Chapter 75

I related what had transpired to Rachel with little understood.

"When you get your degree you'll be able to say you're an art historian, right?"

"Yes."

"But when I get my degree in law, I can't be a lawyer."

"Because the state says the Law Society can decide who practices."

"Correct. States have the right to regulate competition in the public interest. But they cannot blindly outsource that responsibility to professionals who stand to benefit from such restrictions."

"Benefit?"

"Certainly. The Law Society and the courts are staffed by lawyers, European lawyers. The Legislature has outsourced the authority to regulate competition in legal services in New South Wales to the LSNSW. And there have been little more than a very few Aborigines in the state or national legislatures."

"And?"

"And are the various tribal lands governed by land councils part of New South Wales in that sense? Might the tribal councils determine just who might offer legal services to their people?"

I phoned my dad. "I need to talk to you. An hour. Maybe more. After 14:00? I think so. Thanks. I'll explain fully tomorrow."

The next day, I ran through the whole notion with my father.

"That's not really crazy," he said. "You realize that over the past decade, nearly 200 native title claims covering 1.3 million km² of land — appropriately 18% of the Australian continent — have been approved. Just last year an indigenous group describing itself as the Murrawarri Republic declared independence from Australia, claiming territory straddling the border of the states of New South Wales-Queensland within Australia, but the Attorney General declared it had no basis in law. But it hasn't been challenged yet.

"This isn't like Eddie Koiki Mabo nearly 35 years ago. Nor even Michael Anderson in 1999. This would be a reasoned objection. And it's brilliant that Ardler has chosen you."

In 1982, a marathon case spearheaded by Eddie Koiki Mabo, an indigenous man from the Torres Strait who argued for a possessory title of his birthplace, Murray Island, by reason of long possession. When the High Court of Australia finally ruled in Mabo's favor in 1992 — four months after the plaintiff succumbed to cancer — it established the common-law principle of Aboriginal title. In 1993, the Native Title Act was passed by parliament to develop a system whereby Aboriginals could efficiently facsimile Mabo's posthumous victory. In 1999, Michael Anderson traveled to London as tribal leader of the Euahlayi nation and threw a spear wrapped in the Australian flag over the gates of Buckingham Palace in a symbolic rejection of colonial oppression. Today he is convener of the First Nations Interim National Unity Government — an umbrella group representing the sovereign aspirations of members of Australia's 300-odd Aboriginal nations. "There is nothing in Australian law that shows how the British gained the political and sovereign patronage of the Aboriginal people," he says. "They never asked for our sovereignty, and we never ceded it. So we came up with a hypothesis that the British never really had title of this land."

In 1982, that hypothesis was tested in a marathon case spearheaded by Eddie Koiki Mabo, an indigenous man from the Torres Strait who argued for a possessory title of his birthplace, Murray Island, by reason of long possession. When the High Court of Australia finally ruled in Mabo's favor in 1992 — four months after the plaintiff succumbed to cancer — it established the common-law principle of Aboriginal title. In 1993, the Native Title Act was passed by parliament to develop a system whereby Aboriginals could efficiently facsimile Mabo's posthumous victory.

In the decade that has passed, nearly 200 native title claims covering 1.3 million sq km of land — some 18% of the Australian continent — have been approved. But the system has received mixed reviews, with claimants bemoaning its voluminous red tape and perpetual delays. Says Anderson: "You know what blackfellas right across this country use Mabo as an acronym for? Money Available Barristers Only — because they're the only ones benefitting from the system."

Meanwhile a spokesperson for the Attorney-General's Department told TIME it hadn't replied to the Murrawarri People's Council assertion of sovereignty because "there are no constitutional means available for the establishment of separate political communities in Australia," adding that the Australian Commonwealth's sovereignty over the continent is recognized in international law.

The legality of the attorney-general's stance was backed up by George Newhouse, a Sydney-based human-rights lawyer known for his work with indigenous Australians: "Although I recognize this country has largely failed to acknowledge the role that English colonizers played in Aboriginal dispossession, I am not sure the Declaration of the Continuance of the State of Murrawarri Nation has any meaning in law." Time 28 October 2013