Sovereignty Stories from Settler Societies @UOW

A Higher Degree Research Student Symposium ~ 5 May 2023

In May, Higher Degree Research students affiliated with our Centre for Colonial and Settler Studies and our companion Future of Rights Centre @ the University of Wollongong gathered to talk ‘Sovereignty Stories from Settler Societies’.

What resulted was an afternoon of sharing ~ sharing our personal and disciplinary perspectives; our words, texts, and images; our methodologies and conceptual framings; our geographical loci and thematic foci; and our generosity and conviviality.

Cammi Webb-Gannon gets us underway while Lewis patiently pretends not to pose for a photograph

Below is an idea of some of the connections we made and disconnections we explored.

~ Place and Space

As befits an intellectual and artistic endeavour on the theme of sovereignty, relationship with place and space occupied a central part of our exchanges.

Many of our discussions focused on ~ moving and staying; transporting and transplanting; welcoming and accommodating; belonging and not belonging; displacement and eradication.

In ‘Yarning with Weeds’, Crystal Arnold spoke to the foreign weed trying to survive or thrive on Yuin Country. This was an empathetic reading, from an Indigenous point of view, of that which is transplanted, and which struggles to replicate its status and function in its former home. Through its benevolent telling of the story of the weed which tries but can never thrive where Yuin Country Lore is the only Lore, Crystal’s talk cast a welcome shadow on a settler mentality of eradication, emphasising understanding and generosity instead.

Crystal Arnold ~ ‘Yarning with Weeds’

~ Boundaries

Our speakers reminded us that there were, and are, boundaries. These boundaries are artificially imposed. They are attempts to impose control ~ to variously label, categorise, segregate, homogenise, include and exclude.

In many ways, these boundaries define colonialism as it unfolded, and as it perpetuates. As the legacies of colonisation continue to play out, what were marked as boundaries remain in place or morph in response to prevailing social, economic, and political conditions.

The nature, and/or the very existence, of these boundaries are also challenged. Through insisting on openness or on recognising and acknowledging the intersectionalities of identity, we can rethink our pasts, work to reshape our presents, and radically envision as yet unimagined futures.

Nadia Gregory’s title ‘working together, working apart’ is an apt expression of the intertwining opportunities and limitations of such challenges. When trying to reclaim agency, organisations led by women of different races within the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa were compelled to work within existing racialised frameworks. They worked together while also working apart, within categories ascribed to them by those in authority, to try to imagine a future beyond those racialised categories.

Nadia Gregory ~ ‘“Working Together, Working Apart” - Multiracial Women-Led Organisations Within the Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa’

 Methodologically, Stephanie Beaupark’s presentation resisted the artificiality of disciplinary boundaries, such as those between the sciences and the arts. Indigenous knowledges offer a value-system which views all aspects of the community and ecosystem at large as unified. Creatively drawing on the chemistry of colour, she advocated for ‘molecular decolonisation’ as a strategy for coming back to a way of seeing that affirms that we are all interconnected; proposing that as a human species we can work as one with the environment and all its inhabitants to look after our planet’s wellbeing.

Stephanie Beaupark ~ ‘Weaving Together the Art and Science of Australian Natural Dyes’

 ~ Meanings

During the afternoon, we talked about the meanings that are imposed on us through processes of colonialism ~ meanings that we variously create, accept, deploy, develop, challenge.

Lewis Powell introduced us to how settlers used the discourse and paradigms of settler-colonialism to construct ‘narratives of monetary sovereignty’. Proponents of the settler-state’s right to issue and regulate its own currency, legitimised their claims through replicating biblical directives that were harnessed by those colonising lands in the first place. These ‘directives’, which were deployed to give gave colonists’ actions meaning beyond simple invasion, emphasised the so-called mission to go forth, occupy, be fruitful, replenish, subdue. These vocabularies, appropriated by supporters of monetary sovereignty, were aimed at sustaining, and extending the nature and hold of the settler-state.

Lewis Powell ~ ‘The Space of The Settler-State: Narratives of Monetary Sovereignty in Australian History’

 Our speakers also acknowledged that the words that we have access to, in our daily personal and professional lives, are limited in their capacity to represent the holistic nature of our surroundings, the environment, and our relationships with those.

One way of overcoming some of these restrictions is to look to the languages of the First Nations peoples. Our participants affirmed that Indigenous languages can be used to challenge accepted meanings ~ offering systems of understanding that far transcend anything the settler-state can try to impose.

Stephanie told us that in one Indigenous language, the name for the roots of mangroves which draw gases into those plants is the same as that for ‘lungs’. Thinking on this meaning, we were moved to feel that words can live and represent living, to exhale and feel a sense of slow breathing.

~ Emotions, Affect, Storytelling

The feelings that our speakers talked about ~ and shared ~ were overwhelming in some ways.

Necessarily in a gathering focusing on sovereignty and colonial and anti-colonial paradigms, our conversation turned to negative emotions and affect producing and produced by violence, eradication, trauma, shame.

But we were also connected by feelings of welcoming and generosity; patience, empathy, and optimism; unity and activism; the spirit of a community of engagement; and the healing power of personal testimony.

In her presentation on the International Criminal Court (ICC, 2002-), Mareen Brosinksy spoke to us about the ICC’s overwhelming bias towards prosecuting African and Middle Eastern subjects. However, she also pointed to another aspect of the International Criminal Framework, namely Universal Jurisdiction (UJ), which is increasingly being used by developing states, such as Argentina, to try to prosecute perpetrators from developed states, for example Franco’s Spain. Mareen said there is an emotional as well as a political side to all of this; UJ presents non-Western states with a decentralised pathway for public storytelling in a bid for healing and to overcome post-colonial power politics.

Mareen Brosinksy ~ ‘Seeking Accountability for International Crimes: Local Practices and The Effectiveness of Universal Jurisdiction as A National Response Mechanism’

 Our friend from Sweden, Lisa Ridzén, talked about how the Sami minority in her home country continued to suffer from oppression stemming from the intersectionalities of racialised, colonised, and gendered positioning. Transitioning from negative to positive emotion, Lisa steered the story towards agency. She focused on how Sami people were resisting the shame and challenging the stigma imposed on their sense of identity through colonisation to refashion for themselves an existence predicated on activism and pride. Reclaiming traditions such as hunting, protesting destruction of native lands through mining, and creating new traditions including celebrating Sami national day, all combined to form the message that being Sami was ‘enough’.

Lisa Ridzén ~ ‘“Am I Sami Enough?” – Identity Construction in Settler Colonial Northern Sweden’

~ Methodologies and Conceptualisations

One thing that differed markedly across our presentations was the methodology-conceptual framework nexus.

While decolonising agenda and knowledge was on everyone’s mind, to achieve this our speakers adopted a diverse range of approaches.

Some connected directly to Country or directly to people through compiling oral histories. Others turned to the text, undertaking an analysis of discourse ~ reading words and imagery against the grain. Still others harnessed the potential of strategies directly intended to challenge Western, and propose alternative, ways of thinking to work towards a more fruitful integrated future, such as ‘molecular decolonisation’.

To arrive at his ideas, thoughts, and findings, Benny Ho-pong TO deployed a blended quantitative-qualitative approach. His aim is to understand the strategic and affective dimensions of protest in Hong Kong as democracy and autonomy come increasingly under threat. He shared with us his use of coding and sampling and network-tracing, as well as a close reading of language, to understand how social media platforms have been used to cultivate an effective, united community of protest ~ in the face of rising authoritarianism.

Benny Ho-Pong TO ~ ‘The 2019 Social Movement in Hong Kong: Emotional Dynamics on Social Media’

Researching the nexus between existing, emerging, and future technologies one hand, and environments, peoples, place, kin and custom on the other, will only become more critical as we look to radically re-imagine the future.

~ Together

Together the Centre for Colonial and Settler Studies and Future of Rights Centre commit to collaborative, interdisciplinary, activist, and community-engaged research that places colonial and settler colonial formations in comparative and connected frames and explores human rights through both historical and contemporary lenses.

In ‘Sovereignty Stories from Settler Societies’, we came together to collaboratively break down boundaries ~ we crossed disciplinary identifications, methodologies, and conceptual framings, and shared knowledges and emotional and affective experiences, to connect on contemporary and historical issues of justice and belonging.

In the first of what we hope will be many more such conversations, we emerged further committed to the importance of being led by Indigenous knowledges to imagine and create a future that confronts the legacies of past and present, while working to protect the planet and all its species.

And a little extra ~ Susan Engel ~ ‘Social Media Workshop Session’

Sharon Crozier-De Rosa (Co-Director, CASS)

~ and for Cammi Webb-Gannon (Co-Director, CASS), Susan Engels (Co-Director, CASS), Phil Orchard (Co-Director, CASS) & our fascinating HDR researchers whom we thank profusely  

Acknowledgement of Country

The University of Wollongong spreads across many interrelated Aboriginal Countries that are bound by this sacred landscape, and intimate relationship with that landscape since creation.

From Sydney to the Southern Highlands, to the South Coast.

From fresh water to bitter water to salt.

From City to Urban to Rural.

The University of Wollongong Acknowledges the Custodianship of the Aboriginal peoples of this place and space that has kept alive the relationships between all living things.

The University Acknowledges the devastating impact of colonisation on our campuses' footprint and commit ourselves to truth-telling, healing and education.