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1 results

  • 32 - Reckoning with the Past

  • from VII - Reckonings
  • Edited by Peter Cane, University of Cambridge, Lisa Ford, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Mark McMillan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Legal History of Australia
    Published online:
    04 August 2022
    Print publication:
    18 August 2022, pp 740-764

  • Summary

    This chapter will explore why and how First Nations people still have to reckon with the myriad settler and Australian legal histories that have shaped their lives and histories since colonisation. I argue that we still need to reckon with law because settler law denied Aboriginal land title and continues to deny Aboriginal sovereignty. Tracing settler laws’ complicity with the colonial project, this chapter first examines how the fantasy of terra nullius was instantiated through laws which enabled the expropriation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ lands and waters. It then examines how First Nations people have been unduly affected by separate, discriminatory settler laws which governed almost all facets of their lives. Yet, Australia’s legal system to redress these injustices, constitutes new and evolving chapters in the nation’s legal history.