Intervention of the Indigenous Peoples Organisation of Australia at UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues – April 2010
This intervention elaborates on the history and impacts of the legal fictions of the Doctrines of Discovery in the USA and Terra Nullius in Australia on Indigenous peoples. It recommended that the Permanent Forum conduct and coordinate a comprehensive review of the Doctrines of Discovery and Terra Nullius and other similar doctrines around the world that have been used as a legal basis to dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands and also current laws that perpetuate the doctrines, in order to recommend how their impact can be unravelled.
