Brendan Thoms and Daniel Love - who had no prior connection - were born in New Zealand and Papua New Guinea respectively but moved to … References to Aboriginal people are likely to be found throughout the records of various Government agencies held in our collection and may be located through our catalogue, finding aids and indexes. C5/2018. In the mid-1980s he started to do a circuit to the Pitjantjatjara Such courts are used in some Australian states, and they existed in the Northern Territory from 2003 to 2012. Deporting Aboriginal people from Australia would be another case of dispossession as in Mabo, the High Court has heard. The full text of court and tribunal decisions is available from: AustLII website. But critics call Australia’s bush courts a particularly punitive institution with roots in colonialism that abuses the rights of Indigenous Australians. As settlement spread during the squatting era, magistrates and their clerks performed an increasingly wide range of judicial and administrative functions, particularly in more remote areas. Register of convictions, orders and other proceedings in the Court of Petty Sessions at Kerang, commencing 2/5/1888 to … Informing a defendant that he is required to attend court the following day. Comments. The court is not an actual court of law, but it is the commonly referred to designation of the court when dealing with Indigenous offenders accused of crime. Court and tribunal decisions are made after all the evidence is heard, including details of loss and damage. This court pays regard … to tribal lore and customary punishments but the Australian law is designed to protect all Australians and I fear, if I ignore matters such as this — matters which occur between Aboriginal people — it can be said that the law does not extend to the protection of the black people. “I use my hands a lot, or I do drawings,” she said. He returned to Australia in 1975 and was appointed magistrate in 1980. Josh Zimmerman. A company has been handed a $2.3 million fine by the Federal Court for selling thousands of pieces of fake Aboriginal art. Historical examples of' Aboriginal Courts' From the outset it is worth observing that the historical use of the term 'Aboriginal Courts' is itself problematic, in that it has related mostly to a court where the defendants who appear are of Aboriginal descent. This is how justice is done in some of Australia’s most remote corners. “We’re invisible when it comes to justice,” said Ms. Liddle, who is herself an Aboriginal woman. When this Bench Book was first published in 2009 it did not seek to address the issues which, at that time, had been so comprehensively addressed in the revised Aboriginal … William David Bugmy, from remote Wilcannia, New South Wales, faces seven-and-a-half years in prison for assaulting a prison guard by pelting him with pool balls. His considerable time on the circuit, coupled with his years in PNG, shaped his thinking about British and Au… It is not an exhaustive list of sources which can be used in tracing Aboriginal family and personal history. Two Aboriginal men who were held in immigration detention will ask the High Court to find that Aboriginal non-citizens cannot be deported, in a case one expert describes as “landmark”. The landmark case serves to recognise the surviving reality and power of Yolngu law and its … Some of the information contained within the records may be viewed as being offensive to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people because of the context in which they were created. Offenses such as driving in defiance of a court order can end up landing people in jail. The idea that any Aboriginal Australia is a foreigner is absurd and the whole citizenship is ridiculous. However, the case ended with the court rejecting the claim because the Yolgnu people’s relationship to the land didn’t fit the European concept of ‘property’. Wadeye, a town of 2,000 people, 90 percent of them Aboriginal, hosts Australia’s busiest bush court. On a sweltering Tuesday in mid-October, three defense lawyers who had flown into Wadeye (pronounced wad-air) from Darwin sat in a tiny room adjacent to the courthouse, poring over files that spilled out of suitcases. In a case described as a landmark trial, lawyers are asking the High Court to make a determination on whether Indigenous people can be considered as an 'alien' under the Australian … Often the language and opinions expressed in the records may be considered as highly offensive. Are you already a subscriber? High Court rules that Aboriginal people have special status under the law American models is considerably more extensive than those envisaged in the Australian cases. With any further trouble, he’ll go straight to jail. An administrative history of contact between the Government of New South Wales and Aboriginal people. Her choice of this research technique has resulted in record that may be of use to other researchers. She has been leading a push for changes, including “community courts” that would involve Indigenous elders. She intended to include a chapter in her thesis about the inequity suffered by Aboriginal … That widespread imprisonment partly reflects a “tough on crime” approach in Australia and particularly in the Northern Territory, where many crimes carry mandatory sentences. Users of this index are warned that there may be words or descriptions which may be sensitive to some Aboriginal people. The Northern Territory’s Chief Justice has enabled Aboriginal customary law to have a role in the punishment of an Aboriginal couple convicted of drug offences. Catchwords “In jail,” he added, “they start the trouble from there, and bring it back.”, ‘Like a Cattle Yard’: How Justice Is Delivered in Australia’s Bush Courts. This overview provides a brief explanation of State archives that document the NSW government's interaction with Aboriginal people from 1788 until today. Some Wadeye residents say they support a tough approach to law enforcement. One of the lawsuit’s primary assertions is that the bush court provides inadequate translation services. 23/10/2017 Supreme Court of the Australian Capital Territory (Court of Appeal) (Murrell CJ, Burns J, Mossop J) [2017] ACTCA 46. ... Family Court of Australia. The court process. “Trying to explain guilty and not guilty can be difficult,” said Holly Fitzsimmons, 28, a criminal lawyer who manages the Wadeye circuit with the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, a legal service funded by the federal government. The case concerned the Federal Government's intention to rely on provisions in the Migration Act to deport from Australia, on character grounds, two men who had been convicted of criminal assaults. The Court has procedures to help all clients feel safe at court and comfortable that they are being heard. Ms. Liddle, the director of the Aboriginal justice unit, said that judges were often “hogtied” when it came to making appropriate calls for defendants, largely because of mandatory sentences and scarce alternatives such as community work orders. It’s “just like a cattle yard,” Leanne Liddle, the director of the Aboriginal justice unit for the attorney general’s office in the Northern Territory, said of the courts. Court Case 3 – Al-Kateb vs Godwin, 2004. Aboriginal Australians are not ‘aliens’ under the Constitution and can no longer be deported from Australia, following a landmark decision handed down in the High Court today. Please note that all institutions and legislation are from New South Wales, unless otherwise noted. Critics say language barriers and the rapid pace infringe on human rights. Family members waited for the release of a man who had been ordered to stay away from Wadeye. Australia's first Aboriginal Sentencing Court, the Nunga Court, was the initiative of Mr Chris Vass, who presided for many years on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands and prior to working with the Courts as a Magistrate, spent many years working with the … An aboriginal group in Australia filed cases against the Western Australia State government over the loss of land due to mining and other activities. Case study 4: 'The carpets case' A landmark in the legal protection of Aboriginal art occurred in 1994. The courts are part of a legal system that, by some estimates, has made Aboriginal Australians the most incarcerated people in the world; they make up 26 percent of the population of the Northern Territory but account for 84 percent of its inmates. People with disabilities like deafness sometimes face criminal penalties for failing to obey police instructions. She made her database available to me during the early 1990s and using that generosity as a guide to Victoria’s intentions, her mother, Mrs Beverley Gollan, has made it available for researchers in Aboriginal history. Teams of interpreters are often short-staffed, and in some cases, they speak only rudimentary English themselves. Includes a guide to finding records of Aboriginal people in historic legal, prison and court records in the Public Record Office Victoria and National Archives of Australia (Melbourne). Aboriginal Australians are not ‘aliens’ under the Constitution and can no longer be deported from Australia, following a landmark decision handed down in the High Court today. In this case — another Aboriginal murder trial — Justice John Walpole wondered whether he even had jurisdiction over the matter. The result was a civil suit by the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties and … Lower Court Judgment. 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