- A ngarrindjeri word meaning in the beginning, a long time ago.
- Hugh Rule and Stuart Goodman, Culpilil's stories of The Dreamtime, Sydney: Collins, 1979, at 10.
- Catherine Berndt, Land of the Rainbow Snake, Sydney: Collins, 1979, at 17. I use published stories in preference to oral law-stories not yet written or made public. That is, those that are still living entirely in their oral tradition. It is important to perpetuate oral traditions and avoid practises that are likely to erode oral tradition. There are already sufficient law-stories available that have found their way into the public realm. It is not necessary to bring any more of our law-stories into the public, not unless the elders decide these stories should be published.
- Eddie Bennell and Anne Thomas, Aboriginal Legends from the Bibulmun tribe, Sydney: Rigby, 1981, at 44.
- Rule and Goodman, Gulpillil's Stories, above n2, at 25.
- Friends of the Earth, (1996) No.75 Chain Reaction, 26–28; Mineral Policy Institute, (1996) 2 Mining Monitor 10.
- First Nations of Turtle Island and Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, April 3 1996, First Nations International Court of Justice, Chiefs of Ontario. Toronto, Vol 2, at 83–84.
- This was also a view shared by Sharon Venne, at the Australasian Law Teachers Association conference, Adelaide, July 1996.
- International personality has been limited by the colonising powers to include nation states recognised initially by the League of Nations and later the United Nations. Most Indigenous Peoples have been precluded from membership of the UN. The Indigenous Peoples whose lands lie within the colonial boundaries of, for example, the USA, Australia, and Aotearoa are precluded from membership. Initially preclusion was based on earlier racist colonial myths, backwardness, an absence of a centralised political structure etc. However at first contact these colonial powers were themselves also different in identity to what they have become today. Today preclusion from membership of the UN is based upon fear, as it was always, that the recognition of Indigenous Peoples' right to self-determination would erode the territorial integrity of current nation states.
- James, M. Blaut, The Colonizers Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History, New York: Guilford Press, 1993, at 14–15.
- Ibid, at 2, 9, and 24. See also, an example of a recent historian who still views Africans as being people adapted to nature, without a written legal system, nor concepts of political boundaries: Eric. L. Jones, The European miracle. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
- Mabo (No2). (1992) 175 CLR 1, out of respect for law and tradition, I don't refer to Mabo in my text. The name of a deceased person is no longer used. Instead I refer to the decision as the Native Title case.
- Ibid at 31–35 and 78.
- Paul Coe, ‘Mabo-Confirming Dispossession’, in (1993) Broadside, February 10, at 9.
- J. Green, ‘Towards a Détente With History Confronting Canada's Colonial Legacy,’ (1995) 12 International Journal of Canadian Studies 90.
- Means a white person, and also the corpse or spirit of the dead.
- An indigenous word meaning indigenous person used in the southern regions of South Australia.
- The state of South Australia gave approval for the building of a bridge from mainland Goolwa to Hindmarsh Island, Ngarrindjeri miminis (women), opposed the building of the bridge, because it would interfere with women's law business. The state accused the women of fabricating women's business, its connection to the site and to Ngarrindjeri women's identity. The state created the Royal Commission to establish the ‘truth’, to find out if the women had fabricated women's law-business.
- Royal Commission of South Australia, Report of the Hindmarsh Island Bridge Royal Commission, Adelaide, Iris Stevens Royal Commissioner, 1995, at 241.
- Steve Hemming, ‘Inventing Ethnography’, (1996) 48 Journal of Australian Studies 27, at 27–29.
- R v Walker 20th November, 1994, unreported NSW Ct of Criminal Appeal, Gleeson CJ, Allen J and Barr AJ.
- However, remember, at the time of first contact European societies were themselves only in the early stages of evolving forms of statehood that we now know of in the contemporary sense.
- It is referred to mainly in Articles 1, para. 2, of the United Nations Charter. And also in the 1960 General Assembly resolution 1514 XV, proclaiming a right of self-determination of all peoples. In 1966, self-determination was inserted in Article 1, of the International Covenants on Human Rights. Four years later self-determination appeared in the Friendly Relations Declaration.
- For further discussion see Richard Falk, ‘The Rights of Peoples' in James Crawford, (ed) The Rights of Peoples, London: Oxford University Press, 1988, at 18.
- Ibid, Richard Falk, argues that self-determination for peoples must be reconciled in practice with the existing geographical delimitation of territorial boundaries of sovereign states.
- And for contemporary forms of exclusion, the United Nations excluded the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere from the application of the principles of international trust as were previously applied by the League of Nations. In what is known as the ‘Belgian Thesis’, it was argued that there was no reason for Chapter XI of the U.N. Charter to restrict the trust principles to overseas colonies only. The U.N. in 1960 passed resolution 1541, which strengthened the geographic limitation placed on the non-self-governing provision the blue water thesis is another example of a colonial fiction.
- Indigenous women of the Tanganekald Peoples.
- S. James Anaya, ‘The Capacity of International Law to Advance Ethnic or Nationality Rights Claims’ (1990) 75 Iowa Law Review 837. Anaya describes indigenous peoples' rights in terms of ethnic or nationality rights claims, a complete sell out from an indigenous perspective. Also see the Universal Declaration on Human Rights 1948, this does not recognise the collective rights of peoples or minority groups. Only individual rights to religious, linguistic or cultural activities are recognised not the group as having the right. It is in Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that there is any reference to group rights. Also the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, does not recognise any collective rights.
- Article 3 is re-inforced by preambular paragraph 14, acknowledging that the Charter of the United Nations, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights affirm the fundamental importance of the right of self-determination of all peoples, by virtue of which they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.
- However state grants of a limited self-governmental power are extremely rare, as was found in the U.N. Indigenous Study at 257–69, Australia is talking about the concept applying to remote Aboriginal communities, to date it remains talk.
- See Alfredsson Gudmundur, ‘The Right of Self-Determination and Indigenous Peoples’ in Christian Tomuschat, (ed) Modern Law of Self-Determination, Boston: Nijhoff, 1993, at 41–54, for a further discussion on limited rights to self-determination and the distinction between internal and external self-determination.
- Erica-Irene Daes, ‘Native People's Rights’, (1986) 27 Cahiers de Droit at 128.
- Letter to the author March 1995, from Sharon Venne and Millilani Trask, where they recommend that the rules of procedure of the CHR be amended to allow for the full participation of indigenous peoples.
- Letter to the author from the Dept Foreign Affairs, 2.6.95, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs representative has expressed the view that to open this discussion any further could lead to a worse situation. But from an indigenous perspective can it get any worse?
- At the November 1996 meeting of the Commission of Human Rights Intercessional Working Croup on the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, indigenous participants, worked out of the UN meeting in protest, only the indigenous delegation of Australia, including Mick Dodson Aboriginal Social Justice Commissioner, Helen Corbett, D. Williams of ATSIC, Rod Towney NSW Aboriginal Land Council, remained in the meeting with member states.
Australian Feminist Law Journal
Volume 8, 1997 - Issue 1