The monument commemorates Eddie Koiko Mabo, a Torres Strait Islander who is known for his role in campaigning for Indigenous land rights and for his role in a landmark decision of the High Court of Australia that overturned the legal fiction of terra nullius. or land of nobody, whereby Britain assumed that Aboriginal people did not have any form of political organization and therefore no leaders with the authority to sign treaties. According to British law, Australia’s Indigenous population had no legitimate claim to the land on which they had lived for thousands of years. The 1992 court decision is now commonly called “Mabo” in Australia.
This monument was commissioned by Townsville City Council in 2007 to commemorate Edward Koiki Mabo and the Mabo Decision. The Mabo Memorial Sculpture is part of Townsville City Council’s Pioneers Walk.
Features include a pebble mosaic symbolic of the ancestral Octopus that brought the laws of tradition (Malo) to the people of Torres Strait Islands, ten of these laws written in the language of Miriam Mer are etched into bluestone banding; an enlarged playable bronze replica of a Warup drum carved by Eddie Mabo, this drum represents the strength and continuum of Eddie’s voice – resonating the connection between the past, present and future; a large natural granite boulder positioned at the center of the mosaic pattern, carved into this boulder is a large fingerprint symbolizing the physical, spiritual and cultural connection between indigenous people and the land.
