Clip description
Peter Yu of the Yawuru and Bunuba, Kimberley Land Council, talks about Indigenous relationship to land and the High Court decision in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) (1992) 175 CLR 1. Paul Keating stresses the chance to legislate away the fiction of terra nullius, offering a truth rather than a lie as the basis for policy. Images show Indigenous people on the land and in the meeting room. A title states, 'From September 1992 until December 1993 Indigenous people entered intense negotiations with the Federal Parliament to incorporate Native Title into legislation’.
Curator’s notes
After Mabo quickly establishes the parameters of its narratives: the movement between Western and Indigenous perspectives on land. The documentary provides a good comparison between the different approaches to the treatment of Indigenous native title by the Labor Keating Government and the Liberal Howard Government that succeeded it in 1996.