As a young reporter, I saw a listing for a case at the High Court of Australia. Few Australians then knew the name Eddie Mabo but I sensed this case may change Australia, says Stan Grant in this extract from his 2022 Mabo Lecture.
"If ever a system could be called a government of laws," he said, "it is shown in the evidence before me."In 1979 Wiradjuri man and law student Paul Coe walked the path that Eddie Mabo would follow — all the way to the High Court of Australia.
There was scepticism, even cynicism, but I was able to report the story. You can find it still, somewhere buried in the archives of ABC News.In 1992 the High Court handed down its historic ruling. Eddie Mabo would not live to see his final victory, but in that judgement he became immortal. Eternal.The justices spoke of a legacy of "unutterable shame" and that the dispossession of Indigenous people was the darkest aspect of Australia's history. The nation remained diminished.
The Aboriginal Tent Embassy has grown since a handful of young Aboriginal activists planted a beach umbrella and shook a fist at the power on the hill.