Book contents
- The Cambridge Legal History of Australia
- The Cambridge Legal History of Australia
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Contributors
- Maps
- 1 Editors’ Introduction
- I Cultures of Law
- II Public Authority
- III Public Authorities in Encounter
- IV Land and Environment
- V Social Organisation
- VI Social Ordering
- VII Reckonings
- 31 Indigenous Legal Traditions and Australian Legal Education
- 32 Reckoning with the Past
- Index
32 - Reckoning with the Past
from VII - Reckonings
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2022
- The Cambridge Legal History of Australia
- The Cambridge Legal History of Australia
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Contributors
- Maps
- 1 Editors’ Introduction
- I Cultures of Law
- II Public Authority
- III Public Authorities in Encounter
- IV Land and Environment
- V Social Organisation
- VI Social Ordering
- VII Reckonings
- 31 Indigenous Legal Traditions and Australian Legal Education
- 32 Reckoning with the Past
- Index
Summary
This chapter will explore why and how First Nations people still have to reckon with the myriad settler and Australian legal histories that have shaped their lives and histories since colonisation. I argue that we still need to reckon with law because settler law denied Aboriginal land title and continues to deny Aboriginal sovereignty. Tracing settler laws’ complicity with the colonial project, this chapter first examines how the fantasy of terra nullius was instantiated through laws which enabled the expropriation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ lands and waters. It then examines how First Nations people have been unduly affected by separate, discriminatory settler laws which governed almost all facets of their lives. Yet, Australia’s legal system to redress these injustices, constitutes new and evolving chapters in the nation’s legal history.
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- The Cambridge Legal History of Australia , pp. 740 - 764Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022