[LINK] On the naming of a star after Australian Aborigine activist Eddie Mabo

[rfmcdonald]

I found out via Facebook that a star in the constellation of the Southern Cross, has been named after Eddie Mabo, an Australian Aborigine activist whose court case established the existence of native title in Australia. The article "Eddie Mabo: It was written in the stars". The star named Koiki is known on stellar catalogues as SSSC 803504, from the Sudney Southern Star Catalogue, and is apparently a B-class star.

The decision to dedicate a star to Eddie Mabo is a remarkable step towards Australians acknowledging the true history of this country and recognising the vast cultural knowledge that Indigenous Australians hold.

Indigenous Australians were probably some of the first human beings to name stars. But sadly, first recordings by missionaries and ethnographers didn’t account for this knowledge. A general ignorance of of astronomy led to many errors and misunderstandings of Indigenous culture. But today a star that is dedicated to the late Eddie Koiki Mabo shows us that the mainstream is going some way to right previous wrongs.

The history of astronomy in Australia goes back tens of thousands of years. It is the Indigenous astronomy entwined with the laws and customs of the land, that has sustained both the environment and Indigenous Australians for over 40,000 years. Today, the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences’ plan to pay tribute to the memory of Eddie Mabo by dedicating and naming a star after him in the Sydney Southern Star Catalogue, acknowledges this history.

The dedication is part of a Dreamtime Astronomy program developed in partnership with the Nura Gili Indigenous Unit of the University of New South Wales, whichpromotes research into this important field of scientific thought.

Murray Islander Elder Alo Tapim says “The Southern Cross is totemic for southern tribe on the island of the Meriam people and it shows us the pathways and a star will always follows the same path.