Tbf, putting buildings up signalling use didn't suddenly cause conquerors of any geographic to suddenly respect that the land was already in use. See: Roman Imperial Expansionism, Mongol Empire, numerous Chinese dynasties, the Aztecs, the Nazis, the British Empire, the East India Companies, the Zulu, Mali (well Mansa Musa basically destabilized gold wherever he went).

In Australia, the Europeans were too primitive to see how the land was developed, which is why they were able to lie about it being terra nullis.

You see, when the first European "explorers" came here, they wrote about how the land was like a garden estate. Rolling fields of grass with scattered trees. The perfect environment to go on a stroll in, and the animals loved it too. This kind of environment is what nobles back in England hire full time gardeners to curate, even now that we have lawnmowers!

And they thought this environment had just randomly come to be.

Cause they were ignorant primitives!

The First Australians terraformed the environment into this using a technology even more powerful than lawnmowers: cold fire. They knew (and still know) how to create fires that burn up the scrub while leaving the trees unharmed. Using cold fire, they created thriving habitats for yummy animals like kangaroos, with lots of food plants all over the place.

Before colonisation, Indigenous Australians only had to work a few hours a day. They created farms integrated with nature, indistinguishable from nature to the untrained eye. European savages just couldn't see them.

So many false statements in one paragraph, even on a post that is presumably questioning the narrative.

Uh, I currently live a couple miles from a city American Indians built out of cement houses. Before the plague killed them all, thousands of people lived here.

The surviving tribes survived because they weren't in the city.