Treaty Making (Makarrata) and an 'Invisible' People: Seeking a Just Peace After 'Conflict'

Abstract

Indigenous Peoples in Australia are emerging from under the invisibility cloak of terra nullius placed upon them by English and international laws of the nineteenth century. While Anglo-Australian law has been slow in legally recognising them, starting afresh also provides an opportunity to form fair and robust agreements anew. The British, as with other colonisers, have acted in bad faith and even fraudulently with the Indigenous peoples of other lands with whom they did enter into treaties or agreements. Indigenous Peoples in Australia should ensure that they learn from the experience of such encounters and that suitable measures are put in place to avoid these and other foreseeable problems of entering into agreements with people who have shown themselves to be less than trustworthy in the past.