Some of Indigenous Australia's emerging and well-known thinkers offer a critical perspective on the most important political and cultural issues facing Indigenous people today and set the agenda for further action.
Indigenous rights in Australia are at a crossroads. Over the past decade, neo-liberal governments have reasserted their claim to land in Australia, and refuse to either negotiate with the Indigenous owners or to make amends for the damage done by dispossession. Many Indigenous communities are in a parlous state, under threat both physically and culturally.
In Sovereign Subjects some of Indigenous Australia's emerging and well-known critical thinkers examine the implications for Indigenous people of continuing to live in a state founded on invasion. They show how for Indigenous people, self-determination, welfare dependency, representation, cultural maintenance, history writing, reconciliation, land ownership and justice are all inextricably linked to the original act of dispossession by white settlers and the ongoing loss of sovereignty.
At a time when the old left political agenda has run its course, and the new right is looking increasingly morally bankrupt, Sovereign Subjects sets a new rights agenda for Indigenous politics and Indigenous studies.
Aileen Moreton-Robinson is a Geonpul scholar and Professor of Indigenous Studies at Queensland University of Technology. She is author of Talkin' Up to the White Woman and editor of Whitening Race.