How Eddie Mabo helped indigenous Australian get legal rights to their own land?

Mabo Day is marked on the 3rd of June every year with a public holiday in the Torres Strait Islands, closing National Reconciliation Week. But just who was Eddie Mabo, and why was he so important in the fight for Indigenous land rights?

On the 29th of June 1936, Eddie Koiki Mabo was born on the island of Mer, also known as Murray Island, in the Torres Strait.

After moving to Townsville in 1959, he married Australian-born South Sea Islander, Bonita Neehow, and they had ten children.

It was there, while involved in the 1967 Referendum campaign, that historian Henry Reynolds and his wife Margaret became friends with the Mabos.