Indigenous societies and national identity in Australia and New Zealand (c.1770–2020)

'Land belonging to no one' — Britain used this legal idea to claim Australia in 1770/1788 without recognising Aboriginal sovereignty or signing any treaty.

1788, with the First Fleet landing at Sydney Cove, carrying convicts, soldiers and officials — Australia began as a penal colony.

They triggered mass immigration — e.g. Victoria's population grew from about 77,000 (1851) to over 500,000 (1861) — overwhelming Aboriginal communities and land.

Pemulwuy's resistance near Sydney (1790s–1802) and the Myall Creek massacre (1838), where at least 28 unarmed Aboriginal people were killed and several perpetrators were tried and hanged.

Intense frontier violence in the 1820s–1832, including a government-ordered military operation ('Black Line'), that devastated the Palawa Aboriginal population.

6 February 1840, New Zealand; signed by British officials and around 540 Māori rangatira (chiefs).

The English text ceded full sovereignty to Britain, but the Māori text used 'kāwanatanga' (governance), which many rangatira understood as allowing administration while Māori kept authority (rangatiratanga) over their land.

A series of conflicts (1840s–1870s), mainly over land, including the Northern War, Taranaki Wars and Waikato War, fought between Māori and British/colonial forces.

The Māori King Movement — it united multiple tribes to resist further land sales, giving Māori more collective political and military strength than Aboriginal groups had.

The government confiscation of Māori land as punishment after the New Zealand Wars — around 1.2 million hectares, even from tribes that had stayed neutral.

Australia: no treaty, so terra nullius had to be overturned by a court case (Mabo, 1992). New Zealand: an existing (if breached) treaty, investigated by the Waitangi Tribunal (set up 1975).

1) Legal factor — Waitangi gave Māori a treaty to invoke; Aboriginal peoples had none. 2) Power-balance factor — organised iwi, the Kīngitanga, and pā fortifications gave Māori more military and demographic leverage.

On 1 January 1901, six separate British colonies united to form the self-governing Commonwealth of Australia, still under the British Crown.

Self-government over domestic affairs, while Britain retained control of New Zealand's defence and foreign policy.

It was geographically distant from Australia and had its own distinct relationship with Māori, so it chose Dominion status separately in 1907.

New Zealand gave women the vote in 1893 (world first); Australia set a national minimum wage via the 1907 Harvester Judgement.

The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, formed by combining troops from both Dominions for the First World War.

1) ANZAC lands at the wrong beach on 25 April 1915 under heavy fire. 2) Eight months of trench-warfare stalemate follow. 3) Allies evacuate Dec 1915–Jan 1916 with no strategic gain.

About 8,700 Australians and 2,700 New Zealanders died, out of roughly 130,000 total Allied and Ottoman deaths.

The founding national myth that Gallipoli revealed distinctly Australian/New Zealand qualities — courage, mateship, resourcefulness — despite the campaign's military failure.

Unifying view: gave both nations a shared founding story and enduring values. Critical view: it commemorates a British-planned disaster and sidelines Indigenous service and the war's true social cost.

Australia held two referendums (1916, 1917) on conscription, both narrowly defeated, exposing deep divisions; New Zealand introduced conscription in 1916, controversial especially for Māori.

Around 1,000 Māori and hundreds of Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander men served, yet returned to face continued land loss and exclusion from full citizenship rights.

A thesis engaging the claim, an argument for, an argument against, and a substantiated final judgement — description alone is not enough.

Arthur Calwell's post-1945 slogan justifying mass immigration to Australia, driven by fear of Japan and the need to grow the economy and defence.

1973, when the Whitlam government removed race as a factor in immigration selection.

Australia accepted tens of thousands of Vietnamese 'boat people' refugees, the first major wave of Asian immigration under non-discriminatory rules.

Over 90% Yes vote; gave the federal government power to legislate for Aboriginal people and included them in the census — not citizenship or land rights.

An 8-year strike (1966-75) by Gurindji stockmen demanding fair wages and return of traditional land, ending with Whitlam symbolically returning land in 1975.

The High Court overturned terra nullius, recognising that Aboriginal peoples held native title to land before European colonisation.

A body created in New Zealand in 1975 (powers extended in 1985) to investigate breaches of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi and hear Māori land/resource claims.

Australia had no treaty, so change came via referendum and courts (1967, Mabo 1992); New Zealand had the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, so change came via enforcing/reinterpreting it (Waitangi Tribunal, 1975).

A mutual-defence pact between Australia, New Zealand, and the USA, marking the shift from Britain to America as the region's protector.

The South East Asia Treaty Organisation — a wider Cold War alliance (AUS, NZ, USA, UK, France, Thailand, Philippines, Pakistan) aimed at containing communism after France's defeat in Indochina.

NZ's 1984-85 refusal to allow nuclear-armed/powered US ships to dock led the US to suspend its ANZUS defence obligations to NZ in 1986.

Japan's WWII advance (fall of Singapore 1942) proved Britain could not defend the region, pushing Australia and NZ toward reliance on US power, formalised in ANZUS and SEATO.