Recovering the foundations of Koowarta: the struggle of the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission to purchase land in Queensland

Abstract

This article examines one of the stories underpinning Koowarta v Bjelke-Petersen; the story of the attempts of the Aboriginal Land Fund Commission (ALFC) to purchase land for Aboriginal communities in Queensland amid conflicting Commonwealth and state policies on Aboriginal rights. Through telling this story, the article reflects on legal historiography, on the role of legal judgments as official records of the events they document, and on how what is recorded in judgments becomes the official memory of events, marginalising and strategically forgetting other stories to achieve judgment and resolution. The story of the struggles of the ALFC to purchase land for Aboriginal people in Queensland disrupts a too easy memorialising of Koowarta, and presents an alternative source for remembering the events surrounding the Koowarta litigation, to deepen our appreciation of official and unofficial struggles for Aboriginal justice in the 1970s and 1980s.