Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 10 - The Challenge of Indigenous Polities

  • from III - Public Authorities in Encounter
  • Edited by Peter Cane, University of Cambridge, Lisa Ford, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Mark McMillan
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Legal History of Australia
    Published online:
    04 August 2022
    Print publication:
    18 August 2022, pp 227-257

  • Summary

    In this chapter we look at the ways in which the Australian settler-colonial constitutional order has recognised, and denied, the status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as polities.We aim to show that in settler law traditional owner communities, alone or in aggregation, are largely characterised as racial groups, not as bodies politic. We trace developments in the recognition of traditional ownership, and (in glimpses) of traditional law and custom, in Australian law since the 1960s. The story is largely one of settler resistance to Indigenous legal and political authority, in the face of sustained intergenerational Indigenous advocacy. We point in particular to the fact that because they are mischaracterised as racial communities, the efforts of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People to self-determine are made vulnerable to claims that their distinctive rights and institutions discriminate against non-Indigenous Australians.