<div style="text-align:center">**Apologies for cross-postings**<br>
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<div style="text-align:center"><b>Contesting Colonial Sovereignty</b><br>
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<div style="text-align:center">A seminar to discuss the Aboriginal Passport Ceremony<br>
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2pm, 22nd September 2012<br>
Tin Sheds Gallery<br>
148 City Rd, University of Sydney<br>
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On 15 September 2012 a Welcome to Aboriginal Land Passport Ceremony will be held in Redfern (<a href="http://aboriginalpassportceremony.org/" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank"><span>http://</span><span></span><span>aboriginalpassportceremony.</span><span></span>org/</a>).
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, furtherm<span></span>ore,
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”.<br>
<div> <br> 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: <br> <br> - 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.<br> <br> - 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.<br> <br> -
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.<br> <br> 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
(<a href="mailto:ketiairport@gmail.com" target="_blank">ketiairport@gmail.com</a>) or Richard Bailey (<a href="mailto:rb2k@email.com" target="_blank">rb2k@email.com</a>).<br>
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<span><span>The CBC is a Sydney based
group that has been working on projects around race, the <span>border</span>,
migration and the state for around two years. In the past, the
Cross <span>Border</span> Collective has organised conferences, events,
forums, protest and direct action. For more information see: <a href="http://crossbordersydney.org/" target="_blank">crossbordersydney.org</a></span></span><br> <br> The
seminar is being held as part of the Crisis Complex exhibition at the
Tin Sheds Gallery, with the support of Transforming Cultures, UTS (<a href="http://www.tfc.uts.edu.au/" rel="nofollow nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.tfc.uts.edu.au/</a>).<br>
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Doors will open at 1:30 for a 2pm start.<br>
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