07/10/2025
"Since the 1990s, many Australians have come to accept the conclusion of the High Court in the Mabo case that our colonial settlements wrongly presumed a notion of terra nullius. These Latin words were, however, absent from the early nineteenth century documents, and instead, there was a diversity of legal terms that eventually flowed together under the heading of terra nullius. One of the key phrases in law was “desert and uninhabited.” Similarly, the Western Australia Act of 14 May, 1829, claimed that a settlement had been effected on the “wild and unoccupied lands on the Western Coast of New Holland. This paper will show how this terminology – “desert,” “wild” and “unoccupied” – arises from an ideology of waste land that was formed in English law long before its reinvention in the colonies. It was waste land legislation that was the main legal instrument of Aboriginal dispossession."
Join us on the unceded lands of the Whadjuk people of Nyoongar nation at Wollaston Theological College on Tuesday 14 October for the Principal's Lecture, featuring Mark G. Brett, Professor at Whitley College. Professor Brett brings his expertise as a biblical scholar and former policy officer for the Native Title Services Victoria, to his presentation on the reinvention of the category "waste land" as a colonial tool of dispossession.
Time: 7:00 pm
Email [email protected] to RSVP or for more details.
