Eddie Mabo as Moses

• Main Author: Brett, Mark G
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University PressOxford 2024
• Subjects: Canada; New Zealand; Queensland; Moses; First Nations
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/9780191991547.003.0002; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/57910486/workid-ukac0033392-book-part-2.pdf

Abstract The chapter begins with the ground-breaking legal judgement Mabo v. Queensland in the High Court of Australia in 1992. Multiple colonial discourses are re-iterated in this case, including some transnational themes that are discussed in subsequent chapters of this volume. The case reveals, among other peculiarities, that the Australian colonies represent the only jurisdiction of the English common law tradition within which no treaties were made with the First Nations. Instead, there is a peculiar development of terra nullius ideology, which can be traced back to the historic influences of the book of Genesis in Puritan thought in the seventeenth century. Mabo also recovers some of the earlier notions of natural rights, which appeared in Spanish Catholic debates in the sixteenth century. Some of the legal problems outlined in Mabo v. Queensland remain unresolved, not only in Australia but also in other settler colonial states that historically embraced English common law—the USA, Canada, and Aotearoa New Zealand.