Edward Koiki Mabo: The Journey to Native Title - [API] Network

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Eddie Mabo remained involved. Just before the seminar, a new catholic bishop, Leonard Fawkner, was appointed and a mini-flood of priests and nuns in support of the seminar heralded a new age in the diocese. OPAL Queensland, based in Brisbane, ordered OPAL Townsville not to participate in the conference, a directive which was ignored. OPAL Queensland then placed an advertisement in the local paper stating it was not involved. OPAL Townsville informed the community OPAL Townsville was involved. OPAL Queensland informed OPAL Townsville that none of the people involved had officially applied for and received membership. Although the putative OPAL members in Townsville now believed OPAL was a government front, all applied for membership, and, on memory, only one applicant was rejected. No explanation was offered. The special branch kept us under surveillance throughout. We were sure our phones were bugged. Margaret Reynold’s home was broken into and our membership list taken. It was found on the footpath in front of the office of the communist party. The special branch had struck again. Exciting times indeed in what was then a sleepy country town. 8 The inter-racial seminar had by this time achieved a momentum of its own and went on to become such an outstanding success that Charles Rowley, one of the guest speakers, wrote about it in The Remote Aborigines. 9 Over three hundred black and white north Queenslanders discussed the reports that the convening committee produced in such areas as housing, education, employment, health and citizenship, and outlined future directions. In the months of preparation for this conference, I met Koiki Mabo, as did Margaret (now Senator) Reynolds, Henry Reynolds, Kenneth Orr and other members of Townsville’s fledgling academic community. Some of us remained friends with Mabo from this time and entered into an on-going process of cross-cultural learning similar to one which Mabo had experienced in the upper grades of primary school with school teacher, Robert Victor (Bob) Miles, the only white teacher Mabo admired from his childhood on Mer. Miles had taught Mabo English and widened his understanding of ‘white-man culture’, while Koiki had taught Miles the language of the eastern islands of the Torres Strait, Miriam. As I look back on Mabo’s life, it seems to me that his apprenticeship as an activist was now complete. Once again the Queensland government fanned the flames of his militancy. In 1973 Mabo was employed at James Cook University as a gardener and groundsman. Henry Reynolds and I had an oral history project funded by the ARC and commissioned Mabo, our first research assistant, to collect oral history at Thursday Island, Murray Island and Yorke Island where he had been assistant teacher to Bob Miles. The chairmen of Yorke and Murray Islands both refused Mabo permission to visit and repeated the refusal emphatically when Mabo repeated the request. 10 Mabo was convinced that the Queensland department of Aboriginal and islander advancement had orchestrated the response, a conclusion with which I agree. To the Bjelke-Petersen government, Mabo was non-christian, a radical, a friend of reds, a stirrer who had already been publicly identified as the originator of the interracial seminar, and this image would have been communicated to the devoutly christian islander leaders. 11 At this very time Mabo was openly expressing his hostility to the 113
Noel Loos conservative Queensland government over the ‘border issue’ when the commonwealth searched for a redefinition of the border between Australia and Papua New Guinea as that country moved towards nationhood. Mabo sent a telegram from Thursday Island to George Mye, chairman of Darnley island, warning him not to trust Bjelke-Petersen. 12 In October 1974, when his father, Benny Mabo, was ill, Mabo was granted permission to visit by the chairman of the council but only on condition that he did not involve himself with ‘political affairs’, a precondition he found infuriating and insulting. Benny Mabo died on 11 February 1975 before Mabo could make the journey. 13 During this period, there occurred two other events which pointed Mabo along the path to the native title claim. The Queensland government, with the consent of its advisory council, decreed that islanders on the mainland ‘would have no say’ with regard to the border issue. This made Mabo very angry. He always saw himself returning to the Torres Strait despite his lengthy absence. 14 The other important event that was to have Australia-wide significance came about by accident: Mabo learnt that he did not have legal title to his land on Murray island. At some time between 1973 and 1975 Koiki Mabo, Henry Reynolds and I had met in Reynolds’ study to have lunch. Mabo told us of his land holdings on Murray Island, and Reynolds and I had the unpleasant responsibility of pointing out to him that the outer Torres Strait Islands were Crown Land. Indeed I pointed out to him that they were designated on a map we had of the area as ‘Aboriginal Reserve’. We both remember how shocked Koiki was and how determined that no-one would take his land away from him. Subsequent events indicate that this was not mere bravado. 15 From this time on Mabo spoke publicly about the need for the Torres Strait Islands to be self-governing and autonomous, free of Queensland government control, but part of the commonwealth. He used Norfolk Island to indicate the kind of model he would like to see developed, but included ‘the right to secede’. 16 Mabo also took the opportunity to spell out land ownership and inheritance laws on Murray island specifically and in the Torres Strait generally whenever the opportunity arose. Such an occasion was the 1981 conference in Townsville, ‘Land Rights and the Future of Australian Race Relations’, co-sponsored by the Townsville treaty committee (Mabo and I were co-chairmen) and James Cook University students’ union. Koiki Mabo delivered an address, ‘Land Rights in the Torres Strait’, which clearly spelled out his understanding of land ownership and land inheritance on Murray Island. With this understanding clearly established he repeated and elaborated upon his proposal for an autonomous region for the Torres Strait, within the commonwealth but separate from Queensland, which would retain Torres Strait Islander customary law. Once again he referred to the Norfolk Island model. Barbara Hocking, then a Melbourne barrister, delivered a paper proposing that an Aboriginal group should consider a high court challenge and detailed the international and Australian legal history which she believed would support such a claim. She also sketched in many of the major issues that would confront such a legal challenge. The Murray islanders returned from a group discussion determined to take up the challenge. Eddie Koiki Mabo became the leading litigant. 17 In May 1982, Mabo and Others v. The State of Queensland commenced in the high court and the struggle of Mabo and the four other Murray Island litigants became 114
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Edward Koiki Mabo: The Journey to Native Title - [API] Network

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