Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-04T12:47:52.496Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - From James Cook to Eva Valley

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2011

Tim Rowse
Affiliation:
University of Sydney
Get access

Summary

The Aboriginal Treaty Committee had been a research project as well as a popular movement, for academic innovation was an ingredient of policy change. International law, the nature of national sovereignty, the rights of indigenous peoples – these had been topics of legal scholarship and of public policy in nations such as Canada, the United States and New Zealand, but in Australia they were still, in the late 1970s, esoteric matters. Legal scholars were aware that the Blackburn judgement of 1971 had revealed Australian law to be distinctly unyielding to any notion of customary rights of indigenous property and sovereignty, but Blackburn had scarcely exhausted the possibilities of colonial law.

If national legal traditions could not be insulated from international jurisprudence, then Australian exceptionalism was open to question. In 1979 the High Court ruled in ‘Coe v the Commonwealth’ that it had no jurisdiction over the question of indigenous sovereignty, but some lawyers remained optimistic that other issues of indigenous rights were domestically justiciable. Barrister Barbara Hocking, speaking at a conference on ‘Land rights and the future of Australian race relations’ held at James Cook University Townsville in August 1981, suggested that a test case be brought before the High Court by Queensland Aboriginal people still living on their tribal land. She inferred from the judgements in ‘Coe’ that ‘the High Court is interested in a test case’ on the existence of ‘native title’.

Type
Chapter
Information
Obliged to be Difficult
Nugget Coombs' Legacy in Indigenous Affairs
, pp. 193 - 209
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×