Mabo Day
The late Mr Eddie Koiki Mabo is considered a legendary man within the Torres Strait, his name synonymous with native title rights.
His story began in May 1982 when he and fellow Murray Islanders, David Passi, Sam Passi, James Rice and Celuia Salee instituted a claim in the High Court for native title to the Murray Islands within Torres Strait.
The claim was made against the State of Queensland which responded by seeking to legislate to extinguish retrospectively any native title on the islands, which was challenged in the High Court on the grounds that it was inconsistent with the 1975 Racial Discrimination Act.
The High Court, in a historic judgement delivered on June 3, 1992, accepted the claim from Eddie Mabo and the other claimants that their people had occupied the island of Mer for hundred of years before the arrival of the British.
The Court found that the Meriam people were “entitled as against the whole world to possession, occupation, use and enjoyment of the lands in the Murray Islands.”
The decision overturned a legal fiction that Australia was Terra Nullius (a land belonging to no-one) at the time of colonisation.
3 June is a bank holiday in the Torres Shire.