(reference) Claiming that Australia was terra nullius allowed an inhabited territory to be settled without the legal requirements of a conquest or cession. This meant that the indigenous people were considered to lack a sovereign and primitive social organization. Mabo v Queensland (1992) 175 CLR 1 at 36. As for the "barbarian theory", it was based on the idea that the indigenous inhabitants had no system of law, government or proper use of the land: see 36, 39– 40. (reference) In 1788 squatters could acquire title to land through physical occupation, although indigenous people already occupying the land had no occupancy rights. This led to indigenous peoples technically trespassing on their own land. The Australian government and the British Crown have maintained that they have never signed a treaty with Aboriginal peoples. Although this is legal fiction and historically inaccurate as at least two treaties were signed by Aboriginal peoples, one in Victoria and one in Tasmania according to Wunder, JR 2007, P Grimshaw and R McGregor (eds), pp. 19-56. (second reference). “What has been conspicuously missing from the appreciation of Aboriginal history is the awareness that Aboriginal tribes were, in fact, small nations who had long had