Re-imagining Settler Sovereignty: The Call to Law at the Coranderrk Aboriginal Reserve, Victoria 1881 (and Beyond)

Abstract

Contemporary struggles to establish lawful relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples continue a long history of contestation surrounding Europe‘s claims to dominion over the lands of others since the beginning of modern expansion in the late fifteenth century.² This collection focuses on Indigenous assertions of sovereign autonomy that were directed towards securing a permanent stake in the land in nineteenth-century British settler colonies, particularly through farming enterprises that sought at once to challenge and work within imposed Western frameworks. In this chapter, we home in on one extended campaign for land-based justice in the colony of Victoria, Australia, when the Aboriginal peoples of the Kulin nations, together with their European sympathizers and allies, challenged the ways in which British sovereignty had been unfolding there. Such was the influence of their campaign that by 1881, the government had agreed to an official Parliamentary Inquiry into conditions at the Coranderrk Aboriginal Reserve, the centre of a so-called rebellion against colonial authorities.

We are grateful to the Australian Research Council for funding The Minutes of Evidence project: promoting new and collaborative ways of understanding Australia’s past and engaging with structural justice’ (http://minutesofevidence.com). This three-year project (2011–2014) brings together leading Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal researchers, education experts, creative artists and Community members to promote new modes of publicly engaging with historical and structural injustice. It draws centrally on the 1881 Inquiry to create a series of ‘meeting points’ (in public spaces, on-Country, in schools, theatres and universities) to share memories, understandings and possibilities in relation to the nation’s past, present and future. Julie Evans is the Lead Chief Investigator and Giordano Nanni the Senior Research Associate on the project, which is hosted by the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. We thank our research assistants, Maria Rae and Adam Ferguson, for assisting in preparing this chapter for publication.