After Ron Castan AM QC died aged 59 on 22 October 1999, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander MP, Democrat senator Aden Ridgeway, eulogised him as “the great white warrior against racism”. Castan’s post-Holocaust vigilance against the resurgence of antisemitism certainly contributed to his ferocious battle during the 1980s to expose the doctrine of ‘terra nullius’ as not only a legal fiction, but also an “obnoxious racism”.
Castan devoted his life to securing justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander claimants and was the lead counsel in the landmark Mabo case for native title. He also helped to conceive and draft the Wik people’s case that native title can coexist with pastoral leases in Australia. In these two undertakings, said Justice of the High Court of Australia Michael Kirby, Ron Castan reconfigured the 150-year legal relationship between Australia and its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
In 1985 Castan, along with Uncle Jim Berg, and Ron Merkel, had sued the University of Melbourne and the Museum of Victoria for the return of their collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural material, and through this act created the Koorie Heritage Trust. Castan was a founder of the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and played a leading role in the legislative discussions on Australian Native Title law throughout the 1990s.