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The Torres Strait Islands are a group of at least 274 small islands which lie in Torres Strait, the waterway separating far northern continental Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea. The islands are mostly part of Queensland, a constituent State of the Commonwealth of Australia, with a special status fitting the native (Melanesian) land rights, administered by the Torres Strait Regional Authority. A few islands very close to the coast of mainland New Guinea belong to the Western Province of Papua New Guinea, most importantly Daru Island with the provincial capital, Daru. Only 14 of the islands are inhabited, with many of the islands threatened by rising sea levels. == History == The indigenous inhabitants of the Torres Strait Islands are the Torres Strait Islanders, an ethnically Melanesian people who also inhabited the northern tip of Cape York Peninsula, distinct from the Australian Aborigines who are the Indigenous Australians in the rest of the country. The Portuguese navigator Luis Vaz de Torres explored Torres Strait in 1606. Torres had joined the Queiros expedition which sailed from Peru across the Pacific Ocean in search of Terra Australis. Lieutenant James Cook first claimed British sovereignty over the eastern part of Australia at Possession Island in 1770. The London Missionary Society mission led by Rev. Samuel Macfarlane arrived on Erub (Darnley Island) on 1 July 1871. The Islanders refer to this as "The Coming of the Light", and all Island communities celebrate the occasion annually on 1 July. In 1879 Queensland annexed the Torres Strait Islands. They thus became part of the British colony of Queensland and (after 1901) of the Australian state of Queensland - although some of them lie just off the coast of New Guinea. In 1898–1899 the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition led by Alfred Cort Haddon visited the Torres Strait Islands.〔National Film and Sound Archive: The Recordings of the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits on the (Sounds of Australia registry )〕 In 1904 the Torres Strait Islanders become subject to the ''Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act''.〔(Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897 (Qld) ). Documenting Democracy. 24 May 2011. Retrieved on 3 July 2011.〕 The proximity to Papua became an issue when it started moving towards independence from Australia, which it gained as part of Papua New Guinea in 1975. The Torres Strait Islanders insisted that they were Australians, but the Papua New Guinea government objected to complete Australian control over the waters of the strait. Eventually an agreement was struck whereby the islands and their inhabitants remained Australian, but the maritime boundary between Australia and Papua New Guinea runs through the centre of the strait. In practice the two countries co-operate closely in the management of the strait's resources.〔For a detailed map see , for the agreement see 〕 From 1960 to 1973 Margaret Lawrie captured some of the Torres Strait Islander people's culture by recording the retelling of local myths and legends. Her anthropological work, stored at the State Library of Queensland, has recently been recognized and registered with the Australian UNESCO Memory of the World Programme. In 1982, Eddie Mabo and four other Torres Strait Islanders from Mer (Murray Island) started legal proceedings to establish their traditional land-ownership. Because Mabo was the first-named plaintiff, it became known as the Mabo Case. In 1992, after ten years of hearings before the Queensland Supreme Court and the High Court of Australia, the latter court found that Mer people had owned their land prior to annexation by Queensland.〔 〕 This ruling overturned the long-established legal doctrine of ''terra nullius'' ("no-one's land"), which held that native title over Crown land in Australia had been extinguished at the time of annexation. The ruling thus had far-reaching significance for the land claims of both Torres Strait Islanders and Australian Aborigines. On 1 July 1994 the Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA) was created. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Torres Strait Islands」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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