This is the Yirrkala Bark Petition which is on display in Parliament House in Canberra. The bark petitions asserted that the Yolngu people owned the land and protested the Commonwealth’s granting of mining rights of land excised from the Arnhem Aboriginal Land reserve. They asked that no arrangements be entered into with any company which will destroy the livelihood and independence of the Yirrkala people. And so this became the first formal claim for native title. It failed. In 1971 it was taken to the Supreme Court where the judge used the notion of terra nullius to justify this ruling.