Unmasking indigenous invisibility: Reforming and decolonising the pedagogy of terra nullius

This chapter examines the treatment since the colonisation of the Australian Continent by the British of Indigenous people under Anglo-Australian law. Settler colonialism has largely treated Indigenous people by pretending they were absent from the Continent. When encounters were inevitable, Indigenous people generally were treated as sub-human. Legal pedagogy has been complicit in the poor treatment of Indigenous people, often by creating legal fictions to ‘explain’ the gaps in law that would otherwise be evident. Lawyers and law schools can and should stop being complicit and help to reverse this aspect of colonisation.