Indigenous nation building and native title: strategic uses of a fraught settler-colonial regime

Abstract

ABSTRACT Despite the ongoing and destructive nature of invasion and settler-colonial institutions, laws and policies in Australia, many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations continue to assert their sovereignty; exercise their inherent rights to self-determination as self-defined, autonomous peoples; and pursue collective aspirations in highly constrained and contested environments. Many nations are engaged in Indigenous nation (re)building (INB). One key INB strategy utilised by such nations is to use settler-colonial policy for their own collective ends. This article analyses the relationship between a complex and highly fraught settler-colonial legal-political system, native title, and INB processes in Australia. Using the ‘Identify as a Nation, Organise as a Nation, Act as a Nation’ framework, we explore some of the actual and potential relationships between the native title system and INB. Despite the considerable harms of the native title system on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, we maintain that First Nations may be able to strategically engage in the system in a way that assists them to further their cultural and political autonomy.