The Factual Basis for Indigenous Land Rights

Groundbreaking judgments in Australia and Canada the 1990s reveal that Indigenous land rights depend on evidence of occupation law when British Crown asserted sovereignty. Looking back at earlier decisions, it is apparent they were not based facts, but prejudicial erroneous assumptions about peoples. In St. Catherine’s Milling (1888), Lord Watson said Ojibwe Indians solely goodwill Crown, a conclusion evidently stemmed from trial judge’s racist assessment society. Cooper v Stuart (1889), wrongly described New South Wales as “territory practically unoccupied, without settled inhabitants or law,” time became colony. This article demonstrates what was missing 1880s supporting rights, rather should have led to application existing law. Erroneous factual resulted legal precedents denial for around century. Nor impact these entirely spent. Even today, false arguments are made there no basis nineteenth-century common rights.