[csaa-forum] Contesting Colonial Sovereignty: A seminar to discuss the Aboriginal Passport Ceremony

Katie Hepworth katie at katiehepworth.net
Tue Sep 11 17:08:39 CST 2012


**Apologies for cross-postings**

*Contesting Colonial Sovereignty*
 A seminar to discuss the Aboriginal Passport Ceremony

2pm, 22nd September 2012
Tin Sheds Gallery
148 City Rd, University of Sydney

On 15 September 2012 a Welcome to Aboriginal Land Passport Ceremony will be
held in Redfern (http://aboriginalpassportceremony.org/). Over 200 people,
including newly arrived asylum seekers, will be issued with an Aboriginal
Passport by Ray Jackson, President of the Indigenous Social Justice
Association. The ceremony itself is an important and powerful disruption of
settler colonialism and its assumptions of national sovereignty. It
recognizes, furthermore, that indigenous sovereignty was never ceded. At
the same time, the ceremony undermines the authority of state-issued
passports as documents that finally determine questions of inclusion and
exclusion. As the Ceremony organisers write, “the issuing of the Passports
covers two important areas of interactions between the Traditional Owners
of the Lands and migrants, asylum seekers and non-Aboriginal citizens of
this country. Whilst they acknowledge our rights to all the Aboriginal
Nations of Australia we reciprocate by welcoming them into our Nations. It
is a moral win-win for all involved in the process”.

This Seminar, one week after the event, will consider a range of issues
raised by the ceremony, including the politics of sovereignty; whether a
singular indigenous sovereignty is possible; as well as what alternative
sovereignties might look like. The seminar will be chaired by Eve Vincent
and will involve the following speakers:

- Ray Jackson, President of the Indigenous Social Justice Association and
long term activist who has been deeply involved in social movements for
many years - from the Union movement through to deaths in custody and
policing issues.

- Maria Giannacopolous, a lecturer in Socio-legal Studies and Criminal
Justice at Flinders University. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on
the relations between law, justice and sovereignty with a specific emphasis
on racialised communities (Indigenous peoples, refugees and migrants) in
Australia.

- Darren Parker, a Ngunnawal man, a graduate of University of Melbourne and
currently a PhD student at the same university. On completion of this
qualification he will be the first Aboriginal PhD graduate from Melbourne
Law School. Darren has an interest in commercial law and in particular the
social impact of law within our community and on the indigenous population
in particular.

This seminar is the third in the cross-border collective’s monthly series
of seminars on the theme of Politics, Colonialism, Borders. These seminars
aim to bring together activists and academics to examine local and
international movements and debates in order to develop a counter-politics
of the border. In our view, any such political movement must confront and
resist Australia’s colonial history and the ongoing dispossession of
indigenous peoples. If you would like to get involved in future seminars,
please email Katie Hepworth (ketiairport at gmail.com) or Richard Bailey (
rb2k at email.com).

The CBC is a Sydney based group that has been working on projects around
race, the border, migration and the state for around two years. In the
past, the Cross Border Collective has organised conferences, events,
forums, protest and direct action. For more information see:
crossbordersydney.org

The seminar is being held as part of the Crisis Complex exhibition at the
Tin Sheds Gallery, with the support of Transforming Cultures, UTS (
http://www.tfc.uts.edu.au/).

Doors will open at 1:30 for a 2pm start.
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