 In contrast to the rest of Australia, "terra nullius" did not apply to the new province.The Letters Patent establishing the Province of South Australia attached to the Act acknowledged prior Aboriginal ownership, and stated that no actions could be undertaken that would "affect the rights of any Aboriginal natives of the said province to the actual occupation and enjoyment in their own persons or in the persons of their descendants of any land therein now actually occupied or enjoyed by such natives".Nonetheless, under the Act, the Indigenous inhabitants were assumed to have become British subjects.