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What Is Customary Marine Tenure and How Did It Survive Colonial Rule in the Torres Strait? - Torres Strait Islanders and the Fight to Reclaim Indigenous Sea Ownership | Sleepy Facts About History · Sleepy Facts About History

0:04
Welcome to Sleepy Facts About History. The line
0:13
on the map separating Australia from New Guinea
0:15
is often viewed as a simple boundary between
0:18
two landmasses. But for thousands of years, the
0:22
Torres Strait has been an inhabited maritime
0:24
corridor where people built a distinct society
0:27
based on movement, exchange, and a profound relationship
0:31
with the sea. This episode explores how Torres
0:35
Strait Islanders developed a sophisticated maritime
0:38
economy, navigated the waters in outrigger canoes,
0:41
and maintained complex systems of customary marine
0:45
tenure that treated the ocean as a named and
0:48
owned landscape. The story also examines the
0:52
profound disruptions brought by the 19th century
0:55
pearling industry, the arrival of Christian missionaries,
0:58
and the administrative control imposed by Queensland.
1:02
Yet this is not simply a history of colonial
1:05
erasure. Islanders actively adapted to these
1:08
changes, preserving their kinship structures,
1:12
traditional ecological knowledge, and connection
1:15
to their land and sea country. This continuous
1:19
persistence ultimately enabled Eddie Kawikimebo
1:22
and the Merian people to successfully challenge
1:25
the legal fiction of Terra Nullius in the High
1:28
Court of Australia. I wanted to understand why
1:31
this specific maritime world refused to be redrawn
1:34
as empty water by colonial powers. Some questions
1:39
sound simple until you try to answer them. And
1:43
the more I learned about the Torres Strait, the
1:46
more I realized how deeply the legal history
1:48
of modern Australia is tied to the survival of
1:51
traditional seafaring practices. It is a calm
1:55
and detailed look at a society that treated the
1:58
sea not as a barrier, but as a road. The line
2:04
on the map that separates Australia from New
2:07
Guinea was never a barrier to the people who
2:10
built their lives upon it. The Torres Strait
2:13
Islanders have treated this shallow, reef -strewn
2:15
corridor as a place of residence, connection
2:18
and named inherited ownership for thousands of
2:22
years. It is a maritime world that colonial powers
2:26
tried to redraw as empty water. And it is a world
2:30
that one islander from Murr would eventually
2:33
force Australian lore to finally see. If you
2:37
look at a map of the far north of Australia,
2:40
you will see a thin line drawn between Cape York
2:43
Peninsula and the coast of New Guinea. That line
2:47
is the Torres Strait. For most people who notice
2:51
it at all, it functions as a boundary. It appears
2:55
as a divider between two landmasses, two nations,
2:59
Two versions of the continent. But that line
3:03
on the map conceals something the map cannot
3:06
show. Beneath it, through it, and across it lies
3:10
a sea that has been inhabited for thousands of
3:13
years. It is a shallow, reef -strewn corridor
3:16
scattered with more than 200 islands, reefs,
3:20
and caves. Seventeen of those islands are home
3:24
to permanent communities today. The people who
3:27
live there, the Torres Strait Islanders. have
3:30
never understood this water as a barrier. For
3:33
them, it has always been a place of residence.
3:36
It has been a named and owned landscape. It has
3:41
been a medium of connection rather than division.
3:44
This episode is about how that maritime world
3:48
came to be. It is about how it functioned. And
3:52
it is about how it persisted and changed when
3:55
colonial powers arrived with very different ideas
3:57
about what sea and land meant. To understand
4:01
the Torres Strait as islanders have understood
4:04
it, we need to begin with its physical creation.
4:07
Around eight to six thousand years ago, as the
4:11
last ice age ended and global sea levels rose,
4:15
the low -lying land bridge that had connected
4:17
Australia and New Guinea was gradually submerged.
4:20
What had been a continuous shelf of dry land
4:23
became a shallow sea, dotted with the higher
4:26
ground that became islands. The water that separated
4:30
the two continents also created a new kind of
4:34
human environment. It became a maritime corridor
4:37
where people could move between islands by canoe.
4:41
It became a place where reefs exposed at low
4:44
tide provided rich hunting grounds. And it became
4:48
a place where the horizon in every direction
4:50
connected rather than isolated. Archaeological
4:54
evidence shows that people were living in the
4:57
islands at least 2 ,500 years ago and possibly
5:01
earlier. They came from the north and west. They
5:06
brought with them languages that belonged to
5:08
the Papuan language family, not to the Aboriginal
5:11
language families of the Australian mainland.
5:14
They also brought techniques of gardening, fishing
5:18
and canoe construction that would form the basis
5:21
of islander life. The islands of the Strait are
5:25
conventionally grouped into three clusters. This
5:28
grouping matters because it reflects real differences
5:30
in environment and way of life. The western islands
5:34
are low, muddy, and fringed with mangroves sitting
5:37
close to the New Guinea coast. The central islands
5:41
are small sandy caves and coral islands, dependent
5:45
on the surrounding reefs. The eastern islands,
5:49
including Murr or Murray Island, are volcanic,
5:52
fertile and high, capable of supporting permanent
5:56
agriculture. These differences shaped what was
5:59
possible on each island. On Muur, for example,
6:03
the volcanic soil allowed for terraced gardens
6:06
where yams and other crops could be cultivated
6:09
in a seasonal rhythm tied to the northeast monsoon.
6:12
The monsoon arrived with reliable rain. Planters
6:17
worked the terraced plots in a calendar they
6:20
had refined over generations. On the low coral
6:23
islands, gardening was limited or impossible.
6:27
People there depended more heavily on fishing,
6:30
shellfish collection and trade with gardening
6:32
islands. The strait was thus not a uniform place.
6:37
And the people who lived there were not a uniform
6:40
population. They spoke related but distinct languages.
6:46
Kala Lagao Ya and its variants were spoken in
6:50
the western and central islands. Mariam Mare
6:53
was spoken in the eastern islands. Both are Papuan
6:57
languages. This confirms that the cultural orientation
7:01
of the Strait was northward, toward New Guinea,
7:04
rather than southward toward Australia. The foundation
7:08
of Islander society was a sophisticated maritime
7:11
economy that combined multiple sources of food
7:14
and materials. To understand it, we need to see
7:18
it in motion. Imagine an outrigger canoe leaving
7:22
the shore of one of the eastern islands. The
7:26
hull is hollowed from a single log, stabilized
7:29
by lateral floats lashed to the main body with
7:32
cane and fiber. A sail of woven matting catches
7:36
the wind. From shore, you could watch these vessels
7:40
cross between islands, growing larger or smaller
7:44
on the horizon, carrying people, goods, and news.
7:49
The canoe was not merely transport. It was the
7:53
enabling technology of islander life. It was
7:56
used for hunting, trade, warfare, and social
7:59
visiting. Without it, the maritime corridor would
8:03
have been impassable. With it, the sea became
8:07
a road. Gardening on the fertile eastern islands
8:11
provided carbohydrates and stability. Fishing
8:15
on the reefs and in the open water provided protein.
8:19
But the most distinctive and ritually central
8:21
activity was the hunting of dugong and marine
8:25
turtles. These are large animals. A dugong can
8:30
weigh 400 kilograms. Hunting them requires specialized
8:35
knowledge, equipment, and social coordination.
8:38
The hunt began with observation. Hunters read
8:42
the water for signs of dugong grazing on seagrass
8:46
beds. They understood the currents and tides
8:49
that shaped animal movement. The canoe approached
8:53
silently. The harpooner stood ready with a barbed
8:57
spear attached to a line. When the throw found
9:01
its mark, the animal would dive, and the line
9:05
would pay out through the hands of the crew.
9:08
The dugong could stay submerged for minutes.
9:11
The hunters had to follow its path, anticipated
9:14
surfacing. and coordinate the effort to exhaust
9:17
and retrieve it. The meat, once brought to the
9:21
surface and brought ashore, was distributed according
9:24
to kinship obligations. The hunt itself reinforced
9:28
the social bonds that organized islander society.
9:32
Kinship was the structural core of Torres Strait
9:35
Islander life. It determined who could marry
9:39
whom. It determined who had obligations to whom.
9:43
And critically, It determined who had rights
9:46
to use which land, reefs, and waters. Customary
9:51
marine tenure was not a vague spiritual connection
9:54
to the sea. It was a specific, named, and bounded
9:58
system of ownership and management. Particular
10:02
families or kin groups held rights to particular
10:05
reefs, to particular turtle and dugong hunting
10:09
grounds, to particular fishing spots. These rights
10:13
were inherited, negotiated and sometimes contested
10:17
they were enforced through social sanction and
10:20
in some periods through warfare the sea was thus
10:25
not open access it was property in the sense
10:29
that it was socially recognized as belonging
10:32
to particular people and being subject to particular
10:35
rules of use this is a crucial point it runs
10:40
directly counter to the colonial assumption that
10:43
the sea was empty unowned or available for exploitation
10:47
by whoever arrived with the technology to exploit
10:50
it. The islands were not isolated from their
10:53
larger neighbours. Trade networks connected the
10:57
strait to both sides. These connections were
11:00
lived through movement rather than merely mapped.
11:03
An outrigger canoe loaded with surplus yams,
11:07
dried fish or shell ornaments might cross to
11:10
a Papuan village on the New Guinea coast. or
11:13
to an aboriginal camp on cape york peninsula
11:16
the exchange was not a simple transaction it
11:21
followed social protocols established over generations
11:24
creating and renewing relationships marriage
11:28
partners moved between island communities and
11:31
between islands and the mainland information
11:34
moved too news of events of changes of opportunities
11:39
and dangers traveled across the water A canoe
11:43
returning from a trading voyage carried not only
11:45
goods. It might carry pottery from New Guinea,
11:49
or iron tools that had entered the regional network.
11:53
It also carried knowledge of conditions elsewhere.
11:57
The strait was thus a zone of interaction. It
12:01
was a place where things and people circulated.
12:04
It was a place where identities were formed through
12:07
movement and exchange, rather than through fixed
12:10
attachment to a single spot. This is why it is
12:15
misleading to think of the islands as remote
12:17
or peripheral. They were central to a maritime
12:20
world that extended in multiple directions. This
12:25
was the world that existed when Europeans began
12:28
to take serious interest in the strait in the
12:30
19th century. The first sustained European presence
12:34
came not from settlers or administrators, but
12:37
from the pearling industry. Beginning in the
12:40
1860s, commercial operators began harvesting
12:44
pearl shell from the waters of the strait the
12:47
industry brought outside capital outside labor
12:50
and outside demand into a maritime economy that
12:54
had previously operated according to islander
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rules pearling required boats known as luggers
13:01
and divers who could work the seabed islanders
13:04
were drawn into this labor force sometimes willingly
13:07
sometimes under coercion They were joined by
13:11
Pacific Islanders, Asians, and Europeans, creating
13:15
multi -ethnic communities that had not existed
13:17
before. The pearling economy was extractive and
13:21
dangerous. Divers worked without modern equipment,
13:25
descending on breath -hold to collect shell from
13:28
the seafloor. They surfaced to sort their catch
13:32
on deck while the smell of cleaned shell filled
13:35
the air. The work was profitable for the operators
13:39
and hazardous for the workers. Islanders were
13:43
typically paid less than European crew members
13:45
for the same labour. The industry also brought
13:48
new patterns of mobility. Islanders travelled
13:52
on luggers, worked at shore stations and sometimes
13:55
travelled to mainland Queensland for employment.
13:59
The transformation of islander life accelerated
14:02
with the arrival of Christian missionaries. The
14:05
London Missionary Society reached on the island,
14:08
or Airob, in 1871. This event, known in islander
14:13
tradition as the Coming of the Light, is remembered
14:17
as a foundational moment in modern islander identity.
14:20
The missionaries brought Christianity, literacy
14:24
in the local languages, and a new form of social
14:27
organization centered on mission stations. They
14:31
also brought a new cosmology. a new calendar
14:34
of observances and new restrictions on pre -christian
14:38
practices the conversion was rapid and by the
14:42
standards of colonial missions remarkably thorough
14:45
within a generation most islanders had been baptized
14:49
island life had been reorganized around church
14:53
school and mission authority but this was not
14:57
simply a story of imposition and erasure Islanders
15:01
were active participants in the process. They
15:05
selected what to adopt, what to adapt, and what
15:08
to preserve. The coming of the light became,
15:11
and remains, a central element of Islander identity.
15:16
It is celebrated annually on July, August. It
15:21
is reenacted in ceremony, and it is claimed as
15:25
a moment of spiritual and social transformation.
15:28
At the same time, Pre -Christian beliefs and
15:31
practices persisted in modified forms. They were
15:35
integrated into islander Christianity rather
15:38
than simply disappearing. The colonial state
15:41
followed the missionaries, and the sequence matters.
15:45
Purling had brought the first sustained European
15:47
presence in the 1860s. The Lent Missionary Society
15:52
arrived in 1871. Queensland annexed the islands
15:57
within 60 miles of the coast in 1872. It extended
16:01
its claim to all remaining islands in 1879. This
16:07
annexation was not a response to island the demand
16:10
or even to any particular crisis. It was a strategic
16:14
and administrative decision. It was driven partly
16:18
by concern about foreign influence in the region.
16:22
It was driven partly by the desire to regulate
16:25
the pearling industry and control its labor force.
16:29
The extension of Queensland law over the Strait
16:32
meant that islanders became subjects of a colonial
16:34
state whose institutions, categories and priorities
16:38
were foreign to their experience. The Queensland
16:41
Department of Native Affairs, and later successor
16:44
bodies, governed islander life under protectionist
16:47
legislation that controlled movement, employment
16:50
and residence. Islanders required permits to
16:54
travel, to work, to marry across certain boundaries.
16:58
The colonial administration imposed new territorial
17:02
categories, new forms of record -keeping, and
17:05
new definitions of who counted as Islander, as
17:09
Aboriginal, as Asian, as Pacific Islander. These
17:13
categories had real consequences for people's
17:16
lives. They determined where people could live,
17:20
what work they could do, and what legal rights
17:23
they possess. Yet the colonial transformation
17:26
was incomplete. customary marine tenure, kinship
17:31
obligations, and islander identity persisted
17:35
and adapted. Islanders continued to garden, to
17:38
fish, to hunt dugong and turtle, to travel between
17:43
islands in outrigger canoes. They maintained
17:47
their languages, though now with written forms
17:49
developed by missionaries. They negotiated with
17:53
colonial authorities, sometimes resisting, sometimes
17:56
accommodating. always seeking to preserve what
17:59
they could of their maritime world. The 1936
18:03
maritime strike by Torres Strait Islander pearling
18:07
workers was one moment of organized assertion.
18:11
Workers from multiple island communities coordinated
18:14
to demand better wages and conditions from the
18:17
pearling operators. The strike demonstrated that
18:20
islander labor was not merely passive submission
18:23
to colonial demand. It was a field of struggle
18:27
and negotiation. It remains a significant marker
18:31
of islander collective agency under colonial
18:33
rule. The story of Mer, or Murray Island, illustrates
18:38
this persistence most clearly. Mer is a volcanic
18:42
eastern island, fertile and densely populated,
18:46
with a long history of permanent gardening and
18:49
complex social organization. Through the colonial
18:53
period, Mariam people maintained their connection
18:56
to their land and sea country. They continued
18:59
to garden in the terraced plots that had sustained
19:02
their ancestors. They continued to recognize
19:05
the boundaries and ownership rights that kinship
19:08
and customary law had established. They passed
19:11
this knowledge down through generations, not
19:14
as a political strategy, but as a way of life.
19:18
When Eddie Koikimabo, a Mariam man, began in
19:23
the 1980s to challenge the legal assumption that
19:26
Australia had been terra nullius, empty land,
19:29
at the time of British colonization. He was drawing
19:33
on this continuous tradition of connection and
19:36
ownership. The case that bears his name, Mabo
19:40
v. Queensland, was decided by the High Court
19:43
of Australia on June 3, 1992. The court recognized
19:48
that Meriam people held native title to their
19:51
lands. This overturned the legal fiction that
19:55
had governed Australian property law for two
19:57
centuries. This was a landmark in Australian
20:01
legal history. But it is important to understand
20:04
what it was and what it was not. The Mabo decision
20:09
did not grant land rights to all Indigenous Australians.
20:13
It established that native title could exist
20:16
under Australian common law. and it recognized
20:19
that title for the Meriam people of Murray Island.
20:24
It was a specific judgment about a specific place.
20:28
It was grounded in specific evidence of continuous
20:31
connection and customary ownership. The court's
20:35
reasoning drew heavily on the oral testimony
20:38
of Meriam witnesses, recorded in the 1980s, about
20:42
gardening practices, boundary systems, and the
20:44
social organization of land and sea use. This
20:48
testimony demonstrated what islanders had always
20:51
known. Their relationship to their country was
20:54
not a matter of vague spiritual attachment. It
20:58
was a matter of specific, named, inherited and
21:01
enforced rights and obligations. The Mabo decision
21:04
has often been treated as a culmination, the
21:08
end point of a long struggle for recognition.
21:10
But from the perspective of Torres Strait Islander
21:13
history, it is better understood as one chapter
21:16
in a longer story. The Miriam people who testified
21:20
in the case were not inventing a claim for legal
21:23
purposes. They were describing a way of life
21:26
that had continued through colonial disruption,
21:29
through missionization, through annexation, through
21:32
the pearling economy and its labor demands. The
21:36
legal victory was possible because the maritime
21:39
world had persisted. It was possible because
21:42
kinship and customary tenure had survived the
21:45
transformations imposed from outside. and the
21:49
legal victory did not resolve everything. The
21:52
relationship between customary marine tenure
21:55
and Australia law remains contested, particularly
21:58
regarding sea rights beyond the low water mark.
22:01
The Torres Strait Treaty between Australia and
22:04
Papua New Guinea, which governs the modern boundary
22:08
through the strait, creates its own complexities
22:11
for islander movement and resource use. The maritime
22:15
corridor that islanders have inhabited for millennia
22:18
is now divided by national borders that did not
22:21
exist before the colonial period. What we can
22:24
say with confidence is this. The Taris Strait
22:29
was never a barrier between two continents. It
22:32
was and remains an inhabited maritime corridor
22:35
where people built distinct societies through
22:37
skilled movement across water. They developed
22:41
economies based on gardening, fishing, and the
22:44
specialized hunting of dugong and turtle. They
22:48
created and maintained systems of customary marine
22:51
tenure that treated the sea as owned, named and
22:54
managed. They traded, married and communicated
22:58
with neighbours on both sides of the strait.
23:02
They spoke languages related to those of New
23:05
Guinea, not mainland Australia. They developed
23:08
island -specific cultures that varied across
23:11
the western, central and eastern clusters. When
23:15
colonial powers arrived, First pearlers, then
23:19
missionaries, then the Queensland state, they
23:22
transformed islander life in specific material
23:25
ways. They extracted labor. They reorganized
23:30
settlement around mission stations. They imposed
23:34
permit systems and racial categories. They drew
23:38
new territorial boundaries. But they did not
23:42
erase the maritime world that islanders had made,
23:45
the persistence of that world. Its adaptation
23:49
and survival through centuries of colonial rule
23:51
is what made the Mabo claim possible. It is also
23:55
what makes Torres Strait Islander identity a
23:58
continuing reality today. The listener should
24:02
leave this episode with a specific understanding.
24:05
Torres Strait Islanders are not simply northern
24:08
Aboriginal Australians. They are a distinct indigenous
24:12
people whose history is maritime. Their cultural
24:16
roots lie in the Papuan world to the north. Their
24:20
identity was formed through movement and exchange
24:23
in the sea between two continents. Their history
24:27
is not a simple story of isolation followed by
24:30
disruption followed by legal redemption. It is
24:33
a history of continuous adaptation. It is the
24:37
history of a maritime civilization. that has
24:40
persisted and changed, that has absorbed Christianity
24:43
and colonial law without surrendering its foundational
24:46
relationships to land and sea. The Strait itself
24:51
remains what it has always been. It is not a
24:54
line on a map. It is a lived, named and travelled
24:59
world whose peoples continue to assert their
25:02
customary connections to sea country within and
25:04
across the modern borders that now divide it.