AllMovie

From the mid-'60s up to the time of his death in 1992, Eddie Mabo was a man on a political mission to give aboriginal people the right to occupy their ancestral lands, lands that were taken away by the British government that declared that native people owned nothing because they had no concept of ownership. Mabo contended that he and his kin, as natives of Murray Island in the State of Queensland, had ancestral rights to the land and should be able to reclaim it. This documentary chronicles Mabo's lifelong fight, one he did not win until five months after his death. In Australia, the implications of his victory are indeed far-reaching, and these too are briefly outlined in the film.