limits. Native title can only be recognised where claimants prove a continuing connection under traditional law, a demanding test that disadvantages the very communities whose connection was forcibly broken by removal and dislocation. Native title can be extinguished by prior grants of freehold and other dealings, so on much of the most valuable land it simply does not exist. And the rights recognised are often partial.
Have a question we have not covered?
This dot-point answer is short enough that we have not extracted many short questions yet. Read the full dot-point answer or ask Mo, our study assistant, in the chat for follow ups.