https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/what-s-indigenous-sovereignty-and-can-a-voice-extinguish-it-20230113-p5ccdk.html
I just read this article linked above, and I have a lot of thoughts on it. Here’s a start…
“What did sovereignty look like in 1770?“
The section “What did sovereignty look like in 1770?” is very misleading. The article gives the false impression that Cook was instructed to get consent from the natives of New Holland. This is not what happened. The secret instructions have taken out of context in this article. This article is not the only culprit here – this misconception is very common in the mainstream narrative. When one reads Cook’s original secret instructions in it’s entirety and in context, it is clear that the parts regarding consent of the natives… i.e.
“You are also with the Consent of the Natives to take Possession of Convenient Situations in the Country in the Name of the King of Great Britain: Or: if you find the Country uninhabited take Possession for his Majesty by setting up Proper Marks and Inscriptions, as first discoverers and possessors.”
DO NOT apply to New Holland. This section applies only to undiscovered lands found enroute between Tahiti and New Zealand. Immediately after the consent part of the instructions is this…
“But if you shall fail of discovering the Continent beforemention’d, you will with upon falling
in with New Zeland carefully observe the Latitude and Longitude in which that Land is situated and explore as much of the Coast as the Condition of the Bark….
Cook failed to discover the beforementioned Continent lying in between Tahiti and New Zealand. Therefore the part about consent is irrelevant as it applies to the beforementioned continent which does not exist.
What actually happened is this…
As far as British knowledge was at the time of Cook’s voyage, New Holland was already under formal possession claim by the Dutch. This claim was staked in 1642 from the east coast of Tasmania by Abel Tasman. This claim was implicitly recognised by European powers by the fact that no European deliberately went near the place for more than a hundred years. The British had no way of knowing of the existence of the Bass Strait, so as far as British knowledge is concerned, Tasmania is part of New Holland and therefore under Dutch possession as of 1642.
Cook was also instructed to only claim lands previously undiscovered by European powers – New Holland is not undiscovered. Cook’s ‘secret instructions’ – the instructions that we know of – do not tell Cook to claim New Holland.
So why did Cook claim New Holland if it wasn’t in the secret instructions? There’s two logical possibilities. 1. He went cowboy. 2. He had another set of instructions. If he went cowboy, the British would not have subsequently sent him on future voyages, neither would they have set up a colony in “Botany Bay” based on Cook’s discovery.
Cook must have had another set of instructions.
And there’s proof of this which I have previously written about in this blog.
On Sovereignty
The Jack Latimore article in question mentions “Indigenous Sovereignty”.
THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS ABORIGINAL SOVEREIGNTY.
THEY ARE NOT INTERCHANGBLE!!
This is extremely important to distinguish the two concepts of indigenous and Aboriginal.
“Indigenous” is a cultural designation. It means a minority – a part of a whole. Take a region or territory, there may be different communities living in that space. Indigenous refers to the communities that have the oldest cultural continuity with that territory. Generally, which communities are or are not Indigenous is defined by the State in the limited context of international human rights obligations.
“Aboriginal” on the other-hand has it’s three part definition. Blood, self identification, and claimed by a community. There is no cultural component and no racial component. This is a very similar concept to nationality. There’s a reason Australia created this definition – it relates to international laws on decolonisation. “Aboriginal” is the designation used by Australian state to identify the communities who are under Australia’s colonial subjugation and domination. Aboriginal people are colonised peoples. Colonised people have a very unique and special set of political rights. This is well outside of the scope of international human rights afforded to indigenous peoples. It’s rights to their own territorial integrity, rights to determine their political status, including who governs them and how they choose to identify themselves and speak on their behalf.
Indigenous Sovereignty is by definition limited to the confines of the State, as indigenous peoples are part of a larger whole under the dominant State.
Aboriginal Sovereignty transcends the sovereignty of the occupying colonial State.
Strait off the bat, Latimore is not addressing the core issue. And that is the problem with the current debate over the Uluru Statement. The basis is wrong from the very start.