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One of many abandoned cars sits on the side of a dirt highway deep inside the Murrawarri nation, in the 16,000-hectare property of Murrawarri People's Council leader Fred Hooper, a.k.a. King Fred
If a determined group of indigenous people get their way, the world’s newest country won’t be in Africa or the Balkans but on the eastern periphery of Australia’s outback. A bleak, foreboding, flood-prone savannah the size of Austria 750 km northwest of Sydney, the Murrawarri Republic was home to an Aboriginal nation that lived in the Culgoa River region of the state of New South Wales (NSW) tens of thousands of years before the arrival of British settlers. On March 31, they took the first step in ending more than 200 years of colonial rule when they sent letters to Queen Elizabeth II and the Australian government demanding evidence of either a treaty or deed of cessation. When those parties failed to respond to the Murrawarri’s 28-day deadline, they issued a Declaration of the Continuance of the State of Murrawarri Nation.
“When Captain Cook arrived here in 1770, he said he was claiming the continent in the name of the Crown. But on what legal grounds did he take our land?” asks Sharni Hooper, daughter of Fred Hooper, chairman of the Murrawarri People’s Council.
