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Article: Native unrest: battle over land rights between aborigines and ranchers threatens the peace in Australia's vast Outback.
- Article from:
- Current Events, a Weekly Reader publication
- Article date:
- January 23, 1998
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Weekly Reader Corp. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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SYDNEY, Australia -- Try to imagine what would happen in the United States if Native Americans claimed a large part of the country -- and the U.S. Congress passed a law saying they had a legal right to their claim.
To say that there would be a raging national debate would be putting it mildly.
That's the situation "down under" in Australia, where native Australians -- known as Aborigines (a-buh-RIJ-uh-neez) -- have laid claim to large parts of the nation's land.
In 1993, Australia's legislature passed the Native Land Title Act. The law acknowledged for the first time in Australia's history that Aborigines owned the land before European ...