Mabo Day, celebrated annually on 3 June, commemorates Mer Island man Eddie Koiki Mabo and his successful effort to overturn the legal fiction of terra nullius – literally ’empty land’.
The notion that Australia was unoccupied and unowned was the basis of colonisation and completely disregarded 65,000 years of continuous occupation by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. Their ownership of and unique connections to Land were unrecognised.
Eddie Mabo challenged the Australian Government in the High Court to recognise the Traditional Ownership of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, and won.
The decision established the legal recognition of Native Title, later reinforced by the Native Title Act 1993, that some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have rights to certain land because of their traditional laws and customs.
