In front of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra letters planted in the ground spell out ‘SOVEREIGNTY’.
It’s a reminder of ‘Sovereignty never ceded’, a phrase you’ll see at any protest action in support of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander rights.
Eddie Synot is a Wamba Wamba First Nations person who writes about Indigenous experience at the intersections of law, culture and society.
Mr Synot, an academic lawyer and researcher with the Griffith Law School, wrote in a piece for The Conversation that in Australia there are two competing claims to sovereignty, the Crown and Indigenous peoples.
“But although the case for Indigenous sovereignty seems irrefutable, the reality is much more complicated," he said.
“First Nations have never ceded sovereignty.
“The land was taken by force and has been retained by force.”
But, Mr Synot pointed out that the legitimacy of the Australian state does not rest upon a treaty with First Nations.
“This is a fact that is hard for many to swallow,” he said.
“I don’t like it, but it is a fact we must accommodate if we are to give meaningful expression to Indigenous sovereignty.”
On Thursday, the Blak Sovereign Movement, supported by independent Senator Lidia Thorpe published a critique of both the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ campaigns for the upcoming referendum on a First Nations voice.
“The current proposal is demanding that we be complicit in our own colonisation and assimilation, that we cede our sovereignty and acquiesce to colonial rule,” the statement says.
Kirstie Parker is the strategic advisor of the Uluru Dialogues, the organisation dedicated to advancing the Uluru Statement, which calls for the voice and a makarrata commission to oversee a process of agreement-making and truth-telling.
The Uluru Statement was developed following a process of regional dialogues between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, culminating in a national constitutional convention at Uluru in 2017.
There are 100 First Nations peoples represented in the statement.
Ms Parker, a Yuwullarai woman from north-western NSW, told AAP that neither the Uluru Statement nor the voice demand that Aboriginal people cede their sovereignty.
“It's hugely insulting to all Aboriginal people to say that,” she said.
“And it's not something you can do without noticing or by accident so to suggest that is ludicrous.”
On June 3, 1992, the High Court recognised the land rights of five Meriam people, Eddie Koiki Mabo, Reverend David Passi, Sam Passi, James Rice and Celuia Mapo Salee.
In acknowledging the traditional rights of the Meriam people to their land, the court also held that native title existed for all Indigenous people.
This landmark decision gave rise to native title legislation the following year and rendered terra nullius – land belonging to no-one - a legal fiction.
The Mabo case challenged the Australian legal system from two perspectives: the assumption that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had no concept of land ownership before the arrival of British colonisers in 1788 (terra nullius) and that sovereignty delivered complete ownership of all land in the colony to the Crown, abolishing any existing rights that may have existed previously.
Kieran Stewart-Assheton is the president of the Black Peoples Union.
“We’re a revolutionary organisation, working towards building a pan-Aboriginal movement in Australia, so that we can fight for our self determination and our sovereignty,” he said.
“It's one thing having those rights and another having the power to enforce them.
Mr Stewart-Assheton envisions a revolution.
“Ultimately, our end goal is, of course, the abolition of the colonial government,” he said.
“We believe that we should have First Nations governance structures in place as opposed to a colonial government structure.”
Mr Synot believes thinking of overthrowing the Commonwealth of Australia and total rejection of the constitution is naive.
“Short of a coup or an entire rewriting of the Australian nation – neither desirable nor realistic – there is no stepping outside of those authorities. It is constitutionally impossible,” he said.
Mr Stewart-Assheton said the BPU is against the voice proposal but conceded that being in the same camp as Peter Dutton and Pauline Hanson makes for uncomfortable bed-fellows.
“At the end of the day, they would deny Aboriginal people everything, even if it was just the measly scraps that fall off the table,” he said.
“But we're saying ‘no’ because we don't want to participate in these colonial processes and we believe that we have our own right to self-determination and to sovereignty.
“We also see the voice as a way to attack our self-determination and our sovereignty so we are saying ‘no’, but for the very opposite and different reasons.”
Wirdi barrister Tony McAvoy SC is a native title lawyer who has written extensively on treaties.
Mr McAvoy says a successful referendum, later this year, will have no legal effect on Indigenous sovereignty.
“My view is that there's there's no impact because no First Nation in Australia has accepted that there will be as a result of the reform,” he said.
“And ceding sovereignty is really only something that can be done expressly by the First Nations involved.
“It can't be done by stealth."
Mr Synot believes that the delegates to the Uluru convention worked through political and legal obstacles to give meaningful expression to Indigenous sovereignty and achieving change.
"If we are to change the constitutional structure of this nation then we need to begin here, at its foundation, with the voice, a permanent institutional mechanism that respects First Nations by recognising their place and sovereignty in the fabric of government," he said.
Mr McAvoy agrees that if the referendum is successful and the voice lives up to its potential, we should see progress.
"A change in the way in which government relates to Aboriginal people and First Nations communities that delivers some relief from various disadvantages that we have suffered," he said.
"And that will, in turn, benefit the whole country."
