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Moments of Decolonization: Indigenous Australia in the Here and Now

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2014

Sarah Keenan*
Affiliation:
SOASUniversity of London

Abstract

This article traces some of the ways in which Australian law in the post-Mabo era has functioned to discursively historicize Indigenous Australia, that is, to construct Indigenous Australia as a historical relic. I argue that despite law’s continual historicization of Indigenous Australia, there have nonetheless been “moments of decolonization,” as there have been since the colonization of Australia began, in which Indigenous Australia asserts its contemporary presence in opposition to and outside of colonial Australia. Drawing on Doreen Massey’s conceptualization of place and space and three examples, I argue that in these moments, Indigenous activists do not only resist the ongoing project that is settler Australia, they also create an elsewhere to it.

Résumé

Cet article examine quelques-unes des façons dont l’Australie indigène a été historicisée, sur le plan discursif, par la législation australienne dans l’ère après-Mabo, c’est-à-dire représentée comme un vestige historique. Malgré le fait que l’Australie indigène est continuellement historicisée par la législation, je soutiens qu’il y a tout de même eu des « moments de décolonisation », tel qu’il y en a eu depuis le début de la colonisation en Australie, où l’Australie indigène affirmait sa présence contemporaine, à l’extérieur de l’Australie coloniale et opposée à celle-ci. M’appuyant sur la conceptualisation de lieu et d’espace de Doreen Massey ainsi que sur trois exemples, je soutiens que dans ces moments, non seulement les militants autochtones résistent au projet en cours de l’Australie coloniale, mais ils créent également un « ailleurs ».

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Law and Society Association / Association Canadienne Droit et Société 2014 

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References

1 Mabo v Queensland [No 2] (1992) 175 CLR 1.

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64 Based on a search of all legislative instruments passed under NTNERA as of 15 February 2011.

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89 Ibid.

90 As the land was leasehold, these were in fact subleases, but the principles remain the same. For a full exploration of the legal characteristics of the subleases, see Sarah Keenan “Property as Governance: Time, Space and Belonging in Australia’s Northern Territory Intervention,” Modern Law Review 76, no. 3 (2013): 464–93.

91 Shaw No 1 at paragraphs [75]–[99].

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