Indigenous Issues and UC Law

Indigenous Issues and UC Law

 

An understanding of historic and contemporary issues that affect the application of the law to Indigenous Australians is a crucial part of the understanding of past and present Australian laws. Many areas of law have an Indigenous perspective, and this is incorporated into the particular units that you will study.

 

For example, some of the Indigenous issues covered in our units include:

 

  • The reception of English law into Australia and the interplay of Indigenous Law and received law (Legal Systems and Constitutional Law).
  • Equality before the law and access to the legal system (Legal Systems).
  • The status of Indigenous Law before the Courts (Constitutional Law).
  • Native title both pre and post the Mabo decision (Property Law).
  • The application of aspects of the Criminal Law System to Indigenous People, including punishment and criminal procedure such as arrest and bail (Criminal Law and Procedure).
  • Indigenous witnesses and the law of evidence: cultural assumptions, witness examination and unheard stories. Confessional evidence: Indigenous experiences with the police and the right to silence. (Evidence Law)
  • The existence of Fiduciary duties between the State and Indigenous people in the context of native title and the stolen generation. The role of the Fiduciary relationship in communal ownership situations (Equity).
  • The application of Intellectual Property laws to Indigenous people stopping the rip-offs, gaps in protection for cultural heritage, protecting the integrity of Indigenous art, resale royalties for Indigenous artists (Intellectual Property Law).
  • Issues for indigenous women as prisoners, as victims and as offenders in the court (Gender and the Australian Legal System).
  • Racial discrimination in the workplace, focussing on Indigenous people (Employment, Discrimination and the Law).

 

The unit, which was created in 2009, is "8245 Indigenous People and the Law". This unit will consider topics such as:

 

1.   Indigenous Laws and Relationship to the Land  (week 1)

2.   Legal Impact of Colonisation:- in social, political and practical  context.

  • Terra nullius
  • The reception of English law and the recognition and status of indigenous law post-colonisation as declared by the Anglo-Australian Courts.  Bede Harris
  • Introduction to Mabo and other cases (suggest limited but focussed case analysis with reintroduction of same case at different points throughout course)

3.   History and Government Policy 

  • Child welfare and the stolen generation
  • Stolen wages
  • Citizenship
  • Employment/unemployment

4.   Land

  • Land Rights
  • Native Title 
  • Bourke's proclamation
  • Sea Rights 

5.   Indigenous governance and self-determination 

  • Sovereignty - constitutional non-recognition (Keating's speech) 
  • Rise and fall of ATSIC - Indigenous political voice and power
  • International Human Rights Law
  • Success stories of Indigenous governance
  • ACT legislation and establishment of the ACT Indigenous Elected Body

6.   Criminal Justice:

  • An Indigenous Criminal Law... Pre & post colonisation
  • Colonisation - policing, punishment and control
  • RCADIC - over-representation, discrimination - efforts to counteract
  • public order offences and policing public space
  • Dilemma of domestic violence and alcoholism
  • Law and justice outcomes for Indigenous women and children
  • Co-existence of laws? engagement - circle sentencing, Koori Courts

7.   Racial Discrimination

  • Racism
  • NT Intervention

8.    Intellectual property and Cultural Heritage -  identity, pride and ownership  

  • Consider trip to National Gallery to view Indigenous paintings re relationships to land . Positive amidst much of the negative.

9.   The impact of International Human Rights Law (or possibly covered in other areas of course)

  • Convention on rights of indigenous peoples
  • Membership (United Nations) -v- Conformity

10.  Resolution: Reconciliation, Treaty and the future.