Australia's First Nations

Abstract

Since the 1990s, the term "nation" for Indigenous Australian groups has emerged, along with an increasingly common phrase "First Nations," used both by Indigenous groups in self-reference and by others in reference to them. This article examines the multiple sources of nation and its emergence in Australia as a contemporary form of Indigenous political discourse. Following a history of repeated dismissal of representative organizations by the Australian state, collective gains in recognition and legal visibility of Indigenous people, globally and nationally, have motivated a search for persuasive forms of organization that can command political authority between local social forms and governments, businesses, and other entities. Treaties are commonly understood as between distinct "nations," but-notoriously-the Australian state did not negotiate treaties with Indigenous people. The emergence of "nation" is aspirational and double-sided: it responds to dominant Australian conditions and political demands but retains much that is distinctive of Aboriginal social process rather than erasing it in the socio-political innovation of nationhood. The rise of Australian Indigenous "nations," recent and partial, sheds light both on persistence in Indigenous action and extension of governmental power into Indigenous domains-the "post-" of settler colonialism.

Afterword: Kinship Possibilities in Water Futures

“…Hence, while marine title might recognise that hap u are associated with particular areas of interest and that this holds ownership significance, it invisibilises the fact that the linkage of kinship relations also legitimates claims across difference. That is, there is a stark contrast in viewing kinship as an exclusive identity and property demarcator, and kinship as a network phenomenon (Merlan 2022). Indeed, for Yolngu in north Arnhem Land, it is the perpetual motion pattering of waves that distinguishes the sea tenure of different groups, while for other Indigenous Australians, it is the colour of water that differentiates (Young, this issue).…”

“…The stories recounted here, however, illustrate a fundamental characteristic of Māori saltwater relations: the ability of Indigenous kinship to maintain difference, invoked in everyday life, at the same time as use this difference as a pathway to relationships. Merlan (2022) describes a similar ‘genius’ phenomenon in Indigenous Australian social organisation, and she includes kinship relations, alongside land, custom and language, as dimensions of difference that serve as modes of linkage as well as of demarcation. Meanwhile, Young (this special issue) shows how Ancestors, personified as Wanampi the Rainbow or Water Serpents, are at work in many dimensions, intersecting inside/outside boundaries.…”