The concept of time immemorial has poetic resonance, but it also has legal and historical import, dating back to Blackstone's commentaries on the Laws of England in the eighteenth century. This lecture discusses its uses by the Cherokee in the United States in the 1830s and in more recent Australian cases. Although Australia's Indigenous past has often been referred to as 'timeless', new archaeological research is delivering a series of hard dates, as well as evidence of inventions and dynamism.

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