![]() These historical discoveries triggered a fierce backlash from some right-wing commentators and politicians. Along with the Bringing them Home report into the stolen generations in 1997, the High Court’s decisions were watershed moments in re-evaluating Australia’s history and confronting the past. ![]() This led, in the 1990s, to the Mabo and Wik High Court decisions, which overturned the fiction of terra nullius used to deny those rights. The picture that has emerged is that white settlers had to conquer the continent from Indigenous owners in bitter frontier wars that lasted decades and that, even under British common law of the time, Indigenous people had rights to the land. They supplemented this evidence with modern archaeological, linguistic and environmental techniques. They compared these with Indigenous oral histories handed down over generations. ![]() The writing of Henry Reynolds and others looked again at the accounts of early contact with Indigenous people left by white explorers and pioneers. In the past 50 years, however, as Indigenous people have demanded political rights and compensation for what was taken from them, history has played a crucial role in deepening our understanding. ![]() ![]() Until quite recently Australia’s history was written as if Indigenous people barely mattered. ![]()
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