Indigenous Australia, and The Doctrine of Discovery

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

I was in Northern Queensland in 2012 and was reminded about that trip after I watched the video above about the conditions facing the Indigenous people that lived in Australia and the surrounding islands before colonization. The subject of government intervention covered in the video, an intervention supposedly driven by concern for the conditions existing in these communities, including sexual abuse, alcoholism and drug addiction etc. was very controversial. I had happened to read an article about it in the Australian, a major Aussie newspaper and spoke to a few people about it. 

The issue is very similar of course to the crisis facing indigenous communities throughout the former colonial world whether East Africa, Australia, South America, here in the US and so on. Colonialism created the conditions that it is now claiming are a result of the colonized themselves and justifies, and legalizes removing any form of self determination and control that might exist. A tribal elder describes it well in the video, it's like we are children needing care and stresses that they are after our land for mining and commodity production. One thing I thought interesting is when the elders say that unlike the US, British colonialism never entered in to, negotiated or signed any treaties with Native People in Australia. I couldn't help thinking that this was not really of any consequence as the US government never kept its word, never honored the treaties it signed with the Native People of the North American continent.

At the end of the first video, one of the speakers is an indigenous man, a Torres Strait Islander  named Les Malezer.  These people are different from the Indigenous on the mainland, I think they are considered Melanesian. The people on the mainland are referred to as Aboriginal people. 

I recognized Les Malezer as a man I interviewed back in 2012. I had wandered in to this festival in Townsville in Northern Queensland where there was much festivity, entertainment and food. It was here I tried Kangaroo meat. I saw a banner that said it was a Mabo day Celebration. I asked to speak to someone about it and it Les Malezer came over and I asked him about it. As you can see from the video, below I had very little experience videoing someone or asking them questions. I cut the poor man's face off at some point. Nevertheless, Mr. Malezer was gracious and very interesting. I asked him where the term Aboriginal comes from and he explained it to me. I found out from watching the video above that he is, or was---it's 8 years on) an important person in the indigenous rights movement. 

Eddie Mabo was a Torres Straits indigenous rights and land rights leader who was a campaigner for "Indigenous land rights and in a landmark decision of the High Court of Australia that overturned the legal doctrine of terra nullius ("nobody's land") that characterised Australian law with regard to land and title."   Terra Nullius, or No Man's land is similar to the Doctrine of Discovery as applied to the United States and practiced for centuries by European colonialism. The Zionists apply the same practice toward the Palestinians. Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz's excellent book, An Indigenous People's History of the United States has a chapter titled The Doctrine of Discovery and I strongly recommend that working class people read this book. "According to the centuries old Doctrine of Discovery...." Ms Dunbar Ortiz writes, "....European nations requited title to the lands they "discovered" and indigenous inhabitants lost their natural rights after Europeans had arrived and claimed it." (An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States Chap.11 )