Aboriginal Embassy Research Articles

Aboriginal Sovereignty and the Politics of Reconciliation: The Constituent Power of the Aboriginal Embassy in Australia

As a reoccupation of land immediately in front of Parliament House for six months in 1972, the Aboriginal Embassy was an inspiring demonstration of Aboriginal self-determination and land rights. Since 1972 demonstrators have maintained an Embassy on the site as part of the continuing Aboriginal struggle. Significantly, on its twentieth anniversary in 1992 Embassy protestors declared Aboriginal sovereignty just as the state-initiated formal reconciliation process was getting underway in Australia. Within mainstream public discourse in Australia, reconciliation is understood as aligned with a progressive politics. In this paper we examine the reactionary politics of reconciliation vis-à-vis the struggle for land rights and sovereignty that the Embassy embodies. To this end we examine a debate within legal theory about the relation between ‘constituted power’ (state sovereignty) and ‘constituent power’ (democratic praxis). Following Antonio Negri, the Embassy can be understood as one manifestation of the constituent power of Aboriginal people (and their non-Aboriginal supporters) that the Australian state appropriates to shore up its own defective claim to sovereignty. We illustrate this by comparing the symbolism of the Aboriginal Embassy with that of Reconciliation Place in Canberra. We complicate this analysis by discussing how the Embassy strategically exploits the ambiguous status of Aboriginal people as citizens within and without the community presupposed by the Australian state. In doing so the Embassy makes present the possibility of a break with the colonial past that is often invoked in the politics of reconciliation but which the Australian state has failed to enact.

The Aboriginal Embassy: An Account of the Protests of 1972

The Aboriginal Embassy: An Account of the Protests of 1972

Aboriginal affairs: Monologue or dialogue?

On January 26 2002, the thirtieth anniversary of the creation of the first Aboriginal tent embassy was celebrated. In 1972 the tent embassy emerged from the Black Power movement as a manifestation of the call for recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty and the right to self-determination. These claims have been raised continually by some prominent Aboriginal activists, but the main answer given by the government has been the creation of Aboriginal policies and sections for Aboriginal people within the Australian political system. The government, by different means, has brought Aboriginal activists within the system and has diverted attention from their aspirations. What I would like to point out in this article is that the government has answered claims for a dialogue with an imposed monologue. I would also like to stress that some activists have found ways to take advantage of the circumstances imposed upon them and have developed a dialogue from within governmental institutions. I do not pretend to give a full description of the different means used by Aboriginal people to gain recognition of their rights; I aim only to give an account of some strategies utilised by Indigenous Australians in their fight against political marginalisation. In 1972, the first response of the government to Aboriginal political claims was radical: the police simply expelled the Aboriginal embassy from the lawn of what is now old Parliament House. This action generated much publicity for the Aboriginal cause. The following answers to Indigenous political claims were more moderate and, above all, less visible. In 1973, the Whitlam government used some of the rhetoric of the embassy protests when introducing what was called the selfdetermination policy. Prime minister Whitlam declared: ‘The basic object of my Government’s policy is to restore to the Aboriginal people of Australia their power of self-determination in economic, social and political affairs’.1 The selfdetermination policy was in fact self-management; far from what was asked for by Aboriginal activists, as it meant only greater participation in Aboriginal policy as defined by the government and not what is meant by the international definition of self-determination, which is the right to exercise a free political choice.