Seán Flood - Mabo--A Symbol of Struggle: The unfinished quest for Voice Treaty Truth

This book is more than a mere primer on the Mabo case and its results. It is an important and accessible reminder of the way Mabo pervades notions of the country and its very history, and of how it is changing the consciousness between white and black.

Thomas Keneally, author

Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander tribes were the first sovereign nations of the Australian continent and its adjacent islands This sovereignity is a spiritual notion: the ancestral tie between the land, or mother nature

ULURU STATEMENT FROM THE HEART, 26 MAY 2017

Mabo: A Symbol of Struggle is a new edition of Sen Floods book first published as Mabo: A Symbol of Sharing.

Written for the general reader, teachers and students the book begins with a plea for a Makarrata (Treaty) and ends with the Uluru Statement calling on the Australian Government for a First Nations traditional owners body, enshrined in the Australian Constitution, to consult on government legislation and policy affecting their issues such as culture, preservation of language, land management, native title and passive welfare.

The High Court Mabo decision is dealt with in an engaging and accessible way free of legal jargon. A chapter on the Nature of Native Title has insights from Aboriginal Elders like Pat Dodson and a moving account of connection to country by a blind Aboriginal woman in her seventies who had survived the Coniston massacre in 1927. The ongoing impact of colonialism on Australias natural environment is also included.

Native Title in the Courts Since Mabo is a Chapter written by lee Corbett PhD (UNSW) (Native Title and Constitutionalism in Australia), NSW Barrister, is a comprehensive summary of all the significant decisions since Mabo concluding with Warrie an important case involving Aboriginal Peoples relationship to country as essentially a spiritual affair giving rise to exclusive possession rights.

While the author was writing the revision for this edition Michael Brown, an unarmed African American student, was shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson Missouri. This led Flood to narrate the treatment of the other today under a white power structure treating blacks as second- class citizens. Recent deaths of Aboriginal people in custody are examined and examples of beneficial agreements from native title processes that allow Indigenous Australians to become active agents in (their) own development are included in Part II, The Impact of Colonialism.

Flood offers a strong case for the adoption of the Uluru Statement delivered to the Federal Government on the 26th May 2017 as a road map forward for First Nations to, in the words of Galarrwuy Yunupingu, be part of this nationgiven an equal shot at the prosperity of this nationunity and togetherness -a shared future The unfinished quest for recognition.

Eight pages of colour references including the AIATSIS map of Indigenous Australian language groups, a Glossary of unfamiliar terms, Suggested Lines of Inquiry for Teachers and Students, Past exam questions, Recommended reading and viewing, Footnotes and 201 Endnotes.

Erudite and concisea valuable contribution to broader public debate.
Larissa Behrendt, Professor of Indigenous Research and Director of Research at Jumbunna House of Learning at UTS Sydney.

The message is simple and capable of healing racial disharmony.
Dr Robert Bellear, Australias first Aboriginal judge (now sadly deceased).

An excellent resource for teachers(of) Aboriginal Studies and Legal Studies. The Suggested Lines of Inquiry are great tools for teachers to use.
Jan Ryan, Aboriginal Education Coordinator, Tweed River High School

This book is a must have for Australian History/Studies, Aboriginal Studies and Legal Studies classes in secondary school and early tertiary sector.
Jack Humphreys, South Australian Institute of Teachers Journal

Oh my home, my beautiful home.

Torres Strait Islanders Song

[sung while exiled to mainland Australia]

Extinguishment of traditional title is
extinguishment of traditional culture.

Noel Pearson

I acknowledge with respect the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the original owners and custodians of the country now known as Australia and its islands, seas, rivers, lakes, lagoons, sky, flora and fauna. You tilled, cropped, fished, nurtured and cared for your homelands for 65,000 and more years yet your existence on your country was denied. You sing and dance your country and for millennia you have told your stories under the stars. Your art has worldwide acclaim.

Your nations were invaded by the British colonists and illegally taken by force of arms; your sovereignty ignored without Makarrata (Treaty) or recompense. The invaders lie was that you merely wandered over your lands. You were dispossessed and forced to the margins where you suffered impoverishment and loss of connection to your cultural heritage, your homelands, your mother the earth on which you were born.

Senator Neville Bonner (Federal Liberal MP), and first Aboriginal member of the Commonwealth parliament, on the 19th September 1974 asked the Senate to pass a motion calling on the government for compensation for the dispossession of the lands of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.

In his speech to the motion, referencing Martin Luther King, he said:

(i) also have a vision a vision in which I see all Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders walking tall in the knowledge that their dignity has been restored by their learning that what was once ours has been recognised as ours but forcibly taken and now compensated for I am asking for compensation for our enforced disintegration (Hansard, 12671273).

The motion was carried but nothing was done to enact legislation to achieve its clear intent.

While the vision is yet to be achieved, Mabo restored a measure of justice and native title a measure of land equality for some.

Without a Makarrata and meaningful constitutional empowerment your polity is incomplete. No half measures will suffice.

The struggle goes on

June 2018

See Clarkson et al., Human occupation of northen Australia by 65,000 years ago. Nature 547, 306310 (20 July 2017) doi: 10.1038/nature22968. Recieved 30 November 2016. Accepted 19 May 2017. Published online 19 July 2017. Findings of a DNA study that the ancestors of modern Australian Aboriginal People separated from other populations 64,000 to 75,000 years ago and spread to Australia by at least 50,000 years BP (Before Present).

See: Rasmussen et al., 2011, An Aboriginal Genome Reveals Separate Human Dispersals into Asia, Science, 334(6052): 9498. doi:10.1126/science.1211177 x

I would like to acknowledge Eddie Mabo (19361992), Father Dave Passi and James Rice, who were the claimants who represented the Meriam people in the High Court of Australia; Judith Wright for permission to quote from The Cry for the Dead; Oodgeroo Noonuccal (19201993), custodian of the land Minjerribah, for lines from her poem Let Us Not Be Bitter, published in My People; and Jacaranda Wiley Ltd and Black Inc for selected quotations from