Eddie Mabo died five months before the High Court upheld Meriam title to his island, and his grave was defaced the day after his memorial

Eddie Koiki Mabo was born on Mer in the Torres Strait. His mother died shortly after his birth and his uncle, Benny Mabo, adopted him. In 1974, while he worked at James Cook University in Townsville, the historians Henry Reynolds and Noel Loos realised that Mabo believed he owned his family's land on Mer. Under Australian law it was Crown land. At a land rights conference at the university in 1981, a test case was proposed. On 20 May 1982 Mabo, Celuia Mapo Salee, the Reverend David Passi, Sam Passi and James Rice began their action. In 1985 Queensland passed the Queensland Coast Islands Declaratory Act, declaring that Islanders lost any land claims when Queensland annexed the islands in 1879. On 8 December 1988 the High Court ruled that Act inconsistent with the federal Racial Discrimination Act 1975, and the plaintiffs then had to prove traditional ownership. Mabo died of cancer on 21 January 1992, aged 55, and was buried in Townsville. On 3 June 1992 the High Court ruled 6 to 1, Justice Dawson dissenting, that native title exists in Australian common law and that the Meriam people held title to their land. Parliament passed the Native Title Act 1993. In 1995, the day after a memorial service at his grave, swastikas and racial slurs were sprayed on the headstone and his bronze portrait was taken^†. His family reburied him on Mer, where Islanders performed the burial ceremony for a Meriam king.