sovereignty

Whilst having been too caught up in other things to express my thoughts here, there have been many issues that have occupied my grey matter. In recent times (days, weeks), there have been a number of reports in the press on two that give me some hope: the Israel-Palestine issue and that of the situation in Australia regarding the lack of respect and recognition afforded First Peoples, particularly in regard to the 'National Holiday' on January 26 known as Australia Day.

Whilst my brain had some free time recently, I was pondering the concept of sovereignty. My thoughts rotated around why it exists as a notion—more-so that it is not a concept that I consider needed nor one that has a place in a fair and just society. This brings me to two clarifications: 1). These are ideas still a work in progress; 2). Given the lack of a fair and just society in (never quite) post-colonial countries (and many others), the concept has some usefulness. I will come back to the latter.

For some time now I have been critically analysing white accounts of a walk-off of Aboriginal workers and their families from Wave Hill station in Australia’s Northern Territory in August 1966 – with the participants eventually receiving inalienable freehold title to (part of) their ancestral lands at Daguragu. This event received national prominence and forced the hand of the government – and people more broadly – to address the situation in which Aboriginal peoples lived under and colonialist assumptions that mediate and shape perceptions of them (at east to some degree).