Click to expand Image First Peoples Assembly co-chairs Ngarra Murray, left, and Ruben Berg, center, exchange gifts with Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan during the Ceremonial Opening of Treaty Negotiations on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung country at Darebin Parklands, Victoria, Australia, November 21, 2024. © 2024 AAPIMAGE via Reuters The Australian state of Victoria on October 30 passed a landmark legislation to establish the nation’s first treaty with First Nations people. The Statewide Treaty Bill sets up a democratically elected body to represent First Nations people in Victoria and advise the state government on laws and policies impacting their rights and interests.Victoria’s treaty is the first of its kind in Australia. Unlike other Commonwealth countries, Australia has never entered into treaties with Indigenous people. When Britain first made contact in 1788, the British crown denied First Nations ownership of the land under the doctrine of terra nullius— “land belonging to no one”—which was used to justify violent dispossession and colonization.The treaty acknowledges that First Nations people have lived in balance with the land for at least 60,000 years and rejects terra nullius, stating: “The fiction of ‘land belonging to no one’ ignored those already here.”Under the law, a new representative body called Gellung Warl “gives effect to the right to self-determination and will play a central part in the democratic life of the state.” It will also include truth-telling and accountability bodies to ensure the government upholds existing commitments to reduce Indigenous disparities.In 2025, Victoria’s Yoorrook Justice Inquiry, which was Australia’s first formal Indigenous-led truth-telling inquiry, determined that the decimation of First Peoples in Victoria constituted genocide. First Nations people in Australia continue to be subject to systemic discrimination. They are hugely overrepresented in Australia’s prisons and are over 12 times more likely to have their children removed by child protection authorities than non-Indigenous people.Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Australia is party, all peoples have the right to self-determination, including to freely determine their political status and pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. Australia also endorsed the 2009 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which sets out minimum standards for the rights and well-being of Indigenous peoples.Several UN rights experts have said that the protection of Indigenous peoples’ rights also requires transitional justice measures to effectively address legacies of gross violations of human rights as a form of recognition, reparation and reconciliation.”The treaty is an important step toward upholding the right to self-determination in Victoria, but it needs to jumpstart efforts at the national level to right historical and ongoing wrongs against First Nations people throughout the country. Australia’s federal government should respond to First Peoples’ claims with necessary institutional reforms.