It still remains surprisingly common to hear talk about the Old World and the New World. The Old World generally refers to the European countries whose seafarers, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, set out on voyages of discovery across the globe. What they discovered was called the New World and is understood to include the Americas (North and South) and Australasia. Of course, the irony of this is that the so-called New World had been home to many established civilizations for thousands of years before being “discovered” by the Europeans. Subjugated and often exterminated by these invaders, aboriginal nations and communities have only recently begun to seek justice and redress for the historical wrongs done to them.

At the heart of many of these claims is the disputed issue of land ownership. Upon being “discovered,” many aboriginal groups were obliged or persuaded to transfer vast tracts of land to their new neighbors. Apart from the freedom of these exchanges, much was complicated by the fact that such groups had a very different understanding about the relationship between people and land than the Europeans. Against this fraught political and historical background, courts have been asked to determine claims by aboriginal people, individually and collectively, as to their rights over traditional lands and to continue traditional activities. None of these cases was as contested or became as notorious as an Australian case that highlighted the opportunities and obstacles of framing such political disputes in legal terms.