Eddie Koiko Mabo LibraryPrint Page

Library named after Eddie Koiko Mabo commemorates the link between the man who changed the land laws of Australia and James Cook University.

Eddie Mabo taught himself English by reading dictionaries while working on pearl luggers in the Torres Strait, and had little formal education. Mabo was a 34-year-old gardener at the university in 1974 when he discovered he did not legally own his traditional homeland of Mer Island in the Torres Strait. The realisation prompted the father of seven to start poring over legal texts and anthropological books, and then eventually challenge in the High Court the notion of ' terra nullius, the legal sleight of hand that held Australia was unoccupied when it was first claimed by the British. Mabo died on January 21, 1992, just months before the High Court overturned ' terra nullius ', but his work almost single-handedly forced the authorities to recognise native title in a decision that has seen hundreds of successful indigenous land claims, and prompted ' The Australian ' newspaper to name him its Australian of the Year in 1993.

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