New hope 30 years after Mabo

Melissa Castan talks to Dash Lawrence about her father’s legacy in the era of the Uluru Statement from the Heart

Today, 3 June marks 30 years since the High Court of Australia ruled in favour of Torres Strait Islander Eddie Mabo; a ruling that would end the legal doctrine of terra nullis – that Australia was empty before its European colonisation – and usher in a new era of rights for Indigenous Australians.

The man who spearheaded Mabo’s courageous bid for land rights, was Melbourne Jewish barrister Ron Castan QC.

Castan spent decades doggedly pursuing land rights cases, usually acting in a pro-bono capacity. His commitment to Indigenous legal rights was informed by an acute awareness of the violence and dispossession meted out to Jewish people, culminating in the Holocaust.

He died unexpectedly, in 1999, at the age of 59. But his daughter Melissa continues her father’s legacy, as a law academic and Director of Monash University’s Castan Centre for Human Rights Law.

Speaking to The Jewish Independent this week, Melissa Castan said this year’s anniversary marks an important milestone.

“The 30-year anniversary of the Mabo ruling represents a whole passage of a generation of First Nations people, that have now grown up and come of age in the age of Mabo.

“Since that decision, there have been a series of important developments in Indigenous rights.

“However, progress is still frustratingly slow. There’s still so much work to do and to achieve for genuine justice for First Nations people.”

In 1982, it took Eddie Mabo, an articulate and politicised leader of the Meriam people (in Queensland’s far northern Torres Strait Island Region), to seek recognition that he and his people were the traditional owners of their land – not the State of Queensland.

Mabo and his co-litigants, hoped that the case for their land in Murray Island would lead to a broader recognition that Indigenous Australians had a legal right to ownership over their traditional lands. But it would take nearly a decade, many setbacks and dispiriting delays, before Australia’s High Court ruled in Mabo’s favour.