I often speak and write about the importance of Treaty and the model that I think would best achieve the ultimate goal of land rights, self-determination and reparation. In order to pursue any of these avenues, it is pertinent to understand sovereignty and the path to asserting it given it is apparent it is being denied by the government.

The government’s policy is that we are all Australians and, as such, we are subject to the current structural framework that makes up our laws and governance as a country. This is what is referred to as State sovereignty – the power to govern a territory by a power structure. This view, of course, is silent on the fact that we were here prior to British occupation and are distinctly separate to the government’s definition of ‘Australian’ and that we have a separate claim for sovereignty distinct from the State sovereignty already claimed.

Sovereignty and the assertion of sovereignty is a critical item of Indigenous activism in Australia – the only commonwealth country without a compact between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. It can be said that the notion of Indigenous Sovereignty is intertwined with the activism for Treaty and the pursuit of self-determination.

The definition of sovereignty is where problems arise. Or more specifically, the white privilege in imposing western legal definitions of sovereignty.

At law, sovereignty refers to power and authority to govern and make laws but there are contexts in which it arises (internal and external sovereignty).

Indigenous Sovereignty has nothing to do with the desire to rule or govern a country, especially not in the capitalist sense. Indigenous Sovereignty is about acknowledgement of our role as custodians of this land since time immemorial and caring for our land and communities. Of course in 2017 capitalist society, caring for land and communities takes resources and those resources need to be fairly allocated, as I outlined in my last column, with communities in control of resource allocation to protect country and people.