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Heather Goodall, Invasion to Embassy: Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales, 1770-1972 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1996), 421 pp., $29.95, ISBN 1 864 48149 8.
The recent High Court judgments in the Mabo and Wik cases have focused the attention of non-Aboriginal Australians on the historic links that many Aborigines have continued to enjoy with their traditional lands despite, in some cases, more than two centuries of European occupation. To most white Australians, particularly pastoralists or miners occupying leasehold land, the belated recognition of native title has been seen as a sudden and unwarranted threat to their own claims on separate parts of the continent.
With one eye on their concerned constituencies, state politicians have called unrealistically for native title to be legislated away. Heather Goodall's excellent study, Invasion to Embassy, shows why this would be both unjust and immoral. Contrary to popular opinion, Goodall's study reveals the enduring...