Unfinished Constitutional Business: Rethinking Indigenous Self-Determination

Extract

Unfinished Constitutional Business: Rethinking Indigenous Self-Determination, Barbara A. Hocking, ed., Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005, pp. 293.

In the introduction to this collection of papers from a 2001 conference in Brisbane, Australia, the editor asks, “can indigenous peoples' experiences of colonisation reshape our constitutional language?” (xv). The contributions to the book reflect the breadth of indigenous experiences as well as the range of ways that many nation-states will have to revisit their constitutions in order to satisfy the goal of decolonization/self-determination. Indeed, the book requires us to rethink what we consider to be a constitution in the context of unresolved and highly unsatisfactory indigenous-settler relations. More than a document or series of political institutions, the book explores the many ways that colonial societies have been and remain constituted by non-indigenous assumptions and ideologies and considers whether and how these impair claims for indigenous self-determination.