Eddie Mabo was a man who took on the Australian legal system to fight an injustice and change the way Australian history was told. Eddie Mabo was born on the Island of Mer also known as Murray Island in the Torres Strait off the tip of Northern Queensland in 1936 on the 29th of June. For thousands of years it had been the home of the Meriam people and from the time he was little Eddie Mabo learned about the importance of his culture.
But the country he grew up in didn't recognise even the basic rights of its first people. Indigenous Australians (This was him) had to fight to be able to vote, to be paid equally, to be served in shops and go to theatres and hospitals with white Australians.
Eddie Mabo was a brave person who challenged many high courts to deny some of the Merriam islanders to use their lands. The claim by the people of Mer Was many things but this was the most important one to them which was that they owned the island because their families had lived there for a long time, so…show more content… • Indigenous societies didn't count because they didn't have laws or governments and they didn't own land.
As soon as Eddie Mabo heard these things he was shocked with all their decisions & knew that everything they said was not true and didn’t give up he kept on fighting . He fought for many years. He came down to 1992 during June Eddie Mabo unfortunately died from cancer at the age of 55, five months after his tragically death the high court of Australia in Canberra declared what Eddie Mabo had been fighting for which is what the Meriam people said and he believed which was having rights, freedom and land belonged to them, sadly Mabo didn’t see his victory and success. For this they celebrated him in art, films, named a library after his name and a day called Mabo Day is now running every June on the 3rd so they could remember