Every year on June 3, Australia celebrates Mabo Day, which is most widely celebrated in traditional indigenous areas, and in the Toress Islands this day is a day off. In 2010, a campaign was launched in the country, the goal of which was — to achieve national status for the holiday.
According to scientists, by the time the First Fleet arrived (1788), indigenous peoples (Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders) had inhabited the Australian continent and its adjacent islands for about 70 thousand years.
Conducting the traditional nomadic lifestyle of hunter-gatherers, men hunted large animals, women and children collected fruits and berries, and, on occasion, hunted small animals.
Like many other indigenous peoples who lived in harmony with nature, the land not only provided the aborigines with a livelihood, but was also the center of their spiritual life, the source of identity. It was believed that through the earth the world of those living is inextricably linked with the world of ancestors.
At the everyday level, the land was not individually, but in public ownership, where ownership primarily meant not the right of residence or use for economic gain, but rather responsibility for one’s «ritual possession» and for all life on it. The boundaries of such possessions were the natural landmarks — of the river, lake and mountain. It was believed that the land could not be sold, purchased or donated.
Lacking writing, Aboriginal people passed on laws and traditions to later generations through songs, dances, painting and oral histories.
At the same time, according to international laws of the 18th century, in the absence of obvious social and political systems, newly «open» lands were recognized as terra nullius («nobody») and became the property of the state that «opened these lands.
Although the British government did not deny the presence of indigenous peoples in Australia, it was believed that Aboriginal and Thoress Islander people were too primitive to own land in the European sense of the word. In addition, the first settlers did not find among the natives the usual governing bodies for Europeans, with which the British government could negotiate the acquisition of land.
In the end, Aboriginal people were powerless against firearms and European diseases, although they continued to assert their rights to varying degrees over the next 200 years.
The pinnacle of this struggle was a lawsuit filed by Eddie Koiki Mabo, David Passy and James Rice of the Meriam tribe of Maray Island in the Thoress Strait in the Supreme Court of Australia in 1982. The defendant in the lawsuit was the state of Queensland, which annexed the islands in 1879. The plaintiffs aimed to identify the legal owners of the islands of Mer, Daur and Weier — places of traditional habitat of the Meriam tribe.
In its landmark decision of 3 June 1992, the Supreme Court found that in pre-colonial times, indigenous peoples owned land under traditional law, which actually exists to this day. The myth of the «nobody» of the Australian territories was completely destroyed.
The Supreme Court affirmed the right of Aboriginal and Thoress Strait Islander peoples to own and use land in their traditional habitats. This right was called the Native Title, under which state governments interested in acquiring rights to develop natural resources were required to pay compensation to traditional owners. Unfortunately, Eddie Mabo did not live to see this moment. In January 1992, he died at the age of 55.
To commemorate this event, June 3 was declared Mabo Day. And according to supporters of this decision, this holiday is very important for Australians, since on this day the descendants of British settlers had the opportunity to compensate for the damage caused to the aboriginal population by the colonization process.